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WIRE IN THE BLOOD season 1 review

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2.46- random rants Fall 2002
2.47

WIRE IN THE BLOOD review
by David Blackwell

WIRE IN THE BLOOD is disturbing. It is an interesting crime thriller TV series based on the novel WIRE IN THE BLOOD by Val McDermid. The first three 90 minute episodes did great and four more episodes are being filmed starting this March with Robson Green returning as clinical psychologist Tony Hill who helps DI Carol Jordan catch serial killers in Northern England. Robson Green is in his most interesting character role so far since DCI David Creegan in the TOUCHING EVIL series.

In the first episode, "The Mermaids Singing", DI Jordan (Hermione Norris) recruits Hill to help her catch a serial killer who tortures and then kills people in the ways depicted in drawings of old torture methods. Jordan thinks the killer is man while Tony Hill thinks the killer is a woman. Tony also thinks there is a message on the bodies of the three men killed while the police focus on the gay scene. Tony becomes the next target of the killer. The final disturbing minutes of this episode sent chills through me (as did the final minutes of the third episode, "Justice Painted Blind").

In the second episode, "Shadows Rising", the bones of a teenage girl who disappeared five years ago is later found in a Northumberland lake after two bodies of teenagers are discovered in the same lake. The girl is linked with five other disappearances. Each girl has went off to meet someone in their best clothes never to be seen again. Meanwhile, Jordan is assigned to investigate death threats and the death of a talk show host's dog. The woman, Amanda Vance, hosts a talk show with her husband, Jack Vance, who is a famous former soccer player. Are both cases somehow related to each other? Is the guy stalking the soccer player responsible for the deaths of the teenage girls or is someone else responsible? As the episode goes on, you find out the wife is a lesbian in an affair with the producer of the talk show. Then another teenage girl disappears and a race against time to find her before she is killed begins.

In "Justice Painted Blind", people who served on a jury that acquitted a child killer, Paul Gregory, are being killed. Gregory is a known pedophile and the locals fear he is killing again. Is someone after the jurors the killer himself or someone who has a grudge against the jury and the killer? People are assigned to protect the remaining surviving jurors after two of the women jurors are killed with a sign that gives the number of the juror in the jury. In one scene, a woman being protected by one of the cops walks off in the grocery store to get something. The cop panics and searches for her only to find out she is OK (this is the same cop who feeds info to an attractive female reporter in the first episode he was having sex with). Like the other two episodes, the third episode twists and turns the viewer until the very end. Another scene hints at the unspoken attraction between Hill and Jordan.

WIRE IN THE BLOOD isn't for anyone. It is very disturbing and deals with harsh subject matter and graphic display of such material. Tony Hill is an obsessed psychologist who really gets into the minds of the killers to the point that he relates more to the killers than he does with normal people. He finds someone that understands him best, DI Jordan, whose job as a detective is her life and even her regular relationships don't last long.

Tony is seen visiting a serial killer named Maggie who seems to be very in love with Tony in a twisted kind of way. Maggie has been caught and is living the rest of her life in some kind of prison or institution for the criminally insane. She writes invisible words in a book with blank pages with an empty eye dropper.

Robson Green nails the role of Tony Hill with a raw intensity. He shows how obsessed Tony can become and how detached Tony is and how Tony is hurt if someone lies to him. Robson is a versatile actor who can play comedy and drama on an equal footing regardless he is in a comedy or a drama. Robson Green is one of the reasons why I watched WIRE IN THE BLOOD and his performance as Tony Hill makes this excellent and disturbing show even more worthwhile.
Robson Green can currently be seen playing lawyer Stephen Bradley in the new city lawyer drama TRUST on BBC ONE in the UK and Sunday, January 26 on Masterpiece Theater in ME AND MRS.JONES playing a gossip columnist who falls in love with the woman British Prime Minister.

More info on Robson Green can be found at the Robson Green site- http://robsongreen.com WIRE IN THE BLOOD season one is released on DVD this April in the UK.

this article is (c)2003 David Blackwell. email any comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com