Aren’t we all sick to the teeth of British crime thrillers by now? The major broadcasters – BBC, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, they’re all to blame – have whittled down the genre to a slick, revoltingly homogenous formula. Just switch out a few proper nouns, spin a wheel to decide who the killer is, and roll film. The Suspect, ITV’s latest five-episode mystery drama, is made in exactly this mould – if you’d told me I was watching Vigil, or Trigger Point, I’d have believed you. But does that make it bad? Not necessarily.
At the centre of The Suspect is Aidan Turner, playing Joe O’Loughlin, an eminent clinical psychologist whom we meet as he talks a young brain tumour patient down from a ledge. In an instant, he becomes the “rooftop hero doctor” to the world. Privately, however, he’s struggling with a recent diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Joe is drafted in by the police to offer some criminal profiling after a young woman’s body is discovered, having been stabbed 21 times. But before long, as coincidences and revelations start racking up, the detectives’ attention turns to Joe himself.
