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Collateral BBC2 - Monday 12th Feb 9pm

202 replies

NurseButtercup · 12/02/2018 18:52

This looks good - A new 4 part murder mystery thriller with an interesting cast, Nicola Walker, Carrey Mulligan, Billie Piper and Jon Simm. Is anybody planning to watch?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05x4v7l

OP posts:
MichaelBendfaster · 07/03/2018 14:51

Not sure what the church minister and the politician added to the story

I think they just represented institutions and concepts that, in David Hare's view, are 'evil'.

Gambling corrupts and ruins people's lives.
Politics is full of people who care only about 'the party' and hoovering up votes from whoever they can get to vote for them by following whatever policies they think will be popular.

Occasionally, 'good' people get involved in politics and have to find the moral courage to stand up to the evils of the institution. (NB I agree with you all about John Simm triumphantly leaving his very damaged ex-wife being a strange kind of 'hero'!)

The church is hypocritical and cowardly and runs scared of reactionaries and bigots.

The whole thing was quite a good watch but a bit student lefty politics.

I thought they underplayed how much Kip screwed up talking to Sandrine. All she had to say about it was that she 'came close' to getting the result she wanted. Like she made a tiny error rather than basically opening the door for Sandrine to shoot herself. It had been going quite well until they started talking about the terrorist shooting!

EnriqueTheRingBearingLizard · 07/03/2018 16:16

I liked it. I didn't mind that some bits of sub plots seemed extraneous because ultimately there were either points to be made, or connections that snaked through the weeks.

Jane and David knew each other and had some kind of history. I had thought they were related in some way, but now not sure about that or quite what it was. He'd done her the favour of signing Linh's paperwork, not knowing she was in the UK illegally. She was the witness to the shooting of Abdullah, on the doorstep of Karen's home. Karen being David's ex.

Quite apart from the assassination, we already have Jane conflicted between the church, her sexuality and her lover and David conflicted by his party politics and towards the mother of his child plus his child's welfare and Karen's personal issues, whatever they actually stemmed from. Ultimately Jane chose the church and David cut loose from Karen, emotionally at least.

Perhaps this strand was all about conflict, using people and letting them down? Undeniably Sandrine was let down by her mother, her superior officer and the family friend, Peter? who rang the 'travel agency' and ultimately by Kip too with her accidental slip of the tongue Sad She was such a sad character despite being the killer.

The scene with Sandrine and the Major's wife was good too. I'm sure she knew all along exactly what her husband was like and he used her to maintain the status quo. In the end, being confronted by Sandrine, she came to her senses and she 'let him down' in a sense, by finally seeing just what their relationship was based on and throwing in the towel. I suppose you could say Peter, the family friend, also let down Sandrine's mother, who had now lost her husband and both children.

That's without starting on the pizza parlour, the refugees, the police and MI5.

runningoutofjuice · 07/03/2018 16:47

I got the impression at some point that David and Karen's child was the result of a one-night stand or a very brief fling so they were never emotionally connected, at least on David's part.

I missed a bit in the middle so don't know where this came up, who decided that Sandrine should kill the pizza man? Who made a mistake?

EnriqueTheRingBearingLizard · 07/03/2018 17:19

I think David and Karen were married, but very briefly, perhaps because she was pregnant. They have the same surname, Mars.

The pizza guy (Abdullah's) assassination came about because he'd discovered the boss of the illegal traffic ring, Peter, who had the guise of the travel agency. He was the one Sandrine had the burner phone for, the phone the Major found and he ordered her to carry out killing to save his own exposure. He deceived her that she was assassinating a terrorist, but she wasn't.

It came about because of an email error by Berna (?) the Turkish translator who was working for MI5.

Not sure if Abdullah was going to try and use the information to make sure he and his sisters were allowed to stay, or what. That whole bit, including the video footage of the boat journey and the horrors of that, were a bit bewildering. I was sleepy and not paying full attention.

runningoutofjuice · 07/03/2018 19:37

Wow Enrique you managed to concentrate amazingly well, I didn't realise half of that!

onewhitewhisker · 07/03/2018 20:02

aha now i saw the john simm/billie ending bit differently. i felt it was far too neat and happy an ending for smug john simm and you were supposed to feel it wouldn't work - and the bit with billie looking out of the window was supposed to mean she'd do something terrible, like OD with the children in the flat.

TerfyMcTerface · 07/03/2018 20:20

When Berna was being interviewed by Kip, didn’t it emerge that the email error was, in fact, deliberate? But I couldn’t work out why she would do that?

Honourthepromise · 07/03/2018 23:16

But if Kip had lied to Sandrine about Asif not being a terrorist, Sandrine might have lived a little bit longer, but it wouldn’t have been very long before she found out the truth.
And it would have meant she’d been deceived. Again.

I liked the fact that Hare made the murderer a sympathetic character, right from the start. A murder that we’d witnessed.

MrsGruber · 07/03/2018 23:59

Sorry to be stupid, but can someone exactly how explain Sandrine came to be outside Billie Piper's character's flat at the right time, given the elaborate preparation involved?

How did the people smugglers know Abdullah worked as a pizza delivery driver? How did they know Karen was going to order a pizza at that exact time? (Especially given her shambolic lifestyle)? How did they know when to tell Laurie to make sure Abdullah was the driver? Maybe I'm overthinking this too...

MrsGruber · 08/03/2018 00:02

Sorry, do I mean Asif, getting confused...

