Thorne (spoilers)

[Adam H. Kerman]

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In 2010, Sky1 broadcast a six-episode series, two different stories, from
the Thorne novels by Mark Billingham. Sleepyhead and Scardy Cat were adapted.
Both have a theme of serial killers emerging from an event in childhood.

With Canadian and Australian funding. It aired in America on Encore, which
had the nerve to call it an original production. Encore edited each
three-part story into one, running about 2:10 each.

Both rely heavily on flashbacks to tell the story. Sleepyhead has very
little to investigate; we're just led through the story with the coppers.
Scardy Cat resembles a bit of an investigation, although highly bungled.

David Morrisey plays D.I. Tom Thorne. In Sleepyhead, the killer is
desperate for Tom's attention, leaving a series of notes. The killer
is practicing on young women in their mid 20s, trying to perfect a
hideous technique. He's figured out how to cause trauma to arteries
in the neck, leading to the brain having a stroke-like episode. Except
for the victim's age, the deaths appear to be natural on the surface.

One young woman is left alive. The killer's goal was to create significant
brain damage to imprison the woman in her own body, conscious but with no
motor functions beyond the ability to move her eyes. Thorne assumes it
was a mistake but soon realizes that this was the killer's goal.

Thorne's best friend is the pathologist, Phil Hendricks (Aidan Gillen),
who takes great delight in demonstrating the killer's technique upon
Tom's own neck. Phil is a gay man; this becomes a plot point later.

It's all tied in with the killer's memories of his own father, also a
serial killer, a major case that Tom had "solved" 15 years earlier. The
father used to pick up men in gay bars to murder them. His motives weren't
explained (I assume self-loathing). That killer won't be taken alive and
places the gun in his own mouth while Tom is holding it, although Tom
squeezes the trigger.

Phil hides Tom's crime.

Late in the episode, Tom suspects Phil, given the notes. Phil's pissed.

It becomes clear to the other detective, Inspector Kevin Tughan, that the
modern-day killer has been leaving personal notes for Tom about the older
case and they conclude that Phil is the only one who could have known
the details and covered up for Tom. The story rather falls apart at the
moment Phil is taken into custody. But Phil, dragged by the murder board,
recognizes the son of the serial killer from 15 years earlier.

At the same time, Tom recalls the three little girls laid out on the bed
from the case 15 years ago, daughters of the serial killer, who killed them
before having Tom kill him. Tom realizes it's his son.

What wasn't known was that the son was also about to be killed by the
father when Tom entered the house, distracting him. The son, then, witnessed
the father's murder and saw his murdered sisters. He claimed that every time
he saw a young woman who reminded him of his murdered sisters, he'd
"protect" them from his father. This doesn't explain the locked-in syndrone
he'd learned to create. The killer wasn't playing with Tom but expressing
gratitude.

Also, what wasn't known, was that the boy when much younger was being
raped by his father.

Inspector Tughan conducts the interrogation of the serial killer who, in
a bit of major stupidity, bites off his own tongue without opening his
mouth and chokes on it. Tughan is desperate to get the killer to implicate
Tom in his own father's murder.

There's a pretty neurologist who never becomes a love interest, and her
daughter is taken by the killer, but not harmed too badly. The episode
concludes with the living victim asking to be taken off artificial
respiration.

The second one, Scaredy Cat, is about a young man who had been humiliated
at school 15 years earlier, and so he became a serial killer. He seems to
be working with someone else as the killings are in two distinct styles.
But the police detective who never stopped working on the first killing,
the murder of the girl who disappeared 15 years earlier, finally figures
it out and is killed.

Tom and Phil make up as Tom's mother has just died. Tom handles it badly,
hiding it from his fellow officers, including his superintendant who
knew her.

Phil finds pattern killings and Tom forces Tughan to re-open one of his
closed cases in which the boyfriend of the victim was locked up.

In the first killing we see of a young mother, the young son is left
alive, having hidden in the closet. Tom and his father take him in after
the killer finds the foster home.

The police utterly bollocks up this case. Sandra Oh plays a detective
who transferred from another squad. Later, we learn it's because she
abuses cocaine. One of the killers surrenders to her. Tom decides to use
him as bait to find the other killer, an amazingly stupid idea given that
they think the two killers killed at least 8 in the recently identified
pattern, and it might be more. In the safe house, Sandra Oh plays security
guard. Desperate for a cocaine fix, she shoos out the second cop who is
supposed to be guarding the prisoner with her. She retreats to the bathroom,
believes the second killer has entered the house (through a door that she
had earlier unlatched as she wanted to smoke), and in her terror, allows
them to escape.

It really didn't make any sense that they'd be guarding a prisoner in a
room with a direct entrance to outside.

The killers continue murdering, including a suspect who had been ruled
out earlier. The police had planted a tracker on his car. Seems that
no warrant was required. They steal the car with the tracker, which had
not been removed after he'd been ruled out.

Nice civil rights there.

Tom figures out Sandra Oh's cocaine problem after the evidence techs found
the drugs in the bathroom, and fires her. She figures out the tracker is
still in play and goes after the killers.

It finally dawns on Phil that it's one killer, split personality.

They follow the killers to a field where the girl had been killed 15 years
earlier. The killer buried her body and then killed his friend and buried
him next to her. He took on his friend's personality. The killer is
captured but not killed this time.

The scenes with Tom's father were interesting, and I liked Tom and his
father with the young witness.

Sandra Oh attempts an English accent but slips out of it in some of
her dialogue. It sounds plausible when she's doing it, though.

Quite frankly, they telegraphed the surprise revelation early, that there
was no second killer, 'cuz no one ever saw him.

There are eight other novels, so far. Doesn't appear that Sky intends
to film any others. Subsequently, Morrisey had done South Riding and
The Walking Dead.

They weren't that good, so I don't care.