Wire in the Blood: A compelling trilogy about cops and psychos

When Dr. Tony Hill takes some time off from teaching clinical psychology to help the police catch a serial killer, one of his university colleagues asks how long he's going to keep at "this Silence of the Lambs nonsense."

The joke reflects the awareness of the creators of the always interesting, sometimes riveting British television series Wire in the Blood (2002) that their stories include elements that have become conventional. These include an investigator who talks with incarcerated killers to gain insights that will lead to the capture of killers still at large. But the joke reflects their confidence as well. They know that they have taken these familiar elements and made something interesting and original of them.

Wire in the Blood, adapted from a novel by Val McDermid, is a serious program about serious people doing the serious work of trying to stop seriously deranged criminals, but it also pokes fun at itself once in a while. That's a relief. Without bits of humor lightening it up just a little, Wire in the Blood would be relentlessly dark.

The program was broadcast in the United States on the BBC America cable channel. All three episodes in its first season are collected on VHS and DVD.

The terrain the program navigates is twisted. Hill is brought in by detective Carol Jordan to help guide her along some of the blackest paths in shadowy psyches. They work well together and come to some understanding of each other as they begin to understand the brutes they hunt.

Hill is brilliant but a little odd. His intense focus on aberrant psychology can leave him flustered by simple social situations and other parts of what make up ordinary life for those of us who do not torture people, or track down those who do. The doctor is played memorably by Robson Green, the celebrated actor and singer who plays a detective in the less interesting British television series Touching Evil. Robson conveys through the most subtle expressions a complex absorption in the mysteries that consume him.

Hill has a keen analytical mind, but he can become dangerously caught up in his work. He sometimes re-creates a murder with such singleness of purpose that when he puts himself in the position of the victim, it becomes possible that he might accidentally kill himself.

Jordan is just as immersed in her work, but she is not nearly as lost in her thoughts as Hill can be in his. She is committed, not entirely humorless but with a resolve that likely reflects the difficulties she has had to overcome to succeed in what many still regard as a man's profession. Hermione Norris plays Jordan with cerebral intensity that makes her both a match and a balance for Hill. She's as smart as he is, but in different ways. He would accomplish little without her applying his theories to the practical demands of police work.

Wire in the Blood is not a whodunit in which viewers can find clues and try to arrive at the solution before the detectives do. In life, investigators often do not encounter a killer before the very end. Similarly, in the program the killer often is not a character we have met and so we couldn't have guessed the identity. The fascination is in watching as Jordan, Hill and their colleagues figure things out. Because the cases require understanding the thinking of some very vicious people, it might come as a relief that one needs guidance. Being able to understand what drives such monsters would not be pleasant.

Through almost all of its first season, Wire in the Blood presents the relationship between Hill and Jordan as professional. There is a suggestion that this might be changing at the end of the third episode. Also, Hill's confidence is shattered when he is wrong in one of his assessments of a killer. Wire in the Blood is entertaining and the likelihood that our heroes will be facing new challenges in the second season holds tremendous, tantalizing promise.


ABOUT THE FIRST SEASON'S STORIES, AND THE TITLES

The programs rewards watching and it encourages thinking about what it shows. The titles, for example, engage the imagination. No one ever explains what Wire in the Blood means. There are no mermaids in the first episode, The Mermaids Singing. There is no paint in Justice Painted Blind and no shadows in Shadows Rising, or at least not the conventional kind. As with trying to figure out what compels killers, there are no easy answers.

Episode One: The Mermaids Singing
Someone is killing single men after subjecting them to medieval tortures and genital mutilation. The police are not certain there is a serial killer at work, until the body of a fourth victim is found. He was a cop. Then the killer starts posting videos of the killings on the Internet.

Episode Two: Shadows Rising
It starts with the disappearance of a young woman. When her body is found, the case appears linked to other murders. It might also be related to the violent stalking of a husband and wife who are the stars of a television talk show.

Episode Three: Justice Painted Blind
The final story in the first season concerns the killing of a child. The man accused is found not guilty and then people associated with the case turn up dead.