So, what would you do if you ran into, literally, the man who killed your brother? Context is important. Let’s assume you met him 20 years after the crime and he was out of jail and living an apparently successful life. He’s long released from prison and because of his age at the time, his conviction is spent.
Dead & Buried’s main protagonist, Cathy, who lost her older brother Terry when she was 15, understandably rages at the shocking discovery that killer Michael McAllister shops in the same Derry supermarket as her.
She tracks him down on social media, creates a fake profile to stalk him, sends an undertaker to his house for his wife (who is alive), visits her at her business and breaks into the couple’s home.
Her best friend pleads with her to stop (her therapist is not best pleased either), but she’s driven by anger, thoughts of revenge and a strange, weird, attraction.
The question writer Colin Bateman poses in Dead & Buried is one of redemption and forgiveness.
Who should we sympathise with? Cathy, who understandably still grieves for her brother and sees decades of trauma resurface after meeting McAllister? Or the former killer who had paid his dues for a youthful mistake, is now a productive member of society and is being hounded and stalked?
Has McAllister the right to get on with his life or should he always suffer for his sins? Is Cathy entitled to her pound of flesh or is she now the criminal?
Set on the Derry/Donegal border, both Cathy and McAllister appear to have drink problems, perhaps as a result of the trauma when young.
Cathy is not averse to a morning glass of wine and is on medication, which she sometimes decides not to take.
We also see McAllister drink plenty of wine and on one occasion his wife wakes him from his slumber on a living room chair with an empty bottle of whiskey at his feet.
McAllister is married with a son in Donegal, where his wife has opened a new business, a coffee shop, in the last year.
He works as an executive for his father-in-law’s bus company and hates that he’s so beholden to him that he has to attend his weekly, dull Christian meetings with the “brothers” prayer group.
McAllister dreams of starting a new career, but it’s shot down by his wife who reminds him “how much” the brothers have done for him over the years.
Cathy, a schoolteacher, is married to another teacher and they have a young son. It’s a good marriage but her husband is clearly unhappy with some of her behaviour, such as when she has an afternoon dress up and wine session and forgets to collect the child from creche.
When Cathy tells her best friend she’s found McAllister on social media, she reluctantly agrees to have a bit of in vino fun and send him a message while the husbands watch the football in another room.
But things escalate quickly after Cathy creates a fake profile, telling McAllister she knows him from school.
She hates him but there’s also an attraction.
Soon she’s sending suggestive photographs and leaving her underwear in his bedroom after breaking into his house.
Dead & Buried explores the possibility of forgiveness with subtly and intelligence but beware, this is grim drama.
It seems to rain more in Derry than in the 1930s Limerick of Angela’s Ashes. The sets are dark, life is challenging and there’s unbroken tension as we await Cathy’s next move.
