Joanna Scanlan’s DI Vivienne Deering runs a Manchester murder squad like a demented den mother, her paper-strewn office doubling as a war room where Elaine Cassidy’s pregnant Dinah Kowalska and Will Mellor’s Spike Tanner chase drug cooks, paedophile rings and a serial killer targeting women with Down’s syndrome. Creator Paul Abbott pumps Shameless speed into procedural form: scenes slam-cut from mortuary humour to sudden horror, the camera sprinting after uniforms through Moss Side terraces. Abbott wrote the first two series opener and closer himself, letting the writers’ room keep the middle episodes punching at the same frantic tempo.
Series two pivots to a hard-left examination of racial tension when Nigerian-born crime boss Nora Attah (Rakie Ayola) floods the city with heroin and the far-right English Protection Army answer back; 3.1 million watched the finale on Channel 4 in 2017. The third and final run, broadcast September 2018, puts Deering’s team against a white-supremacist cell plotting to assassinate a liberal mayoral candidate; filming shut down Deansgate for a mock bomb blast that made the MEN headlines. Ratings held at 2.5 million consolidated despite overnight slips, enough for Abbott to sketch a fourth season before funding dried in 2019.
AbbottVision shot all 21 episodes on Manchester streets, using the old Granada Studios as base and recruiting locals as extras. Composer Vince Pope’s theme layers brass over breakbeats, echoing the city’s Hacienda ghosts. The show left BBC and Netflix catalogues in 2022, so new viewers hunt DVDs or dodgy rips to watch Scanlan deliver the line, “I’m not mad, I’m emotionally extravagant,” then bulldoze a crime scene with biscuit crumbs on her lapel.
Production Details
Channel 4 / 3 Seasons / 21 Episodes / 2015
Created by: Paul Abbott
Showrunner(s): Martin Carr, Paul Abbott
Writer(s): Paul Abbott, Paul Tomalin, Mark Greig
Producer(s): Simon Meyers, Anna Ferguson
Music: Vince Pope
Main Cast
Joanna Scanlan as Vivienne Deering
Elaine Cassidy as Dinah Kowalska
Will Mellor as Spike Tanner
Paul Ritter as Randolph Miller
Ste Johnston as Jonah Mitchell
Tom Varey as Stuart O'Connell
Saira Choudhry as Tegan Thompson
Alexandra Roach as Joy Freers
Neet Mohan as Taz Ahmed
Charlie May-Clark as Cathy Calvert
Conor MacNeill as Gavin Nuttle
Kate O'Flynn as Dr Peep
