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This dark British miniseries has an unflinching focus on the pensive, slightly
spooked but always confident Detective Inspector Dave Creegan (Robson Green). Of
course the caseload isn't entirely alien to a pop culture audience, weaned as it
is on crime novels and American television-style plots. There's an aging
geneticist who is possessed by an odd infatuation--apparently not a sexual
one--with children, keeping them penned in an all-white room while watching them
on a remote video cam, and other deviants just interesting enough to capture
extended interest. Touching Evil's pacing is intricately slow, such that
evidence gathering can be seen from an inchworm-like perspective (showing
tweezers extracting a single hair, for example). Green's role is structured like
Fox Mulder and other U.S. television creations. Moody and a bit inscrutable,
Creegan comes to the Organized and Serial Crime Unit after a long sabbatical,
triggered by his getting shot in the head. Rather than give up
police work after meeting with the bullet, however, he recommits to the job,
treating cases as if they're his personal obsession. And they are. Creegan
violates all the conventions his American TV-cop counterparts break in their
unbridled passion to solve crimes, but he does it with unforced and unhurried
relish. The plots in each of these episodes are singular, allowing the story
lines to develop like good mysteries, even driving the viewer to suspect that
Creegan's passions are leading him waywardly away from the cases. Shot with
mostly stoic camera angles, the show's energy changes significantly when
Creegan's heart begins to pound, the camera catches in halted visuals, and the
drama builds and builds until, well, until it avoids resolution time and again,
much to the viewer's delight.
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