What should we make of Identity, ITV1’s big new police thriller series?
It stars another refugee from The Wire, Aidan Gillen, as well as Keeley Hawes who’s fresh from finishing Ashes to Ashes. The series is set in the plush offices of Scotland Yard’s Identity unit. Hawes’ DSI Martha Lawrence has had to take on troubled and somewhat renegade DI Bloom. Well he is Oirish don’t you know?
The stylised trailers didn’t make it completely clear whether or not this was an ongoing series, or a weekly procedural with a story arc. Of course it was the latter. I guess I’m just used to expecting longer form stories these days.
The first episode revolved around someone who looked a bit like Peter Crouch’s younger brother who was making life hell for various people by stealing their identities, running up huge debts and generally sending them to the brink. A criminal mastermind, he was somewhat disappointing when we caught up with him – as surely we would.
Back at base, there’s a multi-ethnic set of team members, many of whom explain their jobs to one another. I know that the viewers need this kind of exposition, especially so in first episodes, but it still feels terribly clunky.
I was hoping that we’d get a bit more about the rights and wrongs of the data mining the department seem capable of – digging out details of what you bought with your Nectar card, and where you went on your Oyster card. But the best we got was one character saying that they were a bit uncomfortable using all this data, but then sifting through it anyway, and another saying that if you’ve got nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear, and broadly speaking, leaving it at that. Perhaps this is an area the series will get into a bit more later on.
Holly AIrd plays the team’s computer person, positioned behind computer monitors, being stuck with slightly more exposition than I’d have liked, and generally not explaining how she found out certain pieces of information. Although entertainingly, she seemed to use some specialist police system at one point, when a quick Google search would have sufficed.
The identity theft team are obviously well paid, because they walk around, not in cheap suits, but some very smart gear. Hawes was wearing a fetching short length trench coat affair, while Gillen was wearing a v-neck jumper and t-shirt combo that Joachim Loew would be proud of, supplemented by a smart leather jacket.
Even the school in which a crucial chase takes place, has buildings the like of which few other schools will be getting anytime soon. This was not a chase through some Portakabins.
But all said and done, it was a nicely made piece, and even though we probably had one too many helicopter shots of London (and inevitably the Gherkin as it’s a statutory requirement to include it any drama set in the capital), I’ll still be tuning in next week.