Every Breath You Take (1)

A police sergeant goes missing, and a year later she turns up in a golf bag. That is how Every Breath You Take (1) opens its account: the body of Debbie Briton found stuffed away like old clubs, a year after anyone last saw her. Then a second body surfaces, a police woman floating in the Thames, and Boyd's team is suddenly looking for whoever killed her and her unborn child.

Suspicion falls quickly on a stalker. There is always a stalker in these cases, and on paper this one fits neatly. Grace Foley is having none of it. Her instinct says he is not the killer, and half the pleasure of part one is watching her hold that line while everyone else chases the obvious man. The trail runs through personal connections inside the force itself: DI Steven Maitland and his family, DAC Ralph Christie leaning on the squad, DC Amelia Silver and DS Spencer Jordan working their leads. Everyone connected to Debbie seems to have something they would rather not explain.

Barbara Machin wrote it and Gary Love directed, with Trevor Eve as Boyd, Sue Johnston as Grace, Holly Aird as Frankie Wharton, Claire Goose as Silver, Wil Johnson as Spencer, Simon Kunz as Christie, Thomas Lockyer as Maitland, Tessa Peake-Jones as Fiona Maitland, Paloma Baeza as Anna and Lee Ross as Christopher Redford.

Part one does what good first halves do. It hands out just enough of each suspect to keep you guessing wrong, and it lets the dead woman stay a person rather than evidence. Debbie was well known, well liked, pregnant, and nobody looked hard for her until the river gave her back.

And that golf bag detail is doing real work. It tells you the killer knew her well enough to move her quietly, which makes the stalker theory look thinner by the minute.