Written by: Lizzie Mickery
Directed by: Jamie Nuttgens
Produced by: Bruce MacDonald

Four women have been killed – and their pubic hair shaved off.

Looks like it's case for Mighty Mouse! Oops, sorry – I meant the National Crime Squad and Uncle Frankie! So in come the NCS, complete with tame profiler, and take over from AMIP – who in turn have taken over from the local CID. It's all rather like a club sandwich, really (not sure who was the turkey but there was a fair bit of ham going around at times.) The plot was a bit hampered by the sheer implausibility – as they pointed out several times - of finding a serial killer, who kills more or less at random and all over South East England, by investigating known associates of the last victim. On the other hand, someone certainly forgot to teach good ol' Dave Summers anything about 'Chance and Data' when he was in Primary school - he seems to think that the finding of one local suspect made another one impossible, whereas, speaking mathematically, each event is separate and equally likely or unlikely.

We have found two local suspects – one, the dead girl's unsuitable boyfriend, the other, a local photographer who has taken a picture of her recently. Everyone, except Sam, thinks the boyfriend - Jerry Forbes - is the most likely. Bad enough he has soft porn pictures on his wall (and I'm sure no one in all the Met has!) but he's a loner – he doesn't like to go to the pub! Ooh, bang him up now! Seriously, the soccer team he follows has been playing in some of the locations where the women were murdered at the times when the women were murdered. Sam, on the other hand, has found herself her very own suspect, - Mark Evans, an impotent and theoretically humiliated photographer. Her connection is largely the arty poses the last couple of victims have been found in – in short, as the saying goes; she has a feeling in her water.

The AMIP investigation is being run by DI Dent, whom Dave Summers worked with on the Flying Squad. It seems Dent at least allowed, if not participated in, the harassment of Dave on the basis of his sexuality so while Sam and Burnside are off solving the case Dave is sitting around looking scornful (not unreasonably) and talking 'issues' with Dent. Oh, and he also gets to do some big brother bits with Sam. As he says to Burnside,

"Admit it, Sam's got problems. She's a great mate but she's crazy."

When you consider the hat she appears in the first scene in he has to be right – insanity could be the only excuse!

In this episode we get to meet one of Sam's 'problems'. In as clumsy a bit of scriptwriting as I've seen, her drunken mum is paraded in and then dispatched in a matter of moments with no trouble. Pardon me for being cynical but she's wobbled her way over here 'cause she wants to see her daughter and we're supposed to believe she's in such a state that no taxi driver would take her – but after an obligatory slurred sentence or so she is obligingly silently and raises no objection to being summarily disposed of…yeah, right. You wanna ride the roundabout you got to pay the penny – you want Sam to have this terrible trauma of a horrendously drunken mum then don't just tell us, show us. I regret to have to say that this big focus on Sam appears to be leading into some sort of relationship with Burnside. Personally I was quite enjoying the way their relationship was developing – it reminded me quite a lot of Burnside and Viv Martella – until it became obvious where the scriptwriters were heading. They did at least give us a lovely line from Burnside in full outraged guv'nor mode –

"What the hell do you think you're playing at? You not getting enough attention around here you got to go parading around in your knickers?"

It isn't enough, however to reconcile me to the prospect of a Burnside/Philips relationship – or even just Burnside/Philips sexual tension.

In the pursuit of her photographer suspect Sam does some unofficial undercover and goes for a sitting there, all sweet and demure, before making an appointment for some 'glam' shots. It is these shots and the news that she is proposing to wear a g-string, which raises Burnside's ire. Needless to say he does give in eventually. Coming around to her flat he gives her the big undercover talk –

"…it changes you. It becomes harder to not see it from their point of view, to resist the temptation to show off."

- and enquires what colour g-string she has bought.

It is, in fact, a purple lacy one and soon enough she is popping it on with a matching bra and heading off for her photo shoot, despite all of 'big brother' Dave's protests. (I have to say I thought it a particularly horrible purple but perhaps that's what serial killers like.) In a sequence that went on way too long for my tastes – but I don't suppose I was the target audience – Sam coquettes around in first g-string and bra, then g-string alone and finally in the buff. The girl could flick hair for Britain, really she could. Of course it was highly necessary that she did strip off so Evans could see that she had shaved her pubic hair. I assume that the writer, Lizzie Mickery, did talk to criminal profilers about this but it just seems to me that if I was an angry man who gained a rare feeling of power from shaving my victims the last thing I'd do would be attack someone who had already done it to themselves – however, I have a strong feeling I'm going to be proved wrong. Certainly the suspect has already taken her out for a drink.

Later on, after the profiler has shown her rare ability to read people by telling him that Sam is one of his favourites and he has gazed up at her 'tough yet vulnerable' profile puffing a cigarette at the window of her flat, Burnside has a sudden change of heart and decides it is all too dangerous for her. Not altogether unreasonably Sam is quite hacked off - which gives her a great opportunity to throw "I shaved!" in his face with great emphasis and Frank to call her a silly little bitch. The credits roll on that.

Interspersed during this main story were some brief scenes to indicate that Ronnie-the-Razor Buchan is not forgotten. The most crucial of these occurs when Burnside goes to visit the widow of his murdered partner. Here we find out that he has rarely even kept in touch (five years in deep cover could have something to do with that) and that she believes this is because Frank fancied her. There is reference to a long-ago drunken Christmas party but not details of exactly what did happen. Of course given the son of Barry Foxton is called Tommy and Burnside was called Tommy in his first appearance in The Bill one could hypothesise all sorts of things, couldn't one?

DCI Burnside – Chris Ellison
DC Sam Philips – Zoe Eeles
DS Dave Summers – Justin Pierre
Supt Brian Lee – Andrew Readman
Tony Shotton – Shane Ritchie
DC Chris Gibson – Paul Gilmore
DC Pete Moss – John White
Mark Evans – Sean Gleeson
Jerry Forbes – Mark Letheren
Dr Anna Grantham – Kate Gartside
DI Dent – Dennis Banks
DC McVeagh – Murray MacArthur
Cath Foxton – Ishia Bennison
Mrs Philips – Susie Baxter
School Friends – Ashley Walker, Michelle Ryan
Jane Aspinell – Lara Hazell

© Avon 2001

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