SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Grace Season 5, Episode 2. It also contains discussion of suicide.

Grace Season 5, Episode 2 is just as dark as the BritBox series usually is, but it might feel almost too familiar for American viewers. That’s because the subject of “Dead at First Sight” is catfishing. When the novel was published in 2019, US audiences had been watching Catfish: The TV Show for seven years. Luckily, episodes of that series didn’t end in death.

But that gives the folks who are watching this on BritBox a sense that they’ve seen half of this story before. They can tell early on that all of the victims (who are introduced fairly quickly) are being deceived in the worst way. That blunts some of the shock that “Dead at First Sight” is going for. It’s still a very good whodunit, as the presumed suicides are found to actually be murders, but it doesn’t have the emotional punch of some other Grace episodes like Season 3’s “You Are Dead.”

“Dead at First Sight” gets its dramatic momentum not from sadness or shock, but from the little details that Roy Grace and his team inevitably uncover. Of course the two seemingly unrelated deaths are going to be related after all, but viewers probably won’t guess how until the squad gets there. Peter James has a knack for getting to the second level of his crime stories, where the big twists genuinely add to the narrative instead of feeling tacked on, and Grace as a series has always been able to preserve that.

The final twenty minutes of the episode are suitably dramatic, although the last revelation feels like it doesn’t have enough time to breathe. But as usual, the acting performances push the mystery over the top. John Simm remains the stabilizing force that keeps the whole show on track, and there’s a subplot for Ari Branson that gives Rebecca Scroggs two great scenes. Even if the bones of the story aren’t uncommon, by the end the audience still feels like they’ve gone on a satisfying ride.

In other news, Grace Season 5, Episode 2 marks the debut of actor Juliette Motamed as Vee Wilde. She’s the expected new addition to fill the spot left behind when Craig Parkinson’s Norman Potting left the series. Unfortunately, Vee does not have a good first episode. She also fills the “brash young cop” stereotype near-perfectly, starting right away when she gets on the wrong side of Bella Moy (and thus also the audience). Hopefully the character will be fleshed out further in the remainder of the season.

“Dead at First Sight” is less impressive than the Grace season 5 premiere, but still a solid procedural entry and better than most of the crime dramas being turned out today. While it may be uneven in places, it still delivers enough suspense and solid acting to be worth the watch. If nothing else, it will make viewers more conscious of what they’re doing online—and who they may or may not be talking to.

Grace streams Thursdays on BritBox. Photo Credit: Courtesy of ITV.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.