John Duttine’s Detective Superintendent Lance Thorne arrives at a glass-walled City boardroom to find merchant banker Michael Gough’s Charles Makepeace dead on the carpet, briefcase still clutching takeover documents. Over six weeks Anglia Television charted the investigation through dealing rooms, wine bars and Docklands flats where wives, mistresses and rivals all had motives tied to a £300 million merger. Sian Phillips plays the widow Isobel with a cut-glass calm that fractures under questioning, while Gavan O’Herlihy and Tim Woodward are the ambitious junior bankers whose alibis depend on each other.
Richard Harvey’s nervy synth score underlines a world of Filofaxes, car phones and shoulder pads; Spencer Chapman’s camera lingers on computer screens flickering share prices that could ruin or enrich before the next bell. The serial aired 6 March–10 April 1987, never repeated, never issued on DVD, surviving only on off-air VHS traded among enthusiasts who prize its granular depiction of pre-Big-Bang London. Paul Ableman’s tie-in novel appeared five weeks before the finale, but the television version retains the sharper teeth, ending on a freeze-frame of Thorne alone on a nighttime bridge, case files under his arm, city lights reflecting in the Thames.
Production Details
ITV1 / 1 Season / 6 Episodes / 1987
Created by: Paul Ableman
Writer(s): Paul Ableman
Producer(s): John Rosenberg
Music: Richard Harvey
Main Cast
John Duttine as DS Lance Thorne
Gavan O'Herlihy as Dan Maitland
Tim Woodward as John Field
Kim Thomson as Kate MacRenny
Lesa Lockford as Millicent Thorne
Adam Blackwood as Sgt Ballantyne
Siân Phillips as Isobel Makepeace
Charlie Dore as Grace Field
Kenneth Farrington as Mr Morrison
Jaye Griffiths as Diana
Joss Ackland as Sir Max Sillman
Trevor Ray as Colin Tucker
