Life Sentence (1)

Series two opens with an awkward piece of police work: to solve a murder, the Cold Case Squad has to sit down and talk with the man who may have inspired it. Thomas Rice is already serving a life sentence when a fresh killing turns up bearing his fingerprints, so to speak. He was known as the Gambler, because he left playing cards at the scenes of his murders, a habit that makes the new crime look less like coincidence and more like homage.

The card motif does the heavy lifting early on. Clare Delaney is the one woman who escaped Rice alive, and she gets her reminder on a wet, windy night: a playing card flung at her windscreen as she sets off on a house call. It's a properly nasty image, and the episode knows it. Susannah Harker plays Clare as cool and poised, which only makes the moment land harder; composure is exactly what's being tested.

Boyd, meanwhile, can't let go of a hunch that Rice killed more women than anyone ever found. The research notes mention he has personal links to this case, which explains the unshakeable quality of his conviction. And so he and Grace settle on a plan that sounds mad on paper: send DC Amelia Silver in to charm a confession out of Rice. Claire Goose gets real material here, since Amelia's part in things drives the plot along nicely. Spencer Jordan is paired up with the team for the ride.

Barbara Machin and John Milne wrote it, Edward Bennett directed. Alongside Trevor Eve, Sue Johnston and Holly Aird, there's Samuel West doing something quietly repellent as Rice, plus Mark Aiken as Tim Walker, Paterson Joseph as Dermot Sullivan and Simon Gregor as Paul Bryant.

The best cold-case dramas run on the discomfort of reopening wounds, and this one starts from a bolder place than most. Asking a killer for help is a grim arrangement, and nobody pretends otherwise. Part one leaves you wanting the second half, which is precisely the job.