Director James Hawes's television episode "Aftermath" serves as the pilot for "DCI: Banks" series. The tip-off is DS Annie Cabbot (Andrea Lowe of "Pandaemonium") hasn't yet been assigned to DCI Banks' squad, and Chief Supt Gerry Rydell (Colin Tierney of "Nowhere Boy") is still Banks' superior. DCI Alan Banks (Stephen Tompkinson of "Hotel Splendide") finds himself in charge of a horrific serial killer homicide case involving a young, married school teacher Marcus Payne (Samuel Roukin of "Turn: Washington's Spies") who has raped, tortured, and killed four women. Banks is still searching for the fifth missing girl. He encounters Cabbot after the police call on Payne as the result of a phone call from a neighbor, an illustrator named Maggie Forrest (Monica Dolan of "Kick Ass 2"), who reports them to the police. Initially, when the two policemen--PC Dennis Morrisey (Myles Keogh of "Chatter") and PC Janet Taylor (Sian Breckin of "Starred Up")--arrive at the Payne's apartment, they believe that they are responding to a simple domestic squabble. However, they are stunned when Marcus attacks them with a machete. Marcus kills PC Morrisey, and PC Taylor batters Marcus into submission with her baton and handcuffs him to a railing. In no time at all, "Aftermath" lurches off to a dramatic, unsavory start as Banks and his detectives discover the four corpses, three of them bundled up in plastic sheathes. Marcus' wife Lucy (Charlotte Riley of "Easy Virtue") survives and winds up in the hospital with DCI Banks grilling her about her part in the murders. Later, they learn that Lucy was abused by her parents, while penniless Lucy blackmails Maggie into writing her a check to pay for her legal representation. The Robert Murphy teleplay takes all sorts of surprising turns. One thing that stands out about this complicated but intelligent episode is the toll that being a policeman takes on an individual.
Review of Aftermath: Part 1
