There's a surprising revelation in The Bay

When Marsha Thomason joined the third series of The Bay, she and her character DS Jenn Townsend were very much the new girls – the drama had previously starred Morven Christie as family liaison officer Lisa Armstrong.

Luckily, viewers were quick to accept Jenn, and it seems it was a similar story among the cast.

Marsha explains: “It was so great coming back for series four. Last year… I was a bit nervous, whereas this year I felt much more confident coming in and it was just so nice.

“We all became friends and are all in touch when we aren’t filming. It is especially nice coming back and seeing everybody as I live in LA, they would get together for dinner or drinks and they would send pictures so I’d be sad I was missing out so it’s been great to come back.”

It’s probably a mark of just how well Marsha (and Jenn) have fitted in that the show’s writers felt confident getting this latest run off to a very dramatic start.

For anyone who missed the opening episode, Marsha explains: “This series starts with a fire, which was really intense and so incredibly sad. It was really hard to watch as we were shooting it, very harrowing. I got very emotional.

“Right at the top of episode one, [Jenn] gets a phone call, gets there as soon as she can and this house is ablaze and the kids are outside shouting and it is just heart-breaking. This is a particularly challenging case with some delicate relationships to manage, with the surviving children to look out for and how we handle all of that.”

She adds: “There are four children in the family. Two of them are teenagers, but two of them are still quite young, so Jenn has to tread carefully.

“What’s interesting about the case this year is that there is a grieving family and the dad hasn’t really been very hands on with them ever so this is the first time he’s ever had to step up and take care of them on his own whilst dealing with this grief, whilst he is trying to keep his business afloat and everything that comes with that.”

That becomes clear in this episode as the dad in question, Dean, is faced with another life-changing event, and tries to escape from his grief by going back to work. Is it an understandable urge to restore some normality, or is Jenn right to fear that he’s about to do something he might live to regret?

Meanwhile, Jenn is also under pressure – her work is taking up so much of her attention, she’s failed to notice that her own kids are in trouble. As if that wasn’t stressful enough, Manning wants her to keep something from the team so that his personal and professional lives don’t start colliding.

At least the cops may be about to make some progress, when a suspect they’ve been searching for hands himself in, leading to a surprising revelation.