DVD Review: Above Suspicion, Set 2

What separates the really good police procedural television shows from the rest of the pack? Nowadays everyone has a stable of really good script writers working for them, and no show would dream of ever just having a straight ahead who-done-it anymore. However, that doesn’t mean most of them aren’t still following a familiar formulae. A crime is committed and police try and solve the mystery and catch the bad guys. Since they’re all doing roughly the same thing with equally well-written and directed stories, it usually comes down to the actors to make a show stand out from the rest of the crowd.

At least that’s the case with Above Suspicion. A new season of episodes is now available on DVD from Acorn Media. As in the show’s first season the cast is headed up by Ciaran Hinds as Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) James Langton and Kelly Reilly as Detective Inspector (DI) Anna Travis. Two superior actors individually, taken together on screen they feed off each other talent and energy in a display that makes for brilliant viewing.

The daughter of a late colleague of Langton, Travis was a fresh Detective Constable when she first came to work with him. She has been instrumental in helping him solve two high-profile and grisly murders. While he might have initially had a kind of paternalistic protective attitude towards her because of who her father had been, their relationship has gradually changed over the course of the last series into something with the potential for being less platonic. Right from the start, we can’t help notice the amount of tension that continues to exist between the two characters.

Travis has been assigned to assist in the investigation of a very high-profile murder. An ex-police officer has been found dead in a drug dealer’s apartment. While the priority is solving the murder, Langton and his team also have to figure out what the ex-cop was doing there. When they start checking into his background, what he’d been up since he left the police, they find a rather complicated picture. Not only did the man have a fiancee, but he had also recently married another woman. He had been employed as the second woman’s driver for only a month before they were married. On its own this is suspicious. Added to the facts his wife isn’t exactly upset by the news her husband is dead and she’s a lot better off than he was, the police begin to wonder what’s the secret behind their relationship.

In the meantime the forensics team has turned up some very disturbing evidence at the crime scene. They find traces of the drug fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine. According to a cop from the drug squad fentanyl is a death sentence on the street because its so strong. When mixed with cocaine or heroin to increase the its potency fentanyl been the cause of many an accidental overdose. As Langton’s team gathers more evidence they discover there were three other people on the scene when the shooting happened. Was this a deal gone bad? Was the fentanyl part of the deal? Were the streets of London, England all of a sudden going to be flooded with this dangerous drug?

The deeper they get into the investigation the more threads they have to follow. With pressure coming from on high for a speedy resolution Langton and his whole team become tenser. Unfortunately this is the type of atmosphere which leads to mistakes being made and clues missed. Recently promoted to DI, Reilly’s Travis is much more confident in her abilities then she was when we first met her. Unfortunately this causes her to become a little cocky and headstrong; she makes mistakes. On top of that, instead of discussing her ideas with direct superior, Detective Chief Inspector Mike Lewis (Shaun Dingwall), as she’s supposed to, she repeatedly goes over his head to Langton.

The result is the detective coordinating the case isn’t being given information he needs to conduct the investigation properly. In an interesting transformation from the previous episodes, Travis is not quite as likeable as she once was.

Reilly does an excellent job of portraying somebody who has gotten just a little too full of herself. She’s also appears to be far less innocent in she’s not adverse to using her attractiveness to get what she needs from male officers. We see this in the way she deals with the man in forensics who is handling the case and her team’s contact in the drug squad.

This of course, leads to increased tension between Travis and Langton. When he discovers that she’s told the drug squad about the fentanyl before she had let Lewis know about it, he has to take her down a peg or two. Unfortunately he also lets his own feelings show by making a snide comment when the guy from the drug squad asks her out for a drink. Although he’s being sarcastic when he makes the comment, we know there’s a hell of a lot more going on than either character shows.

It comes to the surface late one night when the two are alone in the office. Langton has obviously been drinking, not drunk but loose, and he shows Travis a picture of his late wife. After telling her how devastated he was after his wife died he then starts to tell Travis how he feels. While we’re fairly certain she feels much the same way, she retreats behind a smile and almost runs from his office. While it looks like she’s trying to let him down gently, much like she’s been turning down the other men who have asked her during the show, we also have the impression she’s keeping something back. As if she’s afraid to admit what she’s feeling even to herself.

Both Reilly and Hinds give wonderful multilayered performances throughout the show. On the surface they both come across as hardened detectives intent on doing their job. Both can be cutting and callous, but there’s the impression this is a shell they have built up to protect themselves from what they have to deal with in their job. For on the occasions their characters let their guards down we see an incredible amount of vulnerability. In some ways they have both been damaged, by the job and life, and have learnt how to hide their pain from the world. You have the feeling that in each other they may just have found the one person who would understand what they’re going through. Unfortunately the opportunity for them to find this out may never present itself.

Above Suspicion, Set 2 contains the three episodes of the series Deadly Intents. Also included on the disc are interviews with the cast and crew who discuss both how their characters have progressed since the first series and the show itself. There is also an interview with Lynda La Plante the author of the books the series is based upon and the screenwriter for the show. To be honest, while I’m a fan of her work, I’m not a big fan of La Plante personally. As I’ve seen interviews with her before I passed on this one. However, if this interview is anything like others it would be worth watching if you haven’t heard her talk about her work before. She is intelligent and capable of offering good insights into her work without spoiling the story.

There are plenty of police procedurals on television that are probably equally well written and directed as Deadly Intent. However it’s not often you have the opportunity to see actors of the calibre of Ciaran Hinds and Kelly Reilly performing in them. Even better is the fact they aren’t performing in a void and the supporting cast more than holds their own. Still Hinds and Reilly are the stars of the show for good reason. They turn what would have otherwise been a good police procedural into something special.