ITV
All I do each night is Prey. Hoping that John Simm will find the cunt and make him pay. That’s right folks. ITV’s new three-parter is The Fugitive with Sam Tyler. As we happen upon Detective Marcus Farrow (Simm) he’s hanging upside down on the arse end of a security van crash and here’s the kicker: he’s the prisoner. Something ugly and pointy sticks through his chest. That can’t be healthy? He uses the confusion of the post-crash melee to GTFO then runs right into the path of a lorry. The fatal impact has no effect on him however. He dusts himself down and carries on running like a G. Just what is Marcus’s story? (Clue : it’s The Fugitive).
But let’s rewind to the days before he was body checking speeding lorries. Marcus has two gobby young sons Max (Charlie Concannon) and Finn (Ezra Dent-Watson) who live with his strange and estranged wife Abi (Heather Peace). The love’s still there for him but she tells him she’s just started seeing someone. A prick called John. “That prick??” he says. Yeah, that prick. He punches a hole in the wall to show his displeasure. The wall is all “dude, take it easy”. His good pal and colleague Sean Devlin (Craig Parkinson) takes him away before he starts on the fixtures and fittings.
Abi tells him she’s just started seeing someone. A prick called John. “That prick??” he says. Yeah, that prick
To take away the pain Marcus throws himself into his work and luckily for him there’s a fascinating case to investigate. A decomposing body has turned up on the moors. The forensics are suggesting it’s Turkish criminal Godfather Omer Hassan who was supposed to have done a bunk to Turkey 10 years hence. Doorman Christopher “Topher” Lomax (Struan Roger) is the sole witness testifying to his hasty exit to the Med. What’s up with that? Lomax is a cancer riddled old fuck now and tells Marcus how Hassan pissed on a lot of feet, trod on a lot of toes, put sundry noses out of joint. The scrote seems to make some vague threat against Marcus’s family but it’s almost certainly nothing.
Still, Marcus has to pop around to his ex-wife’s to pick up some ancient Hassan case files on floppy disks. Displaying the lack of professionalism that the police often show he is distracted by the sight of Abi and Max all stabbed up and dying. Case files, Marcus – focus. He makes sure to run around like a dipshit leaving as much incriminating evidence as possible before bumbling outside and lying in a big shitty puddle. Hello? Floppy disks? Coppers, man. Young Finn has survived and but Max is dead like a cunt on the stairs. Classic Max am I right?
He makes sure to run around like a dipshit leaving as much incriminating evidence as possible before bumbling outside and lying in a big shitty puddle.
Leave it to Acting Detective Chief Inspector Susan Reinhardt (Rosie Cavaliero) to investigate the killings. She’ll sort it all out. Susan’s a deranged pisshead stalking her ex-husbland so she knows a thing or two about difficult breakups. She focuses on some curious anomalies in Farrow’s account. He didn’t phone the police to raise the alarm just stumbled into a neighbour’s. Furthermore, he and Abi had been arguing about that prick John, a neighbour saw him knocking and there’s no sign of the house key he claims to have had. His fingerprints on the knife, the punch hole in the wall, the scratches from Abi – it all looks a bit sus. So arresting we must go.
Aaaaaand we’re back inside the security van. A scrote with a pair of scissors lunges at Marcus for “killing that kid”. Say isn’t that Aden Hassan (Samuel Gomes Da Silva) son of Turkish criminal Godfather Omer Hassan? It certainly looks that way. He’s stuck those scissors right in Marcus and no mistake, pummelling him to the ribs, tweaking his nipples, flicking his ear lobes – a disturbance that causes the distraction which causes the crash.
After some sterling on the lam detective work Marcus winds up in a shitbox registered to Topher Lomax’s nephew Dale. A mysterious gentleman breaks some floppy disk case files in half. Well that looks incriminating. Oh Lordy – it’s only Sean Devlin, Marcus’s supposed “friend” and “colleague”. They tussle and Marcus retrieves one of the disks off him by punching him in the cock. Reinhardt arrives just as Marcus is on his way to a prior engagement being some place that’s else.
“I didn’t kill my wife” he says. “I don’t care” she responds. They both chuckle at the reference. Those guys. He skedaddles.
He never done it. And now he must prove it. G’wan Marcus!
The verdict: Rikee.
Marks out of 10: 7.5