Series one tracks the disappearance of Bristol student Hannah Ellis and the arrest of Céline Buckens' Talitha Campbell, a billionaire's daughter whose sneering privilege makes her the perfect media villain. Between 2021's arrest and the courtroom finale, Tracy Ifeachor's duty solicitor Cleo Roberts pieces together a defence while detectives lean on Talitha's incriminating text messages and her taste for cocaine-fuelled parties. The case turns when Hannah's body is recovered from a building site and the prosecution claims Talitha orchestrated a revenge attack after being ousted from her university clique.
Series two jumps to 2024 and a hit-and-run on Brighton's seafront. Climate activist Marcus Calderwood dies naming Michael Socha's PC Justin Mitchell as the driver, forcing Adeel Akhtar's jittery defence solicitor Sam Malik to unpick a conspiracy inside Sussex Police. Nathalie Armin's steel-willed prosecutor Leila Hassoun-Kenny faces a wall of silence while CCTV timestamps and a missing patrol-car tracker threaten to derail the case. Filming shifted to Belfast's docks and terraces, doubling for Brighton after producers realised Northern Ireland's Victorian streets could pass for the south coast at half the cost.
Buckens earned a BAFTA nomination and an International Emmy for her portrait of poisonous entitlement, critics praising how she let the mask slip in tiny, chilling flickers rather than grand speeches.
Production Details
BBC One / 2 Seasons / 10 Episodes / 2021
Created by: Ben Richards
Writer(s): Ben Richards
Producer(s): Christopher Hall
Cinematography: Matt Gray
Main Cast
Tracy Ifeachor as Cleo Roberts
Celine Buckens as Talitha Campbell
Kerr Logan as James Thornley
Lolita Chakrabarti as Meera Harwood
Sharon D. Clarke as Virginia Hoult
Amy Morgan as Heidi McKinnon
Sinéad Keenan as DI Paula Cassidy
James Frain as Damian Campbell
Joseph Payne as Dhillon Harwood
Abra Thompson as Hannah Ellis
Claire Lams as Andrea Ellis
Rebecca Grant as Nisha Baria
