BritBox's 'Suspect' Trailer Features a Suspicious James Nesbitt
BritBox's last major debut for September 2022 is Channel 4's Suspect, starring James Nesbitt (Bloodlands) as a hardbitten detective and based on the Danish series Face to Face (Forhøret), created by Christoffer Boe. Despite the very close name, it is not to be confused with The Suspect, starring Aidan Turner (Poldark) as an internet famous doctor, which aired on ITV and is coming to Sundance Now in November. (It also should not be confused with Suspicion, which aired on Apple TV+ earlier this year. This has just been a paranoid year for TV, is what I'm saying.)
The series was initially commissioned by Channel 4 this time last year and filmed later in the fall. (It made minor headlines at the time for taking over a Texaco and shutting it down for filming right in the middle of the gas crisis.) The series hails from Jo McGrath and Walter Iuzzolino of Eagle Eye Drama; the filming outfit spawned from the popular UK anthology series Walter Presents, known to PBS viewers as Walter's Choice. It was adapted by Matt Baker and directed by Dries Vos, the team best known for Eagle Eye's U.K. adaptation of Professor T.
It is the third series from Eagle Eye, which has made a name for itself by taking the most popular foreign language offerings aired on Walter's Choice and remaking them for an English-language audience for those defeated by the one-inch barrier of subtitles. Thus far, PBS has been the home of Eagle Eye's remakes, both the aforementioned Professor T and, Before We Die, which aired earlier this year, and Eagle Eye's first original series, Hotel Portofino. This is the first major remake of a series to land on a different platform, though the Danish language series it is based on is on PBS' Masterpiece streaming channel.
Here's the synopsis:
The series will follow veteran detective Danny Frater as he investigates the unnatural death of his daughter and sets out on a mission for the truth, retracing her last days and hours, in an agonising crusade to discover what really happened to his only child.
Nesbitt co-stars in Suspect alongside Joely Richardson (The Tudors), Anne-Marie Duff (Sex Education), Richard E. Grant (Loki), and Professor T's Ben Miller. Other familiar faces include Niamh Algar (Deceit), Antonia Thomas (Small Axe), Sacha Dhawan (Doctor Who), Sam Heughan (Outlander), and Imogen King (Clique).
The series runs eight half-hour episodes, an unusual format for mysteries dramas, which usually run an hour, if not feature-length. That's because of the series' unique format, which will see Nesbitt's character sit down face to face with each possible suspect and interview them one on one to figure out the whodunit. As Nesbitt described it, "Each episode of Suspect is an intensely theatrical double-hander, a psychological battle of wits between Danny and another character who may know something about his daughter's untimely death, and I really can't wait to lock horns with my fellow cast members and to lead this incredible array of acting talent."
Suspect debuts on BritBox as a binge drop on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022.
