Enjoyable new ITV crime drama

Tweekums

This new ITV series consists or two two-part stories, although I wouldn't be surprised if more are made. It follows DS Sean Stone, a skilled police officer who finds himself transferred to missing persons when his inability to be anything other than totally honest embarrasses his boss at a press conference. At missing persons he works with Ruth Hattersley although it isn't long before she is getting frustrated by his methods. He does have a knack for seeing patterns though and it isn't long before he works out that some missing people are probably the victim of a serial killer. In each of the cases he manages to offend almost everybody who he comes into contact with although he does get results.

It is a pity that this series was so short as it was rather fun; Reece Shearsmith was great as DS Stone and Alex Kingston gave fun support as Ruth Hattersley. Stone is an interesting protagonist; much like Saga from 'The Bridge' he is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum… this is dealt with sensitively; we see that he does have some difficulties but is still highly competent when other people's emotions aren't involved. The stories are typical of the genre but still rather enjoyable; both stories featured plenty of suspects and in neither case was it either too obvious or too convoluted. It is a pity the two hour stories were each spilt into two episode; I can only assume it is because some of the material wasn't suitable for pre-watershed broadcast so it couldn't start at eight. With only two stories the series was a bit on the short side but the conclusion set things up for a second series so I'm sure we'll be seeing more of DS Stone… I certainly hope we do.

score 7/10

Tweekums 25 September 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3092837/