YOUR ESSENTIAL TV LISTINGS

James Nesbitt plays an officer on the hunt for a killer cop dubbed ‘Goliath’ in a new thriller from the makers of Line Of Duty

Our 52-page guide has Jaci Stephen’s Soap Watch and a preview of the new crime thriller from the creators of Line Of Duty, starring James Nesbitt

We’ve spent years wondering who the corrupt police officer is in Jed Mercurio’s brilliant series Line Of Duty. Now Jed’s production company HTM Television is about to have us scratching our heads all over again, trying to identify another sinister officer.

In Bloodlands, a four-part drama starring James Nesbitt, the mystery person – nicknamed Goliath – used inside knowledge to allegedly assassinate four targets in Northern Ireland in 1998.

The investigation has long since gone cold but a dramatic sequence of events brings the case back into the spotlight. Pat Keenan, once a leading IRA member, is kidnapped – and when his vehicle is pulled from the waters of Strangford Lough, a postcard taped to it shows a picture of Goliath, an iconic giant crane at Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard.

Detective Tom Brannick, James’s character, and fellow police officers Niamh Mcgovern and Billy ‘Birdy’ Bird have been looking into Keenan’s disappearance. ‘Tom instantly recognises the postcard’s significance,’ says James. ‘It’s a real jolt for him and revives terrible memories.’

DCI Brannick, who believes the postcard is a sign Goliath may be active once more, has strong, personal reasons for being horrified. He’s convinced his wife Emma, an intelligence officer, was among the killer’s victims, even though her body has never been found.

‘They said her cover had been blown, that she’d gone to ground,’ Tom tells DS Mcgovern, his work partner. ‘But she was kidnapped, just like Keenan. People chose to believe all Goliath’s victims had done a runner, because if word had got out that a police officer was picking off targets at will it would have risked a return to allout-war when peace was on the table in Northern Ireland.’

Tom vows to reinvestigate the disappearances and find out who Goliath really is. But his boss, DCS Jackie Twomey, believes it’s a bad idea to dig around in Northern Ireland’s terrorist past, and Tom’s daughter Izzy is concerned for his safety. ‘She says to him, “I

always knew your job was scary; I didn’t realise how scary until now.” And she’s right,’ says James, who filmed the series in his native Northern Ireland before lockdown. ‘Uncovering the truth of what happened could be hazardous for Tom.’

Although the Troubles, the period of violence in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998, provides the backdrop to Bloodlands, James says it’s a drama that deals with universal themes. ‘It’s an exploration of a man dealing with loss, work – and love. Tom misses his wife terribly and is determined to find out what happened to her, but he is attracted to one of his daughter’s lecturers, Tori. Tom’s heart skips a beat, for the first time in a long while, when he meets her.’