The Control Room (BBC1)
Rating: 
Murder in Provence (ITV)
Rating:
This is a public message to all extras and stunt performers in crime dramas: Would you please take a look where you’re going? Drive more carefully!
Virtually every thriller on television now shows a car racing like a four-wheel plot twist in one shot and crashing into a central character. It’s so common that, when an actor crosses the road or comes out of an intersection, I expect to be boned with his bones.
This happened on both main channels, without warning but quite predictably, when two new series were launched.
Murder in Provence has Roger Allam play Antoine Verlaque and Nancy Carroll plays Marine Bonn
A suspect on Murder in Provence (ITV) was splashed by a hit driver during an incriminating phone call. She was doubly unlucky, as it turned out she had nothing to do with this week’s murder. She was, in fact, killed by a swift red herring.
Gabriel, the hero of The Control Room (BBC1), was luckier. He escaped with a nosebleed and didn’t stick around to be questioned by the police because he had a body in the back of his van.
A Suspect Is Killed By A Fast Red Herring In Murder In Provence
The investigating judge Antoine and his endlessly patient partner Marine hold hands at all times on Murder In Provence, unless they cuddle in bed or lean on each other’s shoulders by the sea
In both series, a car collides with a central character, but only one survives
But that was his only bit of luck, though the succession of disasters—watching him threatened with a beating, interrogated by the police, then blackmailed by a colleague—was largely his own fault.
It’s a little worrisome because Gabriel (Iain De Caestecker) is an emergency operator whose job is to keep people from panicking when they call 999.
He completely loses his head after recognizing a woman’s voice. She’s his childhood sweetheart, Sam (Joanna Vanderham), and she calls to say she just hit her abusive partner in the head with a barbell.
“Is the patient getting?” asked Gabriel.
“Yeah, he’s bleeding everywhere,” she says confused by his accent.
You can’t blame her, because Glasgow-born De Caestecker does a brogue so raw it makes Sir Alex Ferguson sound like Bertie Wooster.
Gabriel played by Iain De Caestecker is an emergency call handler whose job is to keep people from panicking when they call 999 in The Control Room
Gabriel once promised to do anything for Sam, whatever she asked. He was only ten at the time, but still feels honored, so he hangs up his headphones and runs off to meet her at their old haunt. . .a burnt-out classroom in a Christmas tree plantation.
If that all sounds very unlikely, of course it is. But the three-part series, which continues tonight, is riddled with a nightmarish atmosphere that makes Gabriel’s blind terror believable as he stumbles from crisis to crisis.
In a leopard-print fur coat as fake as her sob story, Vanderham plays Sam with convincing ferocity. He can do anything for her, but she will hardly lift a finger for him. . . literal.
When she holds his hand, he looks pitifully grateful – but you can hear the sound of her clenched teeth.
The three-part series is thick with a nightmarish atmosphere that gives credence to Gabriel’s blind terror as he stumbles from crisis to crisis.
Investigating judge Antoine and his endlessly patient partner Marine (Roger Allam and Nancy Carroll) hold hands on Murder In Provence at all times, unless they’re cuddling in bed or leaning on each other’s shoulders by the sea. All French detectives must have a devoted husband, a law enacted by Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. Antoine and Marine are saved from terminal tweeness by Allam’s sardonic taste in his constant witticisms. He speaks every line as if he can taste the blood in it.
Abandoning his plans for a grueling hotel stay, he was horrified to learn the details of an academic’s murder. “And I thought my weekend had gone badly,” he said. With a classic Citroën and jeans that are two sizes too tight, Judge Antoine is a richly drawn figure: fussy, vain, courageous and maudlin.
The other characters have less depth so far, but this was a promising start.