Strike four: Cormoran is back, but will he fall for sidekick Robin?
Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger make a welcome return tonight as private detective Cormoran Strike and his faithful sidekick, Robin Ellacott. The last time we saw them, she was tying the knot with her completely unsuitable and, quite frankly, horrible fiance Matthew, despite the obvious chemistry between her and Strike.
In this four-part adaptation of the fourth book in the series penned by JK Rowling – under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith – the duo receive a visit from a clearly very disturbed man who claims he witnessed a child’s murder many years ago.
Their subsequent investigation leads them to a seemingly wealthy family with political connections.
As well as having an implausible name, and being rather slobby, Cormoran Strike is an amputee war veteran, something which Tom is keen to not let fade into the background.
“Well, his lack of self-care is always useful to me in terms of knowing where he’s at. It’s a gauge now, whether he’s taking care of himself or not – a kind of barometer,” explained Tom.
“In terms of me portraying the condition, there are certain things that are less of an intellectual exercise now, like how I’m going up or down stairs.
“But I’m slightly suspicious about getting too used to it as I think it’s important to remember that I’m not in pain, me, so it’s always going to require an imaginative leap.”
The relationship between the character is key to what makes the detective show work, according to Tom.
“The relationship, Robin and Strike’s, seems to me to be the heart of the show,” he explained.
“Again, I feel I owe a lot to my forebears, the detectives I greatly enjoy watching, or the portrayals of detectives I greatly enjoy watching. Sometimes one feels that they balance moral imperative with a kind of obsessive need to try to understand evil.
“I think that Strike needs to understand it because of his history. I like the fact that he always seems to think he’s got the measure of the killer and why they have done it.
“He’s brilliant at working it out. They both are, together. He always seems to think that, if he sits somebody down and says,‘listen, I know what you did and why you did it,’ that they’ll almost breathe a sigh of relief, as if he were a sort of older brother figure. They either tend to run away or hit him over the head with a bottle. He’s not a brilliant judge.”
Strike: Lethal White, BBC1, tonight, 9pm