MURDER CITY “The Critical Path.” ITV/Granada Television, 18 March 2004 (Season 1, Episode 1). Amanda Donohoe (DI Susan Alembic), Kris Marshall (DS Luke Stone), and a large ensemble cast. Guest Cast: Mac McDonald, Stephen Martin Walters. Writer: Robert Murphy. Director: Sam Miller.

   The large ensemble cast consists of a group of actors playing various members of a homicide squad in a single station based somewhere in London. I have read that many of these players take turns having leading roles as the series went on (it lasted for two seasons and a total of ten episodes), but for the most part it the the mismatched couple of Detective Inspectors Susan Alembic and Luke Stone who were most commonly paired off, as it is in “The Critical Path,” the pilot episode.

   Susan is in charge of one case, that of a missing teen-aged girl, with the assistance of a self-described psychic magnificently cast heavy set Mac McDonald, who steals the show with his innocent but craggy expressive face. That he seems to have knowledge of the case he could not really have disgusts Luke Stone no end – he being a detective who builds his cases on facts, not ESP or worse.

   Which comes into play on his own case, very much a counterpoint to Susan Alembic’s. A man is shot and killed by an arrow in an all but deserted office building in which the surveillance cameras are all working but show absolutely no sign of anyone entering or moving throughout the building. Stone has a suspect, a egotistical man who simply dares Stone to find out how he did it.

   I do not know if the contrasts in techniques and procedures will continue through the rest of the series, but I’ll be watching to find out. I enjoyed this one. It helps considerably when all of the actors are as top notch as they are in this very first episode.