REVIEW: Innocent, Series 1 Episode Three

 REVIEW: Innocent, Series 1 Episode Three

Three episodes into the first four parter of the crime drama series Innocent, and it seems the police are still unsure of who killed David's (Lee Ingleby) wife Tara. There's plenty of suspects, but nobody who seems clear to be the killer. It's proving a challenging case for the police in this series to say the least, one that you'd imagine if it was real life would really push the local police force to their limits.

It's to hope for David's case that they find the killer soon. Poor David is struggling financially; nobody is willing to hire him because he's still the prime suspect in the murder case, and on top of the rent he owns to his brother Phil (Daniel Ryan) he also needs money for his lawyer, in order to gain back custody of his kids. This first series does a really great job at showing how David's life is impacted like this. His false imprisonment has essentially planted a bomb right through his life, and now he has to do the impossible and find a way to fix the fragments back together. 

You can't exactly blame him when he agrees to sell his story to a tabloid journalist (Justin Salinger) for £12,000. I highly doubt the journalist actually cares that much for David here, as they tend to be mainly focused on sensationalism, but the money issues give him a good motive to effectively profit from his wrongful arrest. It will be interesting to see if the show does any more with this in the fourth episode, and we see if the tabloid journalist's piece actually does David any justice, but if they do show us the outcome I have my doubts that it will be pretty.

David's not the only one in a bad place though. After Cathy's (Angel Coulby) discovery that DI William Beech (Nigel Lindsay) had been tampering with the case in the previous episode, we now see that he's been dropped of his position within the police force. It feels like a highly satisfying piece of narrative justice, as the way he took the law into his own hands to paint David Collins as the murderer was quite frankly disgusting. When a character within a narrative does something as morally reprehensible as this, you've got to show them getting some kind of comeuppance, and Innocent delivers on this front.

The kids Jack (Fionn O'Shea) and Rosie (Eloise Webb) are the ones you have to really feel sorry for in all this. Through various conversations between Alice (Hermione Norris) and Rob (Adrian Rawlins), they start to grow suspicious of their adopted parents - and honestly, it's hard to blame them. After all, they lied about Rob being with Alice at the time of Tara's murder, and Rob later states that he went to pick up Alice's medication from the chemist's at ten thirty at night, despite that being a very odd time for completing such a task. The screenplay is really good at playing the paranoia here, as the kids are left unsure what to think, and even Alice and David are questioning one another over whether they killed Tara. You get this strong feel for how a situation like this would realistically tear families apart in this manner, as they each begin to wonder and suspect if they truly know those around them, or if they have some secret and dark agenda that they were trying to hide.

It's not surprising when this leads to Rosie now deciding to meet with David. She's now joined Jack in believing that their Dad might be innocent, and it's alienating her somewhat from Alice and Rob, who have been looking after Rosie and Jack all this time. There's a charming moment when Rosie states she thought she might have forgotten David because of how she hasn't seen him in so long, but that she knows who he is because she remembers the smell of his jacket, and it really highlights how it's the small things that we remember about people which often stand out over the bigger stuff. It's a natural reaction too from somebody who hasn't seen their Dad in such an extended period of time, as they're not as used to them being there; they've spent more time without him than with him in their life by this point.

It's this kind of tragic aspect that makes you all the happier for David at the end of this episode when he's acquitted of all charges relating to Tara's murder. Lee Ingleby plays this so well, showing the overwhelming relief and gratitude on his face from finally being set free. He may not know who his wife's murderer is yet, but he at least knows that he isn't going to be wrongly accused of it any more. In the eyes of the law he's now entirely innocent, and can live life as he pleases.

Overall, Innocent's third episode continues to offer a compelling narrative, which explores characters and their relationships extremely well. Featuring a great performance by Lee Ingleby and a convincing exploration of the way his wrongful arrest has torn his life apart, this proves to be a great episode of Innocent's third episode for sure, and proves that it's a show that's well worth a watch. 

What are your thoughts on Innocent's third episode? Let me know in the comments section.