Egghead68 · 08/03/2018 01:40

I think Billie Piper always ordered a pizza (with a special topping) on a Monday night. So it was predictable.

BitOfFun · 08/03/2018 02:55

I thought it was excellent, and Carey Mulligan has cemented her place as one of my favourite actors.

ReelingLush18 · 08/03/2018 08:10

Sorry to be stupid, but can someone exactly how explain Sandrine came to be outside Billie Piper's character's flat at the right time, given the elaborate preparation involved? Remember the 'hit' was organised by army personnel though, used to 'special ops' type of work. They're experts and particularly Sandrine (who, if you recall, was goaded about her previous 'spy' role work by the GF (rapist) senior officer at their mess dinner).

MrsGruber · 08/03/2018 09:03

Thanks both. So sorry to be picky, and leaving aside the predictability question, how did the people smugglers know about his job?

EnriqueTheRingBearingLizard · 08/03/2018 09:36

The pizza place had been taken over in recent weeks by a mysterious owner who only communicated from Florida. Laurie desperately needed extra money to help support her chronically sick mother, so was in on Mikey’s drugs racket and also instructions received from Peter’s people trafficking. No doubt they’d arranged Abdullah’s job there to keep tabs on him after he witnessed what happened on the boat coming over.

Laurie realised she’d dispatched Abdullah to his death, which is partly why she went to talk to Jane.

The police found the wedge of money Laurie had, but she wasn’t saved from the brutal kidnap and murder by Peter’s henchmen.

Ultimately everyone who put Peter’s operations at risk, died, except Berma, who MI5 allowed to leave.

I think that’s about it anyway and am presuming that ex Military Peter probably also worked for the unknown pizza owner? rather than being the actual Mr Big.

ToffeeUp · 08/03/2018 18:10

I was a bit disappointed with it. I enjoyed the main story but didn't like the vicar and politician story. I can see what the writer was trying to do but it didn't work for me.

scrabbler3 · 08/03/2018 19:57

I wasn't crazy about Nicola W as a vicar. She didn't seem quite right for the role. And she and the Vietnamese woman had zero chemistry - I thought it was deliberate and so I was expecting to find out that she had been using her for a visa.

AlishaMary · 08/03/2018 20:00

Agreed the vicar and younger woman seemed a very unlikely couple and yes zero chemistry. It felt more like the vicar was a mother figure.

MrsGruber · 09/03/2018 00:22

Weren't they there to add to the overall picture of compromised personal morals and questions about whether ends always justify means? I liked the fact that CM's character was also on dodgy ground. (In fact was Laurie's mum the only person not doing morally dubious things?).

BitOfFun · 09/03/2018 02:00

I felt a bit itchy about Nicola Walker sitting in the pews with her feet up Grin

MichaelBendfaster · 09/03/2018 09:54

But if Kip had lied to Sandrine about Asif not being a terrorist, Sandrine might have lived a little bit longer, but it wouldn’t have been very long before she found out the truth.

I don't think she had to lie. She could have encouraged Sandrine to talk about why she'd wanted to take out a terrorist, how it made her feel etc, until she was relaxed enough to leave the room and relinquish the gun. Then she could have had the full picture explained to her in a context of support and therapy/counselling.

Sorry to be stupid, but can someone exactly how explain Sandrine came to be outside Billie Piper's character's flat at the right time, given the elaborate preparation involved?
I think Billie Piper always ordered a pizza (with a special topping) on a Monday night. So it was predictable.

Yes, and at a specific time of night; they made great play of this when Kip's colleague asked her about it and implied that it was a bit late at night for a seven-year-old. To which Karen replied that her daughter 'runs on her own clock' or similar.

MrsRobot71 · 11/03/2018 21:00

My clever sister pointed out what was probably obvious to everyone but me: that Kip’s pole-vaulting career and spectacular and painful failure after giving it her all was a parallel for her spectacular failure in this case with Sandrine.

MrsGruber · 11/03/2018 21:40

Was it though? She completely out-manouvred the odious guy from the security services, solved both murders, and broke-up the people smuggling operation. The point seemed to be about moral ambiguity and means and end. Summed up in the odious guy's observation about whether Abdullah's murder (and the continued trafficking) were a price worth paying to leave his agent in place within an on-going people smuggling operation (in order to protect people like us)?

onewhitewhisker · 11/03/2018 21:57

mrs gruber yes agree, i think it was all about people focusing on their own thing and overlooking the people who are collateral damage. And agree about odious Sam, he messed up the whole thing not Kip. We didn't know what his operation was about until right near the end, so how could she? He could have gone in at higher level and told the police to back off for national security reasons, but instead he just assumed Kip was rubbish and wouldn't solve the case, tried to mess up the police operation by leaking to the press, and accused the Iraqi woman of lying about the boat even though he knew she wasn't. So he only had himself to blame when the police didn't keep him in the loop.
(though Kip messed up with Sandrine).
I thought all the moral ambiguity worked really well. John Sim seeming to get his undeserved happy ending. The level of empathy the viewer developed for Sandrine despite the fact she assassinated an innocent man. Kip seeming quite happy with it all when the viewer could see the huge problems. Even the twist with the vicar leaving Lin, when it seemed all the way through like Lin wasn't really into her.

Mind you i think Nicola Barker's brilliant, i would watch her read the yellow pages.

MrsGruber · 11/03/2018 22:11

Now you come to metion it OneWW, the clue was in the title. Blush

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