Pilot (1)

The Met decides it would like a squad devoted entirely to murders nobody managed to solve the first time round, and puts DCI Peter Boyd in charge of the experiment. That's the set-up here: a trial run, a roomful of strangers who haven't worked together before, and shelves of files left to gather dust for years. It's a lot to establish in under an hour, and it mostly comes off because Boyd picks his first case on instinct rather than paperwork.

Alice Miller was a teenager, kidnapped, raped and murdered five years ago, and the original investigation belonged to Boyd. He failed her once. Now there's newer technology, fresh eyes on the old evidence, and a second chance he clearly means to take. But whoever killed Alice hasn't spent those five years reforming, and while the squad picks through the first crime scene all over again, another girl disappears. The cold case stops being history and becomes a countdown, which is a shrewd move dramatically. Cold work is naturally quiet, all boxes and photographs and people who died long ago, so giving it a live victim raises the temperature without cheating.

It also tells you something about Boyd before anyone bothers to explain him. A detective who opens his new unit by reopening his own worst failure isn't after an easy win, and Eve plays that stubbornness without softening it.

The squad around him takes shape nicely: Sue Johnston's Dr Grace Foley, Holly Aird's Dr Frankie Wharton, Wil Johnson's DS Spencer Jordan and Claire Goose's DC Amelia Silver. Adie Allen plays Jenny Boyd, Steven Elder is Dr Clive Pearson, Sam Loggin appears as Kelly Caldwell, and Tyler Butterworth and Elaine Claxton are the Whitemores. Barbara Machin wrote it, Martin Hutchings directed.

As openers go, this is confident stuff. The machinery creaks a little where the team is still introducing itself, but the central idea lands: old evidence never forgets, and neither does the person who left it behind.