Killer (Pilot)

Three young blonde women strangled and left near water. That is the pattern Maryhill CID has to work with, and it is a thin one: no obvious connection between the victims, and no witness worth the name. The killer keeps moving. DCI Jim Taggart is handed the investigation, and the same paperwork hands him a new sergeant, Peter Livingstone, straight out of training college. The two men have little in common beyond the workload. Livingstone is polite and procedure-minded. Taggart is Taggart, which means the station gets to watch a working relationship form in real time, and the forming is not pretty.

The case is a slog rather than a puzzle. Forensic work, door-to-door calls, the grim job of telling a family what has been found. The clues are thin and horrible, and everyone involved knows the next phone call could be about another body. Taggart pushes the inquiry at the pace he decides on, and the new sergeant keeps up or gets out of the way. Their disagreements are never theatrical, just the usual friction of instinct versus the training manual. The episode is less about whodunit than about two very different men staying pointed in the same direction long enough to stop the pattern from continuing. The whole thing takes place in a Glasgow that looks permanently rained on, which does no harm to the mood.

Glenn Chandler wrote it, Laurence Moody directed. Mark McManus is DCI Jim Taggart, Alastair Duncan is DS Peter Livingstone, and Tom Watson is Superintendent Murray, with Geraldine Alexander as Alison Taggart and Linda Muchan as Liz Boyd.

As a pilot it earns its keep. The city is grey and wet and the murders are unglamorous. The leads bounce off each other without once pretending to enjoy it. McManus plays the part with the heavy-lidded patience that made the character stick, and there is something faintly comic about the new boy's earnestness sitting next to it. But you can see why the pairing was asked back for more.