The Rapture (1)

DCI Joseph Walker watches his girlfriend blown up in a bombing, and the case that follows takes him to a murdered Muslim family. Then two young women are found hanged. The connections between these deaths are not obvious, and for most of the hour the show keeps them out of reach, letting Walker and his new squad chase the joins between one horror and the next. Walker has been handed a case that looks like several cases, and the team is still working out which one they're on.

Walker carries a past full of violence and betrayal, and the episode keeps that past close. He is also conducting an illicit affair with Sarah Templar, a CPS lawyer, which is exactly the kind of complication a case like this doesn't need. The affair and the case keep colliding, and Walker is the one getting bruised. The killer, whoever they are, appears to have a message for the world. And there is that phrase in the background, 'The Plan,' with its suggestion that the investigators themselves might be part of the design rather than outside it.

It's a setup hour, but a confident one. The show has changed its lead and its setting, and it keeps the old mood intact: dread, applied steadily, with people who can't quite trust their own judgement. Every witness is a suspect, and Walker's own relationships are starting to look like liabilities. Even the grieving don't behave the way the team expects.

Oliver Brown wrote it, Harry Bradbeer directed. The cast is a fresh one, led by Mark Asante, Ayça Ayabakan, Sasha Behar, R.M. Clarke, Denise Gough, Laura Greenwood, Conor Grimes, Sean Hanrahan, Diana Kent and Rory Kinnear, with the new team assembled around Walker.

The hour ends with more questions than answers, which is the correct job for a first part. On this evidence, the series is in safe hands.