He might look incredibly angry on the cover of this set, but Philip Murdoc’s Noel Bain has a surprisingly grandfatherly quality to him. He’s quite the mercurial grandfather, though, depending on who he’s with. With friends, he’s a gentle, introspective old man, but when he’s on a case — you better get out of the way. “You know, there are two things that really annoy me,” he says in the first episode of the set when asked if he has any thoughts on a crime. “One is sergeants who ask bloody silly questions all the time.”
“What’s the other?” she asks, but he just shakes his head at her. Curmudgeonly might be the word.
I did like this series, though for some of the deeper character strokes I could have certainly used more background from the previous two sets. The cases, while not exactly of the same stuff as, say, the intricate, brooding Prime Suspect, were still fairly enjoyable, especially as Bain slowly worked his way through them, all the way to their shocking, sometimes devastating conclusions.
The show isn’t terribly dated either, which is a plus. In an improvement from the last set, episodes are now in widescreen as opposed to full screen, though various effects are still a little rustic. Posters for things just as Radiohead’s OK Computer and The X-Files: Fight the Future put this show’s release in the late nineties, but beyond that, this show has aged fairly well.
It’s certainly not a happy series, but A Mind to Kill has tones of humor and heart throughout, most from Madoc’s Noel Bain, that make it a pretty satisfying watch. Would I recommend it over shows like Touching Evil and Prime Suspect? Definitely not — this show isn’t quite on the level of genius that it tries to be. But it makes a good effort. Buy it on Amazon.
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