I watched the first series of this ITV programme and like the concept which starts with a courtroom scene of a person being controversially acquitted of a murder charge and then follows the cleared person as they try to go on with their lives but of course doesn't end until the original case is solved and the real killer identified. Conceivably of course, this could still turn out to be the absolved party, especially with the recent revoking of the "double jeopardy" defence.
This time it's schoolteacher Katherine Kelly we see in the dock, on trial for the murder of a fifteen year old schoolboy who was one of her pupils, who, when she receives her "Not Guilty" verdict resolves not to run away but instead to reclaim her life, staying in the small town where she lived and worked. We learn that her marriage to her probation officer husband has broken down and also that she was strongly suspected of having a physical relationship with the underage murder victim. Finally, just to line all her plates in a row, she also has a mother who suffers from dementia who stays in a local care home. In the meantime, her ex has become engaged to another woman, coincidentally a governor at her old school whose truculent teenage daughter was a classmate of the dead boy.. Naturally, Kelly's reapplication to the school doesn't go down well with her old teacher colleagues or the local townsfolk, particularly the family of the slain boy, but at least, in her favour, the police have appointed a new team, under D. I. Shaun Rooney, to look into the case afresh and this time catch the real killer.
Naturally, we get the usual parade of potential suspects, all with seeming motive and opportunity to kill the victim, as well as other interested parties whose lives criss-cross and unravel in varying degrees as the story progresses. I enjoyed it right up until the big reveal, which I found to be highly contrived and unbelievable, but was placated somewhat by the way we were afterwards shown how all the lives affected by the case might now at last carry on, with even the whiff of romance between Kelly and Rooney as a parting shot.
Sad-eyed Kelly (and who could blame her) was very good as the exonerated woman determined to go forward with her interrupted life and Rooney, who I recently watched play a killer in the Harlan Coben series "The Stranger", was very good this time on the other side of the law, although again I felt involving him romantically with Kelly seemed a bit unnecessary and clichéd. Some of the other plot lines seemed overdone, such as the ex-husband's new fiancée's purported stalking of him or Kelly's determination to break up his new relationship but otherwise I enjoyed the twists and turns of the storyline.
Told over four well-filled 45 minute episodes this was an easy-to-watch and entertaining mystery drama and I look forward to seeing who's next in the dock.
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