CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: This little piggy meets a tragic end in a crackling crime drama
CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: This little piggy meets a tragic end in a crackling crime drama
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Traces
Secrets of the Krays
Trigger warning: this column will discuss the animal rights of dead pigs. If you or your loved ones have experienced pork-related trauma issues, please seek help from an accredited bacon counsellor.
Students of forensics expert Kathy Torrance (Jennifer Spence) were protesting about the welfare of pig carcases at their university, as the Scottish police procedural drama Traces (Alibi) returned for a second series.
‘The pigs are dead!’ objected Kathy, exhibiting a woeful lack of wokeness that might get her sacked by episode three.
Kathy and her colleague Sarah Gordon (Laura Fraser) specialise in examining the carnage left by arson attacks and terrorist explosions. They’re in the right place, because bombs are going off left and right in Dundee.
Written by Amelia Bullmore, from an idea by crime queen Val McDermid, Traces is a unique mix of the technical and the emotional
Why they need the pigs was not explained, but it’s probably got something gruesome to do with analysing shrapnel wounds.
Running a tape measure over the debris after a pipe bomb obliterated a church hall, Sarah muttered: ‘This bomb was deflagrating, not detonating.’
That’s crime-scene jargon for how the fire spread in pressurised waves. I’d make a joke about flame-grilled pork sausages, but I don’t want to be cancelled.
Sarah has other worries. She’s nursing a crush on her boss, DI Neil McKinven (Michael Nardone), and his wife has noticed.
Mrs McKinven could hardly miss it. At a party after a police awards ceremony, Sarah was giggling and blushing like a 1950s schoolgirl meeting Cliff Richard.
Jennifer Spence as Kathy Torrance, Laura Fraser as Prof. Sarah Gordon, Molly Windsor as Emma Hedges and Martin Compston as Daniel McAfee in Traces
The DI was oblivious to it. ‘You’re such a man!’ scolded his missus, who proceeded to tease him so much that the following day he asked Sarah not to text or call him at home. Naturally, she assumes he has fallen hopelessly in love with her and is trying in vain to fight the yearnings of his heart.
Written by Amelia Bullmore, from an idea by crime queen Val McDermid, Traces is a unique mix of the technical and the emotional.
Characters are either squinting into a microscope at a tell-tale speck of evidence, or gazing in romantic turmoil at the horizon.
Most conflicted of all is earnest-but-thick Daniel (Martin Compston), who is living at his mum’s house with his girlfriend, forensics trainee Emma (Molly Windsor).
It’s awkward, because his dad is on trial for murdering Emma’s mum . . . and Daniel is a witness. Even more awkward, Emma is pregnant. ‘You should not have a baby with that girl,’ snaps his mother. ‘You should not even be with that girl — no good can come of it ever.’
For Freeview users, the frustration is that Alibi is a subscription channel. But BBC1 snapped up the previous series of Traces, and we can only hope these new instalments air soon, too.
Britbox viewers have been able to watch Secrets Of The Krays (ITV) since last year. For everyone else, the wait was worth it, because this in-depth biography of the crime twins is absorbing and provocative. The final part charted their rise to the status of cultural icons, as Ronnie and Reggie achieved the fame they craved at the cost of their liberty.
Secrets of the Krays (ITV) is an in-depth biography of the crime twins is absorbing and provocative. Pictured: British gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray
A crowd of 70,000 at the Reading Festival chanted their names, while Reggie listened over the phone from Parkhurst prison.
Souvenir merchants plastered their image over mugs, pens and shopping bags. The Kray tea towel was particularly popular. To witness the transition from reign of terror to national treasures was truly disconcerting.
We also heard a chilling tip from Cockney hard man Chris Lambrianou: ‘You can’t put a fully grown man’s body in the boot of a Ford Consul.’ Useful to know.
Filthy habits of the night: Dr Adam Kay bought a bottle of Jack Daniels to cheer up a patient, in the medical drama This Is Going To Hurt (BBC1), set in 2006. Then he joined a patient on oxygen for a ciggie in the car park. The Noughties really were a different era, weren’t they?
