Laura Donnelly leads the Dark ITV drama cast in The Dark, playing DI Monica Kennedy as the thriller opens on a serial-killer case in Scotland. Viewers of ITV are being pushed straight into the investigation, with the first episode continuing on Monday.
Laura Donnelly and Helen Baxendale
Laura Donnelly and Helen Baxendale star in ITV’s The Dark, but the key figure is Donnelly’s DI Monica Kennedy, who discovers a young man’s body in the countryside. That setup gives the drama a sharper brief than a standard murder mystery: the dead man’s older brother went missing years before, so the case immediately links a fresh death to an older disappearance.
The series is described as a crime drama about a serial killer using twisted techniques in the Scottish wilderness. That pairing of a rural setting with a long-running missing-person thread gives the story a narrower, more procedural shape than a broad whodunnit, and it keeps the investigation tied to one line of inquiry rather than scattering attention across multiple plots.
DI Monica Kennedy in ITV
DI Monica Kennedy in ITV is the role built around Donnelly’s lead turn, and the body discovery is what moves the plot from premise to active investigation. For viewers, that means the drama is not treating the serial killer as background texture; the case is already personal to the detective through the brother who vanished years earlier.
The first episode continuing on Monday also tells viewers how ITV is pacing the story: this is being introduced as an unfolding case, not a one-night standalone. The brightness warning attached to the thriller points to a darker visual style, which fits the Scottish wilderness setting and the serial-killer material without needing the show to spell out its menace in dialogue.
Scottish wilderness case
Laura Donnelly’s lead role makes The Dark a cleaner sell for ITV than a generic crime launch, because the story has one central detective, one body, and one old disappearance pulling against each other. That structure should help viewers track the case quickly when the episode continues on Monday, while the serial-killer premise keeps the investigation from settling into a routine police-drama rhythm.
What the opening episode leaves hanging is not whether Monica Kennedy has a case, but how the killer’s twisted techniques connect to the missing brother from years earlier. That is the hook ITV has put on the table, and it is the reason this darkly lit thriller is worth watching past the first episode.
