Nine Eleven

Fitz comes home to Manchester with his wife and youngest son after ten years in Australia, and the timing is meant to be happy: his daughter Katy is getting married. Weddings in this family do not stay happy for long. He is barely back before an American comedian is found murdered, and the killing appears to have no motive at all, which is exactly the kind of thing that gets under Fitz's skin.

The investigation spreads out around the wedding party, which makes for uncomfortable viewing: police tape and confetti in the same frame. Mark Fitzgerald and Judith Fitzgerald move through the preparations, the groom Gregory waits in the wings with the patience of a man who does not yet know what he is marrying into, and Kenny Archer and Elaine Archer circle the case like weather. Jimmy McGovern wrote the script and Antonia Bird directed, and the domestic scenes carry as much weight as the police work. The wedding scenes and the crime scenes keep interrupting each other, which is the whole point. The case has the feel of a cold one, the kind that opens up questions instead of closing them.

The cast is a reunion of familiar faces. Kieran O'Brien, Barbara Flynn and Stefanie Wilmore hold the family side together, Anthony Flanagan and Andrea Lowe bring the investigation into focus, and Robbie Coltrane slips back into Fitz like a coat he never stopped wearing. It has been a decade for the character and a decade for the audience, and the show does not pretend otherwise. The return gives Coltrane some of his best domestic material. Maria, James and the rest of the family fill the frames with the noise of a real household.

A homecoming should be a comfort. But Cracker knows better, and the wedding will not be the simple occasion anyone planned. The murder sits underneath it all, waiting.