Review in the Daily Telegraph
Know Thine Enemy
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
BBC1, 8.00pm; Scotland, 8.30pm
In the last mystery ever, posh DI Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) and his cockney sidekick DS Havers (Sharon Small) end their screen life together in an atypically dark and disturbing tale. A kidnapped girl is found dead having been drugged and raped. And then another girl goes missing… Written by Ed Whitmore (a stalwart of Waking the Dead) and filmed with a blue grey tinge, this is a cut above the programme’s usual fare. Which makes it as good a time as any to wave farewell. AG
Daily Telegraph, 31 May 2008
Posted 1 June 2008
With many thanks to Ed Whitmore.
Limbo
The last ever series of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
(BBC1, Sun) began with the man still sunk in alcoholic grief after the death of
his wife six months before. For most TV coppers, this would mean waking up in a
tatty flat covered with as many empty pizza boxes and beer cans as the props
department could rustle up. Being an earl, though, Lynley (Nathaniel Parker) was
in his plush riverside apartment surrounded by a few decorously arranged bottles
of superior whisky and a sadly neglected cafetière.
He was roused from this rather civilised torpor by the discovery
of the body of a young boy, who’d disappeared from a house party Lynley attended
12 years earlier. Since then too, the boy’s sister Julia (Georgina Rylance) had
become estranged from her parents and was living in Rome – which meant Lynley’s
first job was to persuade her to return home for the funeral. This he duly
achieved by talking to her in front of a kaleidoscope of Rome’s most famous
buildings.
For her part, Julia proved, if anything, even posher than him,
with her Celia Johnson accent and languid aphorisms. (“‘What if’ are the
deadliest words in the English language.”) Luckily for Lynley, she was also a
goer – and back in London they shared a night of passion during which a
photograph of his late wife fell symbolically to the floor.
The next morning Julia’s lifeless body was found on the street
five floors below his balcony. Lynley was then arrested for her murder by the
weirdly vindictive Michelle Tate (Geraldine Somerville), whose questioning
included the sensitive enquiry, “Your wife was shot dead right in front of you,
wasn’t she?”
All of which soon led to the familiar tale of a policeman
operating outside the rules, as Lynley set out to find the Real Killer: a
process to which the programme took a somewhat unhurried approach, carefully
crossing out the list of suspects one by one. In traditional whodunit style, the
list also turned out to be a close-knit affair with the same people doubling as
suspects, policemen, family lawyers and victims.
The result was a perfectly serviceable way of passing the time.
Even so, I can’t imagine too many viewers being sunk in alcoholic grief
themselves when Inspector Lynley finally heads off into the television sunset
(or UKTV as it’s also known).
Daily Telegraph, 26 May 2008
Posted, 1 June 2008
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