Killer

This chilling deadly trilogy is based around the themes of retribution, jealousy and sexual obsession and making choices that could mean either life or death. John Thaw and Edward Woodward are confronted with dark and deadly situations, while Anthony Valentine creates them…

In KILLER WAITING, John Thaw plays Peter Hastings, an ex-army man formerly known as Major Hastings and now making a living as a successful author. Aided by his secretary Kate Greenwood (Diane Keen), who is also the current girlfriend and, together with her young son from a first marriage, spends considerable time at Hasting isolated farmhouse. The idyllic existence is crudely interrupted when one day, Hastings receives a threating phone call from a man announcing that he will be killed the following Monday. This is the first of a string of calls that Hastings receives. Via flashback scenes we find out that several years ago, Hastings was stationed in Northern Ireland where he became infatuated and involved with a girl called Rose O’Malley. This involvement ended in tragedy… and now the 10th anniversary of Rose’s death is approaching. Back in Northern Ireland, a man whose face we never clearly see hires a professional hit-man and expresses his wish to “have Hastings killed” but not before making him suffer! Soon, the hired sniper turns up at nearby Hastings farm and first kills one of the family dogs before the first bullets come flying through Hastings window. Meanwhile, Kate receives mysterious letters revealing bits and pieces of Hastings past she had no idea about. Initially dismissing the danger of the situation, Hastings now has got to acknowledge that the hit-man means business. Gradually, it all gets more tense and more nasty until the explosive finale reveals a twist which the viewer won’t see coming….

The mood turns considerably more morbid in KILLER EXPOSED (first broadcast 1984), in which Anthony Valentine is suave and charming dentist Robin Fraser, a man who has managed to carve out a successful second career as a sculptor. One of his patients is Detective Sergeant Gill Parsons (Dearbhla Molley), a somewhat repressed young woman working is forensics and more often than not subjected to sexist and humiliating remarks by her male colleagues – in particular Inspector Hawthorne (John Forgeham), a Scotsman portrayed with every cliché a Scottish person can offer. Fraser seems almost obsessed with his current girlfriend Charlie (Molly Radlove) until he realises that she is a lady of many affairs… Also dabbling in hobby photography, Fraser develops a very unhealthy habit of snapping photographic evidence depicting Charlie’s various flings. Indeed, it is his darkroom in which Charlie is going to find her sticky end… When the mutilated and decomposed corpse is found in the woods some weeks later, Gill Parsons and colleagues are on the case. To her big dismay, her superior orders her to dress like Charlie and even ‘become’ her as part of a crime reconstruction. Around the same time, patient Gill and dentist Fraser become romantically involved, Gill in particular feels drawn to his cultivated intellect and obvious artistic vein. It is an involvement which leads up to a very unexpected and shocking climax…

The final thriller is KILLER CONTRACT (also first broadcast in 1984) and here it’s Edward Woodward who plays wealthy and influential business magnate Bill Routledge. It is a very exciting time for Routledge as he is about to launch a major satellite communications project, something that will put him on the map even further! Disaster strikes, however, when his beloved daughter Celia (Caroline Bliss) gets kidnapped and he sees himself confronted by the chilling line “Stop production or your daughter dies”. At first, the distressed Routledge is pretty clueless as to who might be behind the kidnapping until it occurs to him that a rival American company, who wants to buy him out, might be behind the crime. But can he prove it?

All three episodes (which were first broadcast in 1984) are highly original and brilliantly acted, however, in terms of sheer psychological terror and suspense it’s got to be KILLER WAITING, which comes up the winner here. That said, viewers will pick their own favourite!