Aidan Turner embraces the mania in loopy crime drama
Aidan Turner plays a psychologist in The Suspect, ITV’S new is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-killer drama. And, as a psychologist might say: there’s a lot to unpack here.
We started with Turner’s Dr Joe O’loughlin, sent out onto a window ledge to persuade a teenage terminal cancer patient not to jump. The pair almost fell to their death, but managed to swing through a window with Turner in action hero mode. So that’s the first five minutes out of the way. Then we had the discovery of a dead woman in a cemetery, which prompted the police to request O’loughlin’s help in profiling the murderer, only for him to become a suspect. He told the police that his agoraphobic mum died in a house fire and to mark her birthday each year the family has a leaf fight in the cemetery, which sounds like something you’d come up with in a game of Consequences. Along the way, he agreed to walk Fleabag’s sister down the aisle and gained illegal access to a mortuary. On top of that, he’s been diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s.
All of this was established in an opening episode that moved along at a mad clip and stayed just the right side of schlockiness, although it’s often the way with ITV popcorn thrillers that they lose the plot by episode three so we shall see what happens. Turner, sporting a lockdown beard and speaking in his own Irish accent, is suitably enigmatic in the lead role. It’s not yet clear what, if anything, the Parkinson’s has to do with the plot.
The supporting cast includes two familiar faces from Vigil – Anjli Mohindra (very serious) as a young detective and Adam James (very shifty) as a doctor. Acting on a higher plane than everyone else present is Shaun Parkes, so good in Small Axe and standing out here as the hangdog DI Ruiz, a senior officer in a state of low-key existential despair.
The murder victim is referred to – and pictured – in queasy detail: a young woman forced repeatedly to stab herself, and was the final wound to the carotid artery made by the killer or the victim “desperate to end her torture”? Funny how we’re never treated to lingering shots of male corpses in TV dramas. But take that out of the equation and this is a propulsive whodunit that should keep you entertained.
Unless you are his friend, relation or colleague, you probably haven’t heard of Roger Tilling. But you’ve almost certainly heard his voice. He is the sonorous announcer on University Challenge, pronouncing the contestants’ names at increasing speed for the duration of each episode.
In University Challenge at 60 (BBC Two), a programme celebrating Britain’s longest-running quiz show, we were introduced to Tilling. He took viewers on a tour of the studio, including his own vantage point and the desks where the teams sit. Talk about pulling back the curtain – somehow it was a bit disappointing to find that the fabled buzzer is a white plastic button. Tilling preferred the decor from decades past: “It had a stylish walnut finish, like the dashboard of a Bentley.”
This was a fun, affectionate retrospective revisiting contestants from down the years, albeit with an emphasis on recent Twitter celebrities. There was Eric Monkman (Wolfson College, Cambridge), whose startling demeanour led Monkmania to trend on social media; Atyab Rashid (King’s College, London), whose silky voice had the nation swooning; and Gail Trimble (Corpus Christi College, Oxford), who became a star simply because she was brilliantly clever and answered most of her team’s questions.
There were reminders of past larks, including the team from Sidney Sussex, Cambridge who decided to dress “in descending order of sartorial elegance”, meaning the student on the right turned up in a kaftan and string of beads. And there were also positive stories about the effect that the show had on some contestants. Sandya Narayanswami suffered racism at school but university “saved her sanity” and she became the first Asian woman to appear on the quiz. Boltonborn Jenny Ryan, now a star of The Chase, struggled with her mental health at university but jumped at the chance to appear on University Challenge because she loved TV, having grown up “in Granada-land”.
The programme was presented by Samira Ahmed, whose quiet intelligence and bluestocking background surely made her a perfect fit to take over as host from Jeremy Paxman. Instead, Amol Rajan has added the job to his packed portfolio. Is the show safe in his hands? We’ll have to wait until next year to find out.
The Suspect ★★★★
University Challenge at 60 ★★★