I know you didn’t ask, but here’s the problem with slowly-unfolding legal thrillers, ones that start with a phone call and a gasp and a murder then veer between the airless corporate office and the shattered family home of the accused, ending in court where lawyers keep making booming overdone speeches to the jury. Their difficulty is when, exactly, they bother to make us care about the person who got murdered in the first place.
The first option, and quite a common easy dodge, is you never really make the audience care: there’s a body, look. Yeah, in a bag. David Tennant turns out to sea with his hands on his hips. Last thing he needed today. Oh well: time to interview absolutely every person in the town. And in the final episode there’s a semi-preposterous reason why it was actually the person you suspected the least all along. The end.
