CRIME & JUSTICE SEASON

Second season of award-winning crime dramas returns to BBC Entertainment

BBC Entertainment has lined up a second season of award-winning crime dramas stripped across four consecutive weeks in July and August.

Following the ratings success of the inaugural Crime & Justice season in June 2009*, five more premiere crime drama series will be stripped across week nights starting each Monday from July 12 to August 11 at 20h30. In addition, straight after each night’s Crime & Justice crime drama on BBC Entertainment, BBC Knowledge will screen a series of complementary documentary programming taking an in-depth look at the fact behind the fiction.

The season kicks off on BBC Entertainment on July 12 with the critically acclaimed Father & Son written by the late Emmy Award-winning Irish writer Frank Deasy (Prime Suspect: The Final Act and The Passion). Airing just five weeks after the UK transmission, Father & Son stars Dougray Scott (Desperate Housewives, Mission Impossible II), Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda, Skin) and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game, V for Vendetta). Ex-gangland boss Michael O’Connor (Dougray Scott) is determined to make a new start in Ireland away from his gangster past in Manchester. Unfortunately, the life Michael lived has left a terrible legacy. Violence on the estates and gun crime are rife. Even the good kids are getting tangled up in it. Like Michael's estranged 15-year-old son, Sean. Caught up in the chaos of a murder on his own doorstep, Sean suddenly finds himself in the firing line. Michael returns to England to save Sean but determined to avoid being pulled back into his old world. However, Michael finds morals are a lot harder to stand by when his son's life is at stake.

The second week of the season (July 19 to 23), sees Martin Shaw (Judge John Deed) starring as the eponymous detective in George Gently. In his first literary adaptation for television, Our Friends In The North writer Peter Flannery re-visits 60’s Britain for a series of adaptations of the Inspector Gently series of novels by Alan Hunter. The action takes place in1964; a time when the line between the police and criminals has become increasingly blurred; when the proliferation of drugs is about to change the face of policing forever; when Britain's youth stand on the brink of a social and sexual revolution. Inspector George Gently is one of the few good men at Scotland Yard, his sense of public duty an increasingly rare commodity in a police force where corruption is rife and unchecked.

Peter Moffat's (Hawking) BAFTA Award-winning Criminal Justice returns in week three (July 26 to 30) for a new series. Maxine Peake (Hancock And Joan, Red Riding) stars as Juliet Miller in this major five-part thriller which takes an uncompromising and insightful look at the UK’s criminal justice system, but this time through the journey of one woman. Peake leads an impressive cast that boasts some of Britain's top acting talent including Matthew Macfadyen (Spooks, Pride & Prejudice), Sophie Okonedo (Skin, Tsunami: The Aftermath), Denis Lawson (Enid, Bleak House) and Steven MacKintosh (England Expects). Joe Miller (Matthew Macfadyen) is a barrister at the height of his professional powers. He is married to Juliet who is fragile and isolated at home. They have one daughter, 13-year-old Ella (Alice Sykes). One night Juliet stabs Joe in his bed. Life will never be the same again for the Miller family. As fragile mother Juliet travels through the criminal justice system under the constant scrutiny of police, prison and social services, questions of psychological and sexual abuse are raised. Her case passes through the family courts and she concludes her ordeal in a tense finale in the Crown Court.

The Children (August 2 to 4) stars Kevin Whately (Inspector Morse, Lewis) and Geraldine Sommerville (Cracker) as divorced parents whose new lives are torn apart by the death of their eight year-old daughter. Following the build-up to her death, this drama reveals a tangled web of family relationships torn apart by love and hate. Six months before Emily's death, her mother Sue asked Cameron, her new partner, to move in with her and her daughter. They had both just left difficult marriages and moving in was a chance for a fresh start. But envy, jealousy, fear and anger constantly threaten this delicate happiness and as this emotional drama unfolds, it becomes clear that some wounds may be too difficult to heal.

The penultimate drama in the Crime & Justice season is the two part series Hunter (August 5 to 6). Highly acclaimed British actors Hugh Bonneville (Notting Hill, Iris) and Janet McTeer (Sense And Sensibility, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard) star as detective team Barclay and Foster in this tightly plotted crime thriller that delves into complex moral issues. When extremists kidnap two seven-year-old boys from very different backgrounds, and promise to release them only if their radical demands are met, the case falls into the hands of intuitive and pragmatic Detective Superintendent Iain Barclay. Faced with an inexperienced and increasingly unreliable team, Barclay calls his friend and faithful deputy, Detective Sergeant Amy Foster, out of 'early retirement', and away from the bottle, to support him in solving what turns out to be a highly sensitive crime. Emails arrive at Barclay's office, with images attached of the two boys seemingly unconscious, the word 'sacred' written on their bodies and a series of demands that the police team simply cannot meet. Barclay and Foster realise that if the boys are to survive, they must find the kidnappers quickly.

The final week of Crime & Justice season is saved for the second series of the 2010 BAFTA award winner Wallander (August 9 to 11). The series stars Kenneth Branagh (Valkyrie, Harry Potter) as Kurt Wallander, a sensitive but brilliant detective, in these three new powerful stories set in Ystad, Sweden. In Faceless Killers, an elderly man is brutally murdered and his wife left to die. Wallander arrives in time to hear her last word - 'foreigners'. Suspicion falls on the local migrant community, creating a tense situation which soon starts to spiral out of control. In The Man Who Smiled, a man questions the causes of his father's death. Days later he is shot and Wallander finds himself dealing with a double murder enquiry. A series of savage murders are committed in Ystad in The Fifth Woman. Wallander must discover the connection between these crimes if he is to stop a potential serial killer from striking again. Beautifully filmed, this compelling series features an extremely likeable and entirely believable character and bold, compelling stories.

After each drama on BBC Entertainment, BBC Knowledge will be revealing real life crime profiles and documentaries. (see separate article)