An insurance adjuster’s carefully constructed life fractures when a case forces him to confront his concealed heritage.
Lorimer Black (James Frain) is a successful insurance loss adjuster, presenting a polished, aristocratic image to the world. This persona is a careful fabrication, designed to hide his Romany background. His life is thrown into disarray when he is assigned to investigate a suspicious fire at a hotel. The case entangles him in a large-scale fraud that may involve his own firm and brings him into the orbit of Flavia (Catherine McCormack), a beautiful but unhappy married actress. As professional and personal pressures mount, Lorimer finds his two worlds colliding with dangerous consequences, involving him with the eccentric musician Hogg (Stephen Rea) and the powerful Sir Simon (James Fox).
Adapted by the author William Boyd from his own novel, this three-part serial uses the machinery of a thriller to conduct a sharp examination of class, identity, and social anxiety in contemporary London. The story’s central tension is not in the mechanics of the insurance fraud, but in the protagonist’s struggle to reconcile his public persona with his private history. Howard Davies directs with a cool, detached style that accentuates the sense of urban alienation. The production grounds its conspiracy plot in a precise rendering of a city defined by social codes and hidden barriers, making Lorimer’s internal conflict a reflection of a wider cultural unease.
Broadcast: BBC One – A Chestermard Ltd production, 3 Episodes, 16 September – 30 September 2001
Written by: William Boyd
Director: Howard Davies
Producer: Sue Birtwistle
Executive Producers: Delia Fine, Jane Tranter
Main Cast: James Frain (Lorimer Black), Catherine McCormack (Flavia), Stephen Rea (Hogg), Hugh Bonneville (Torquil), James Fox (Sir Simon), Trevor Peacock (Marlobe), Paterson Joseph (Alan), Neil Pearson (Rintoul), Ian McNeice (Ivan), Victor McGuire (Ron Cook), Stephen Moore (Stephen)
