Quarter 3 Review - 7/12

009 Police Procedural – Old 

This quarter, the police procedural was dominated by The Recall Man by David Napthine and starring Jeremy Swift.  Originally from 2001, it was an addictive police procedural series.  Joe Aston is a psychologist who specializes in teasing out memories that have been repressed for whatever reason.  He helps the police in Middlesbrough, bringing him back to his own roots (far more in the first episode than in others).  In the first story, he talks to a woman who suffered amnesia while in the “clean room,” a research facility, where her boss was found asphyxiated.  It’s the classic locked-room mystery:  how did he die if she didn’t kill him?  The woman is extremely confrontational, and it’s a struggle for Joe to progress.  Both of them are written so well, though, that it makes for gripping listening. The second episode was nicely structured.  Joe was on the witness stand as an expert witness.  What had happened was that a cold case was reopened—a man had suddenly remembered something he’d seen and realized he’d witnessed a murder.  The man was a deep-sea diver and not very imaginative.  Joe Aston is written so well, so believably, and as quite a distinctive character.  The prosecution did its best to tear him to shreds, but he held his own, and not in a belligerent or heavy-handed way.  In the third episode, a cab driver is the only witness to a violent shooting, but he can’t remember what happened.  Joe takes him over the route several times, going from Scotland over the border to Middlesbrough.  The Recall Man co-starred Rosie Cavalliero, Carolyn Pickles, Colin Maclaghlan, Paul Brennan, Sue Scott-Davison, Andrew Harrison, James Garris, Elizabeth Kind, and Vincent Peale.  It was directed by Toby Swift.