To Be a Somebody (1)

Albie Kinsella Jr is a divorced manual worker who has already been knocked around by life, and then his father dies. Something gives way. Not long after the funeral he kills an Asian shopkeeper, and the attack carries every hallmark of racism except a reason the police can find. They have a killer with no motive that makes sense, which is exactly the case that ends up on Fitz's desk. But the case file says racist murder, while the man down the street says otherwise, and the gap between the two is where the story lives.

Fitz and Billborough have to sort out their differences before Fitz gets properly involved, and the episode spends its early scenes getting them there. Around the case, the factory floor and the family home keep turning: Dave Bond's supervisor and Martin Pearson's worker, Jill and Ruth, Mark and Judith. Badi Uzzaman's Shahid Ali is the man at the centre of it all, and the show is careful to keep him a person rather than a statistic. Fitz's own life is in its usual state of managed chaos, which the episode uses as a running counterpoint to Albie's unravelling. The investigation has no suspects and no sense, only a dead man and a closed community.

Robert Carlyle's Albie is the engine of the season, a man whose grief curdles into something much worse. McGovern wrote it and Tim Fywell directed it, and the episode builds its horror slowly, in the ordinary spaces: the shop, the factory, the terraced street. Carlyle makes Albie recognisable, which is what makes him frightening. The police are looking for a monster. What they have is a neighbour, and the difference is the whole point. The episode leaves no doubt that Albie is not done. It is a strong start to the season, and it knows exactly where it is going.