Fully loaded thriller
HUNTED ARTY opening credits featuring an egg timer set the tone of this beautifully shot new drama, which opens in Tangier and, by dint of a cracking early twist, brings us right to the heart of the matter.
Melissa George plays Sam Hunter, an operative for the elite private intelligence and security firm Byzantium, who disappears to a remote location, returning to work unannounced a year later.
Her bosses, Rupert Keel and Deacon Crane, have doubts about her, but need their best agent for an important new assignment. The team devises a plan to have Hunter infiltrate a family headed by powerful millionaire Jack Turner (Patrick Malahide), a man with a criminal past whose ambitions are at odds with Byzantium’s secret client.
George is no Sara Lund but she’s compelling nonetheless, as is her hardedged Scottish co-star Morven Christie. And it’s good to see and older, even more tone-faced Malahide back on the small screeen.
Tonight’s first episode packs in a lot of action, including a mystery back story with a colleague who is Hunter’s secret lover – whom she suspects of ordering the hit on her in Tangier – so we get well in to the main plot concerning her next, terrifyingly dangerous, mission before the closing credits. Needless to say, she’s paired in this assignment with her lover.
You might wonder what a nice girl like Hunter is doing in a job like this. The interminable flashbacks to her witnessing her mother’s brutal murder and her own kidnap as a child are probably a clue. Definitely one to watch.
CATE DEVINE