The Sweeney · S04E03
Drag Act
First broadcast 1978-09-21 · Patrick Malahide as Mason
Two brandy lorries lifted in separate jobs, a driver dead, a policeman injured, and the squad chasing its tail on wrong information — Regan spends the hour scrabbling to look as if he was in control all along. Malahide is Mason among the ranks, in an episode that is quietly on the side of two uniformed rookies who recover the brandy and show the veterans how it's done.
The Professionals · S02E10
Fall Girl
First broadcast 1978-12-09 · Patrick Malahide as 1st Security Man
Bodie's old flame Marikka turns up in London and the reunion is a setup: her husband's people arrange for Bodie to take the blame for an assassination, in a frame so good even CI5 starts believing it. Malahide has a bit part among the security men, the year before Minder made him a fixture — and the hour's real story is Bodie hunted by his own people, with a betrayal that costs him something the file will never record.
Shoestring · S01E05
Listen to Me
First broadcast 1979-10-28 · Patrick Malahide as Photographer
Harry Shepherd, inside for a jewellery-robbery killing, has a telephone smuggled into prison and gets a call out to Radio West asking Eddie to prove his innocence; his wife then climbs onto the tower and threatens to jump unless Eddie takes the case on her terms — the only terms offered. Malahide has a small part as the photographer in an hour whose trail runs through a corrupted investigation toward a conviction nobody involved quite believes in.
The Chinese Detective · S02E08
Secret State
First broadcast 1982-11-05 · Patrick Malahide as Colin Bennett
The series finale, and the best premise the second series produced: a fatal shooting with no corpse, an old lady and her budgerigars as the only witnesses, and other parties beginning to take an interest. Malahide is Colin Bennett in the last of the show's fourteen episodes, where the pressure comes less from the crime than from the authority that arrives to take the case away.
Inspector Morse · S04E03
Driven to Distraction
First broadcast 1990-01-17 · Patrick Malahide as Jeremy Boynton
A Minghella script and one of the series' most unsettling premises: two identical killings twenty-seven days apart, the link mortifyingly mundane — both victims bought their cars from the same garage. Malahide is the garage owner Jeremy Boynton, a study in smug evasion, loathsome enough to be suspect and plausible enough to be innocent, and the antagonism between him and Morse supplies the episode's sour comedy.
Lovejoy · S02E02
The Italian Venus
First broadcast 1991-01-13 · Patrick Malahide as Sir Hugo Carey-Holden
A mean landowner disinherits his hard-up brother, a friend of Jane's, and Lovejoy intervenes as a favour, with a cunning plan that depends entirely on a fake statue. Malahide is Sir Hugo Carey-Holden, the snob at the top of the feud, in the kind of dusty drawing rooms where the furniture is worth more than the feelings — and the statue collapses under the first serious glance, exactly as the plan requires.
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries · S05E09
Means of Evil: Part One
First broadcast 1991-11-24 · Patrick Malahide as Axel Kingman
A vegetarian household is suddenly short one member through murder, and Wexford, confronting the scene, finds his mind drifting to a surprisingly practical question: how many kinds of mushrooms are there? Malahide is Axel Kingman, at the centre of the family circle the investigation unfolds around, opposite Cheryl Campbell's Corrine Last, in the opening half of a case with the show's tone entirely intact.
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries · S05E10
Means of Evil: Part Two
First broadcast 1991-12-01 · Patrick Malahide as Axel Kingman
The partnership splits down the middle: Burden is convinced Hannah Kingman was killed, Wexford thinks she took her own life, and neither man will shift, so the two of them stop working the same case and start working two different ones. Malahide's Axel Kingman sits in the middle of the fault line, the evidence meaning one thing to each detective — a lovely structural idea played out to its end.
Endeavour · S00E01
Pilot
First broadcast 2012-01-02 · Patrick Malahide as Richard Lovell
June 1965: fifteen-year-old Mary Tremlett found dead, her boyfriend apparently a suicide, and underneath the dreaming spires a network of illegal sex parties with under-age girls procured for men whose friends are in the right places. Malahide is Richard Lovell, one of the men in the frame, in the pilot that started the great Morse–Thursday partnership — and the smell of the case lingers well past the final scene.
Luther · S04E02
Episode 2
First broadcast 2015-12-22 · Patrick Malahide as George Cornelius
Luther chases a cannibal killer while an old cold case keeps surfacing and turns out to be the same story told twice; Benny's hacking turns up a list of hundreds of potential victims, which is worse than no lead at all — not a clue, a menu. Malahide's George Cornelius arrives as the gangster whose own agenda starts pressing in from the side of the manhunt.
Luther · S05E01
Episode 1
First broadcast 2019-01-01 · Patrick Malahide as George Cornelius
A London that looks the same and is somehow worse: audacious murders, a new partner in DS Catherine Halliday, and a tangle of leads and misdirection that looks designed to protect corruption too high to be reached by a warrant. Malahide's Cornelius applies his own pressure from the side — the season opener wants Luther fighting the system and the gangster at once, and the two fights keep getting in each other's way.
Luther · S05E02
Episode 2
First broadcast 2019-01-02 · Patrick Malahide as George Cornelius
The walls close in: police and Cornelius converge on Luther's home at roughly the same time, neither there to wish him well, while a demon from his past steps out of the shadows to meet him. Malahide's gangster is the hour's gravitational menace, and the episode is partly about how much of that history Luther can carry — the answer, as it keeps implying, is less than he pretends.
Luther · S05E03
Episode 3
First broadcast 2019-01-03 · Patrick Malahide as George Cornelius
The pressure comes from two directions and neither gives: a friend Luther cares for is suddenly in real peril, a young woman has been snatched by the relentless killer, and Cornelius's violent revenge threatens to consume everyone in its path. Malahide's retribution sets the hour's ugly moral mathematics — every minute spent on one rescue is a minute the other person does not have — and the show keeps the clock running on both.
Luther · S05E04
Episode 4
First broadcast 2019-01-04 · Patrick Malahide as George Cornelius
The season's bill comes due. Luther is hollowed out by grief exactly when Cornelius's terrible retribution closes in on everyone connected to him and the killer is loose, determined to finish a final macabre masterpiece. Malahide's gangster is half the reason Halliday has to take the lead — the show is brave enough to watch Luther be absent from his own case, compromised and half-present at the edges, while everything he set in motion arrives at once.