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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

Wreck review – bloodthirsty Orville the duck goes on a high seas murdering spree

It will give you nightmares … the murderous duck in Wreck.
It will give you nightmares … the murderous duck in Wreck. Photograph: Peter Marley/BBC/Euston Films

If I were on a cruise ship, as a guest or a staff member, I would pray for death. Which draws the sting of Wreck (BBC Three) a little for me – a slasher-horror-comedy-thriller set on a cruise ship on which people are bloodily murdered for reasons as yet unknown. You lucky budgies, a part of me cannot help but think. It’s a little like when I watched Papillon, quite baffled because I didn’t understand that solitary confinement was supposed to be a punishment.

The first person we meet on the good ship Sacramentum is Pippa (Jodie Tyack). She breaks up with her boyfriend Danny (Jack Rowan) and is then pursued across the decks and down the corridors by a hooded duck mascot with a knife. No one in the cast is old enough to understand the reference, but, dear slightly older readers, it looks like an armed, yellow Orville. You will have nightmares. Eventually, armed Orville has Pippa trapped, which is when she sticks two fingers up at her plush pursuer, says: “You can’t have me,” and tips herself backwards over the side. Roll credits!

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