TV Crime Log: Intruders, Missing, Awards
What to do, what to do…
The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards is on tonight. The culmination of six weeks or so of Crime Thriller Club, it’s hosted by our old friend Bradley Walsh. Because I think it’s fair to say we really don’t get to see enough of Bradley on the telly.
Among the awards up for grabs at the glamorous Grosvenor House Hotel are Daggers for the Best UK and International Crime Series, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Film, alongside prestigious Crime Writers’ Association awards, including Gold Dagger for the Best Crime Novel of the Year, and the New Blood Dagger for the Best First Novel.
Nominees for awards this year include Benedict Cumberbatch for BBC One’s Sherlock along with Matthew McConaughey for HBO’s True Detective in Best Actor. Brenda Blethyn for ITV’s Vera alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal for BBC Two’s The Honourable Woman and Anna Maxwell Martin for ITV’s The Bletchley Circle and BBC One’s Death Comes to Pemberley in Best Actress.
Filth, Cold In July and Dom Hemingway compete for the Film Dagger. The Bletchley Circle, Line of Duty and Happy Valley for the TV Dagger. Fargo and The Bridge for the International TV Dagger. And authors including Paul Mendelson, Robert Harris, Louise Penny, Greg Iles, A.S.A Harris and Ray Celestin for CWA Daggers.
The Awards are on from 9pm to 10.35pm on ITV3.
However, if you need your fix of drama, there’s an intriguing new series called Intruders on BBC2 on at the same time. It’s produced by BBC America – and, I think, already recommissioned – and penned by X Files alumni Glen Morgan, based on Michael Marshall Smith’s novel of the same name.
The blurb is not quite what it seems:
Jack Whelan, a former LAPD cop with a troubled and violent history, finds the quiet, idyllic life he has crafted with his wife Amy, shattered when she vanishes.
Mysteries unfold when Amy vanishes on a business trip to Seattle and her cell phone is found abandoned in a taxi. Jack heads to Seattle to retrieve the phone and Amy, only to discover that she never checked in to her hotel. Meanwhile, Jack’s high school friend Gary begs for his help.
Nine year-old Madison starts having nightmares and behaving erratically after she sees a stranger on the beach.
Assassin Richard needs to stop a secret from leaking out, and will do so by any means possible.
The first two episodes, showing back-to-back from 9pm tonight, may be worth watching for the unlikely sight of John Simm playing a troubled LA cop. But if you like your thrillers with a sci-fi tinge, and can bear to be without your nightly dose of Bradley, it could be worth 90 minutes of your time.
The Missing is a straight-down-the-middle crime thriller, in which James Nesbitt stars as a father obsessed with finding his abducted son.
The blurb doesn’t know when to quit:
Tony and Emily Hughes’ life changes forever when their five year-old son Oliver goes missing on a family holiday to France.
A huge manhunt led by Julien Baptiste, one of France’s finest detectives, is launched. The French police face an uphill struggle in their mission to find the young boy – Oliver seems to have disappeared into thin air. Tony and Emily are in a foreign land, they do not speak the language and do not understand the rules. As their desperation and profile of the case grows, Tony and Emily find themselves thrown into a media maelstrom, learning the hard way that not everyone they meet is willing to operate in their best interests.
Present day. Eight years on from Oliver’s disappearance and the fallout has resulted in the end of Tony and Emily’s marriage. Tony refuses to believe that Oliver is dead and doggedly continues his search to find his son. After years of searching, Tony is given new hope when a shred of evidence emerges. This reignites the interest of Julien Baptiste, the lead French detective at the time of the disappearance, who returns to Chalons Du Bois to try and finally get to the bottom of what happened to Oliver Hughes.
So the first of eight episodes—eight?—of The Missing starts on BBC1 tomorrow night at 9pm.
Good day to you.
