So we open this episode
finally seeing some emotion from Hardy. Or rather some venerable emotion from
Hardy.
This is linked to the
Sandbrook murders and the fact that he found the body of one of the girls and
possibly nearly drowned recovering her from a river. The fact that he jumped in
himself and didn’t have uniformed officers or the fire brigade do it is
interesting, but I’ll get to that later.
We also get the long overdue
introduction of DI Hardy’s wife and daughter. His wife is an interesting
character. She’s either someone who snapped after years of being married to her
boss (who seems like the kind of person to bring work place stress home with
him) or she’s a partially burnt out copper unwilling to have another run at a
failed case. The way that we’re not told about Hardy’s own possible affair,
keeps the door open on whether she was retaliating or whether she was just
unfaithful. This lines up further options in both their development. Hardy
could have taken the blame for her screw up (not out of concern for their
daughter) but out of guilt over destroying his own family. Her pathological
rejection of him and her assumption that he ran away after the Sandbrook case
could be her guilty conscience rationalising her actions not to mention her
negligence in handling the case. Either way, half way through the series may
not be the best time to introduce her, given the amount of character development
involved with those arcs.
In the A-story, the
prosecution concludes it’s case against Joe Miller, with Knight momentarily
dropping her façade of respectability and throwing boxing metaphors at her
junior. This in turn sees the usually confident Bishop privately rattled, but
she does at least add more realism to the character. The way she sums up the
defences’ job to her junior is particularly good.
“He did it”
“We don’t know that.”
As I said before, defence
lawyers (primarily as a result of American shows) are usually portrayed as
caricatures; using loopholes and such to let guilty men walk free. Bishop isn’t
this, she’s aware that she’s dealing with people and the effect that she can
have on their lives. She’s also aware of what will happen if Joe Miller is
innocent and he goes to prison.
The other big thing to happen
is the reconsideration of suspects for the Sandbrook case. Hardy begins to
question himself and there’s grounds for it there. There’s clearly something
else going on with Claire and Lee; some sort of agreement between them that
she’s not told anyone about.
Overall, this is a pretty
watchable episode; it’s mainly set up for the Sandbrook mystery and we get the
impression that Knight is going to have some medical problems to deal with while
trying to dismantle the defence case.
Supplemental Blog: crazy
theory.
So DI Hardy discovered the
body of first victim in the Sandbrook murders, but why didn’t he have any back
up? Was this during a missing person’s search or did he just find her? What are
the odds of a person who finds a body just happening to be a Murder detective?
So here’s the crazy theory:
Alec Hardy is a serial killer.
What if he didn’t find that
body? What if he nearly drowned while trying to dispose of it? He could have suffered
some sort of cardiac problem (possibly the first) while dumping the body of his
victim in the river. What is Bishop is right about the inconsistencies in
procedure during Joe Miller’s arrest? Why would a Detective Inspector who’s
been handling a case with complete professionalism not take the time to a
uniformed officer to accompany him and witness the arrest of a suspect? As
Bishop said, there is a period directly after the arrest that not even the
audience knows about. There is plenty that Hardy could have done to coerce Joe
into a confession.
As to Joe’s statement “I’m
tired of hiding” perhaps he knew about Hardy; perhaps Hardy has something on
him that was keeping him quiet and him saying that he’s tired of hiding is in
relation to something that they both did.
Will this turn out to be the
truth; probably not; but it’d be damn brave of Chris Chibnall if it did.
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