Messiah (TV series)

Messiah
Genre	Crime drama
Created by	Boris Starling
Starring	Ken Stott Neil Dudgeon Frances Grey Michelle Forbes Kieran O'Brien Art Malik Marc Warren Jamie Draven
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	11 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Lizzie Mickery
Running time	75 min. (Series 1-3) 60 min. (Series 4-5)
Release
Original network	BBC One
Original release	26 May 2001 – 21 January 2008
External links
Website

Messiah is a British television drama series, broadcast on the BBC One network and produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland, although the series itself is set in England. Made up of a series of occasional serials, the first, with two parts subtitled The First Killings & The Reckoning, was broadcast in 2001. It has been followed by Messiah 2: Vengeance is Mine (2003), Messiah III: The Promise (2004), Messiah IV: The Harrowing (2005) and most recently Messiah V: The Rapture (2008). The original production was based on a novel by Boris Starling: the subsequent installments have been written directly for television. Starling has a cameo as a murder victim's corpse in the first serial.

A crime series, it follows the investigations of DCI Red Metcalfe, who often investigates particularly gruesome murders. Metcalfe is played by Scottish actor Ken Stott, and the other main regulars in the series are Kate Beauchamp (Frances Grey), Duncan Warren (Neil Dudgeon) and Metcalfe's wife Susan (Michelle Forbes). The deafness of Forbes' character necessitated both her and Stott learning British Sign Language for their characters' frequent exchanges.

Messiah I is the only series to be directly adopted from the novel, and deals with a serial killer who sets out to commit twelve murders in the same vein as the Apostles. The screenplay was written by Lizzie Mickery, who also wrote Messiah II and Messiah III. The series was broadcast over a May bank holiday weekend in 2001, on 26 (Saturday) and 27 (Sunday) May respectively. The series does have some major differences to the novel it was adapted from. For example; the final scenes in the novel take place at Easter, traditionally the time when Judas Iscariot hanged himself. However, the events of the final scenes in the series take place on New Year's Eve 1999. In the novel, Red is seen crashing to the floor with his killer before crucifying them, similar to the death of Jesus Christ. However, in the series, Red's killer tries to hang him from his staircase, before Red and his wife manage to overpower them and they fall to their death from a great height. Ironically, the way in which the killer falls to their death results in them lying on the floor in the shape of a cross. Red meanwhile manages to pull himself to safety. In the novel, Red hands himself in to the police having committed murder, is interviewed by DS Beauchamp and is subsequently send to jail. However, in the series, Red is seen simply being taken away in a police car to give his side of the story as to how his killer died. Subsequently, he is found to have been at no fault, thus paving the way for the further serials. The novel also shows Red's marriage to his wife, Susan, falling apart and their subsequent split; however, in the series, this does not occur, and Susan appears in three further sequels. Also, it can be noted that the character of Susan is not deaf in the book, but is in the series.

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