The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
| The Suspicions of Mr Whicher | |
|---|---|
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher DVD cover
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| Based on |
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale |
| Written by | Neil McKay Helen Edmundson |
| Starring |
Paddy Considine Tim Pigott-Smith William Beck Nancy Carroll |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | ITV |
| Original release | 25 April 2011 – 14 September 2014 |
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is a British series of television films made by Hat Trick Productions for ITV, written by Neil McKay and Helen Edmundson. It stars Paddy Considine in the title role of detective inspector Jack Whicher of the Metropolitan Police. The first film, The Murder at Road Hill House (broadcast in 2011), was based on the real-life Constance Kent murder case of 1860, as interpreted by Kate Summerscale in her 2008 book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House.
Subsequent episodes are fictionalised accounts of Whicher's career as a private enquiry agent. McKay wrote the first of these, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Murder In Angel Lane, which was filmed in early 2013 and was broadcast on 12 May 2013. It was followed by two episodes written by Edmundson, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Beyond the Pale, broadcast on 7 September 2014, and The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: The Ties that Bind, broadcast on 14 September 2014. Considine later announced on Twitter that the show would not be continuing.
When three-year-old Saville Kent is found murdered in dreadful circumstances at the family home in Wiltshire, Commissioner Mayne (Tim Pigott-Smith) sends Scotland Yard detective Inspector Jack Whicher (Paddy Considine) to investigate the crime. Local Superintendent Foley (Tom Georgeson) believes that the murder is an 'inside job', committed by Saville's nurse Elizabeth Gough (Kate O'Flynn), whom he suspects the child had seen in bed with a man, possibly the child's father, Samuel Kent (Peter Capaldi) but whom he is forced to release due to lack of evidence.
When Whicher arrives, Foley, suspicious of this outsider and his progressive police methods, reluctantly agrees to help. The focus of Whicher's investigation is a torn and blood-stained piece from a woman's undergarment that had been found during the initial search for the missing boy. Constance Kent (Alexandra Roach), Samuel Kent's sixteen-year-old daughter from his first marriage, claims that one of her three night-gowns had been lost by the laundress. When Dr. Stapleton (Ben Miles), the family's doctor tells Whicher that Constance, like her late mother, is mentally unstable and resentful of Saville, her father's son from his second marriage, she immediately becomes Whicher's prime suspect. It is discovered that Constance and her younger brother William Saville-Kent (Charlie Hiett) hate their stepmother Mary (Emma Fielding) — who had, in fact, been employed as their former nanny, with whom their father had had an affair while their mother was dying. He visits a schoolmate of Constance, Emma Moody, who tells him that Constance enjoyed hurting Saville. As the circumstantial evidence builds, Whicher arrests Constance, he having been convinced that she had killed her half-brother out of revenge against her father for his treatment of her mother and his neglect of her and William, but he fails to get a confession from her. At her trial, her lawyer discredits Whicher's case by wilfully misrepresenting it. Emma Moody is called as a witness, but she lies and states that Constance adored her half-brother, and Constance is acquitted. Whicher accuses Mr. Kent of abetting the wrongful acquittal.
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