Old thriller’s still a killer
AN AMERICAN diplomat is killed in what looks like a professional hit on the streets of London, his body carefully propped up on a park bench. The post-mortem reveals a rare parasite, found only in West Africa. That same parasite is found in the body of a veteran aid worker, slaughtered in her hotel hours after delivering a speech at the US Embassy.
A psychotic former RAF officer confesses to the killings and his prints are found on a letter bomb and a mysterious string of code sent to the deputy chief of mission at the embassy.
It sounds like the start of a thriller, a very good, multi-stranded, unguessable thriller you might enjoy on holiday or see at the cinema. It is however the first half of a new two-parter from SILENT WITNESS (BBC1).
It seems churlish to say that the presence of Drs Nikki Alexander, Thomas Chamberlain (Emilia Fox, Richard Lintern) and Co., make it less of a good thriller but it must be said there were moments last night when you wondered why the corpse-cutting lot were in it at all.
Many of the scenes involved the lead detective DCI Ben Solomon (Elliot Levey) tussling with his FBI counterparts and the go-to-guy at the embassy, Matt Garcia (Michael Landes).
Many other scenes centred on the delusional but clearly pivotal RAF man Fergus Weir (Jefferson Hall), who knows a thing or two but isn’t sane enough to pass them on.
Apart from the obligatory body-on-slab scenes, the pathologists were rather out of the picture, with Nikki drafted in later on, not for her scientific expertise but so that she could wake up in Matt Garcia’s bed with no clothes on, and thus be concerned when he vanished. What on earth is going on? How much life, more to the point, is left in the mortuary?
In case you were wondering, or belong to that generation for whom the very word “hotel” has a whiff of scandal, FIRST DATES HOTEL (C4) is much the same as First Dates.
As if harking back to that era of “dirty weekends” and divorce cases, there’s a whiff of lewdness around the pool.
Various people (some participants in the show, some, presumably, having booked the world’s least relaxing break ever) lounge around the pool of this Italian getaway wearing not much, others lounge around ogling them.
There are cameras placed outside the bedroom doors, suggesting that guests might share more than tips about the best place to buy a souvenir bottle of balsamic vinegar. The main act however is exactly the same as in First Dates.
A couple have dinner and see if they get on. They either do or they don’t but either way usually it’s worth watching, if sometimes for reasons that leave you feeling not very proud of yourself.
It was, in some ways, a kinder episode last night with one pair of single parents almost textbook matched to one another, except that one had moved on from her pain and the other seemed still stuck in it.
On the face of it, Dorel, the male half of the other pair, was the sort of foul-mouthed manbaby you’d like to push in the pool. Despite, or maybe because of the bruisings she’d received in her young life, single mum Millie saw through the swagger and gave Dorel a chance to drop it for a night. Quite how long that night lasted neither party would confirm. Quite right too.