In this two-part psychological thriller, a police detective’s obsessive hunt for a killer is thrown into chaos when his own wife vanishes.
Detective Sergeant Mackenzie Stone (John Hannah) is haunted by an unsolved case: the disappearance of his wife’s best friend five years earlier. He remains convinced that the culprit is John Dean (Anthony Calf), an apparently respectable family man. The investigation, however, is complicated by the fact that Dean has since suffered a head injury and now claims total amnesia, living a new life with his loyal wife, Jenna (Jemma Redgrave). When Stone’s own wife, Lucia (Beatriz Batarda), goes missing in disturbingly similar circumstances, Stone’s professional fixation collapses into a personal crisis. His colleagues, DC Ian Reid (Brendan Coyle) and DI Sean Brennan (Patrick Malahide), begin to question his stability and methods, forcing Stone to prove Dean’s guilt while simultaneously fighting to clear his own name.
Writer Chris Lang constructed this serial as a taut character study disguised as a conventional crime thriller. The drama’s central tension comes not just from the unfolding mystery, but from the unnerving psychological parallel drawn between the obsessive detective and the amnesiac suspect. As Stone’s investigation methods become more erratic, the question of identity, both his and Dean’s, becomes the story’s true subject. The production is distinguished by a cool, paranoid tone, which puts the viewer in the same uncertain position as Stone’s superiors: is he a brilliant detective on the verge of a breakthrough, or a man unravelling under the weight of his own obsession?
Broadcast: ITV – Ecosse Films, 2 Episodes, 29 March – 30 March 2004
Written by: Chris Lang
Director: Nick Laughland
Producer: Jeremy Guilt
Executive Producers: Douglas Rae, Robert Bernstein
Main Cast: John Hannah (DS Mackenzie Stone), Brendan Coyle (DC Ian Reid), Anthony Calf (John Dean), Jemma Redgrave (Jenna Dean), Patrick Malahide (DI Sean Brennan), Beatriz Batarda (Lucia Stone)
