Yes, it’s silly, but this star-studded crime thriller is utterly addictive
Dominic cooper as a hitman who can only nibble around the hole in the middle of a doughnut? Perfectly plausible.
A hypnotherapist who lives in a glass cube and sees creepy new clients without an appointment? Sounds reasonable to me.
But a 60-a-day smoker in this day and age? That’s beyond all credibility.
cooper turned up at the door of bereaved psychologist Susannah (Anne-marie Duff) claiming he’d tried to book a session online, and begging for her help to quit smoking, in the first of two back-to-back episodes as Suspect returned.
His name was Jonathan Fallow, he said, and he was wheezing his way through three packs every day. Later, a police colleague of Susannah’s pointed out she should have seen through this ruse — ‘Jonathan Fallow’ is a wordplay on ‘John Doe’, the U.S. term for a man without a name.
But she didn’t need to be a crossword addict to spot other clues. Fallow was able to climb a spiral staircase to her first-floor consulting room, without fightthis,
CHOREOGRAPHY OF THE NIGHT: With an overdose of coarse humour and foul language, Plebs star Ryan Sampson’s crime comedy Mr Bigstuff (Sky Max) took an age to get going. But the doubleact dance with Danny Dyer at the end of episode one was well worth the wait.
ing for breath. His skin didn’t have the texture of a fly-tipped leather sofa. His teeth weren’t yellow, his face wasn’t grey — in short, he didn’t look like any 60-a-day man i’ve ever known.
Back when 200 Woodbines cost a fiver and filter-tips were regarded as sexually dubious, serious smokers didn’t faff around with lighters, the way Fallow did. They lit each gasper off the embers of the last one.
i used to work with a feature writer who always took a final couple of drags off the old ciggie, with the fresh one already alight and clamped in the corner of his mouth. His lips were pockmarked with scars, like a smallpox survivor.
Apart from the cost — around £300 a week at three packs a day — how is it possible for a chainsmoker to exist now? Public places would be out of bounds, from shops to the office, pubs and restaurants — he’d have to stay indoors and order food deliveries.
it’s very difficult for a hitman to work from home, obviously. Some serial killers manage but for professional assassins it’s out of the question.
none of this occured to Susannah. She’s not much of a psychologist.
For all its silliness, Suspect is an absorbing drama with an all-star cast. Based on the Danish series Forhoret, known in English as Face To Face, it consists entirely of explosively intense scenes with just two or three actors.
Susannah’s therapy session with Fallow ended with him confessing to the murder of a string of young women. His fingers wrapped around Susannah’s throat, he described how he killed them but not how he lured them to their deaths in the first place.
The second episode featured Ben miller, as one of those fussy, uptight policemen he plays incomparably well, and Tamsin Greig as his icy-but-acid wife — who knows her husband had an affair with Susannah and enjoys watching him trying to hide it.
Tonight’s scenes star Eddie marsan and Vinette Robinson. Addictive as nicotine.