When John Simm’s sheltered academic Jonah Mulray learns his wife Megan died on a Tai Po mountain road, he flies to Hong Kong and collides with a harder truth: she was simultaneously married to local ex-cop Anthony Wong’s David Chen and entangled in a laundering probe that implicates the British consulate. Over eight tightly wound hours, the series keeps the camera on the neon back-alleys of Mongkok and the glass towers of Central, letting the humid cinematography do the menace while Jonah ricochets between Chen’s fury, detective Tom Wu’s stonewalling, and consul Emilia Fox’s smiling evasions.
The Williams brothers, fresh off The Missing, produce and co-write, feeding exposition through bilingual confrontations rather than voice-over, and director Paul Andrew Williams shoots every pursuit like he’s still making the 2006 thriller London to Brighton. ITV rebranded the show from its working title White Dragon three weeks before transmission, burying the Asian-white co-production lead that might have signalled its hybrid identity.
Broadcast weekly from 10 September 2018, episodes landed on the Hub four days early yet still pulled 7.2 million for the opener, making it the network’s strongest autumn launch until The Widow the following year. Anthony Wong, already a Cannes winner for Infernal Affairs, seized the part to practise English dialogue without the usual triad clichés, and his weary authority steers the final twist: Megan’s death was staged by her own daughter to protect the family’s smuggling fortune. The reveal lands cold because the show refuses to sanctify anyone, least of all the grieving husband who thought he knew her.
Production Details
ITV1 / 1 Season / 8 Episodes / 2018
Created by: Mark Denton, Jonny Stockwood
Writer(s): Harry Williams, Jack Williams
Producer(s): Matthew Bird
Main Cast
John Simm as Jonah Mulray
Anthony Hayes as Michael Cohen
Tom Wu as Daniel Tsui
Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as David Chen
Thomas Chaanhing as Felix Chong
Katie Leung as Lau Chen
Jason Wong as Kai
Ocean Navarro as Student
