The Bay is an ITV crime drama series produced by Tall Story Pictures and distributed worldwide by ITV Studios Global Entertainment that first aired in March 2019. Morven Christie plays a detective sergeant family liaison officer called in on an investigation into missing twins from a family living in Morecambe. The name of the series derives from Morecambe Bay, which is on the west coast of England in the county of Lancashire. The series received an average of 7.2 million views across the six episodes.
Detective Sergeant Lisa Armstrong (Morven Christie) is the mother of two children and working for (the fictional) West Lancashire Police Service as a Family Liaison Officer (FLO). She is called out on the case of two missing children only to find the married stepfather of the twins is someone that she had sex within an alley behind a pub on the night the twins disappeared whilst out on a friend’s hen do. As an FLO, Armstrong is trained not to become emotionally involved with cases she is working on, but her sexual encounter with Sean (Jonas Armstrong), threatens to compromise the investigation. Although she can prove that he isn’t responsible for their disappearance, Armstrong deletes the CCTV footage of them having sex, rather than come clean and admit to the one-night stand and provide Sean with an alibi.
Series 2 was confirmed on 4 May 2019; Series 2 was supposed to air mid-2020 but due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it has been pushed to early 2021.
In December 2020, It was confirmed that Series 2 would air on ITV in January 2021.