Tom Riley plays DI Will Wagstaffe, the officer in charge of an investigation into a brutal murder and a number of brutal assaults in London. It doesn’t take long before Will and his team realise that suspected paedophiles are being targeted, and the race is on to find out who is exacting their own vigilante justice. Meanwhile Will himself is haunted by his own demons, as he struggles to cope with the murder of his own parents several years earlier.
This tv film was a one off, although it almost feels like the pilot for a series; if it was made into a series, I would certainly watch it. I thought Tom Riley was excellent in the main role – both believable as a police officer and also in his personal life as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he would soon have lived longer since his parents’ murder that he had lived before the horrific event that changed his life for good. I also thought that his loving but tense relationship with his sister Juliette (Charlotte Riley, no relation) was very well portrayed. Both siblings have been affected in different ways by the family tragedy and although they clearly love each other, they sometimes struggle to understand each other.
The crime aspect of the story was very well done, and I was kept guessing until the end. The only thing that spoiled it slightly for me was that the ending did seem a bit cliched and stretched the boundaries of belief somewhat. Despite this though, overall the film was well acted and there were plenty of things to keep the viewer guessing.
I hope that this isn’t the last we have seen of Will Wagstaffe and his team – I will be looking out for more feature length tv films with these characters.
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Year of release: 2016
Director: Colin Teague
Writer: Chris Lang
Main cast: Tom Riley, Charlotte Riley, Edward Akrout, Tom Brooke, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Miranda Raison
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