Wire in the Blood

STUDIO: BBC America
PREMIERE: April 6, 2008
STARRING: Robson Green, Simone Lahbib, Brad Hawkins, Ryan Rutledge, Drew Waters, Julio Cedillo, and Tom Nowicki
CREATED BY: Val McDermid

You can keep your CSIs and your Law & Orders. While those might be a nice occasional diversion, they're also clearly made with a TV audience in mind. You can practically chart when the twist will come and expect that the writers won't ask many tough questions and that all problems will be resolved by the final commercial break. A few of the mystery shows on cable TV, most notably The Closer, have played with the formula a bit and taken some risks with darker subject matters, but even the best usually have that undefinable TV sheen. That's what makes Wire in the Blood so remarkable. If you came across the show, not knowing anything about its history or the channel it was airing on, you'd assume it was an independent film that you must have missed in theaters. Everything about Wire in the Blood from the stellar lead performance by Robson Green to the deliciously complex mysteries feel more like a feature than a TV show or movie. If you meet Dr. Tony Hill on the fifth season premiere of Wire in the Blood on BBC America this weekend, you might never look at William Petersen the same way again.

The lead character in Wire in the Blood and the only real recurring role through the entire series is played by the excellent Robson Green. Green's Tony Hill is a clinical psychologist with an unusual ability to solve crimes. A little awkward - one could say "Monk-ish" but the eccentricities of Hill are rarely played for laughs, unlike that USA hit - Hill has something of a sixth sense when it comes to brutal crimes. Not only can the doctor get inside the minds of the killers he's trying to catch but can often picture himself in their shoes. He's a profiler of the highest caliber. In the first two episodes of the new season on BBC America, Hill solves a horrific murder in Texas and assists with an urgent kidnapping case back on his home turf. Both are excellent, but the second episode feels more confident and in its own groove. The first was created as a between-seasons special and kind of plays as such, often hitting the fish-out-of-water concept a little too hard, but it still features a clever mystery that's well worth your time.

Watch the first episode for fun and to get introduced to Dr. Hill and then prepare yourself for week two - as good a kidnapping thriller as television audiences have seen in years. Hill is called in after a woman reports seeing a girl getting grabbed off the street and thrown into a car. Who was the girl? Who was the man? And how they can find her when every minute lessens the hope of her coming home alive? For audiences unfamiliar with the way TV works overseas, Wire in the Blood will feel completely new. Each year contains more of a series of movies than shows - each episode runs nearly 90 minutes - and they only produce a handful a season. Series 5, the one starting on BBC America this weekend, only runs five episodes - the special and then the four episodes that aired in England last Summer. You may not get the 22 or 23 episodes of CSI or Law & Order that you get every season, but sometimes it's nice to be left begging for more. And shouldn't all show move to a quality over quantity situation in today's crashing market? I'd gladly take fewer episodes of every series if it meant a rise in quality writing. After just one episode of Wire in the Blood, you'll probably be like me, trying to track down copies of previous seasons and surfing the web for news about upcoming ones. Like a lot of BBC America programming, Wire in the Blood raises the bar for crime thrillers on TV.