Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Marc Warren, Maimie McCoy, Luke Allen-Gale, Elliot Barnes-Worrell, Darrell D’Silva, Emma Fielding, Robert Boulter, Beatie Edney, Joseph Millson, Bobbi Blijleven, Ruben Brinkman, Deirde Duisterhof, Loes Haverkort, Peter van Heeringen, Marcel Hensema, Mike Libanon, Saskia Neville, Mark Rietman, Anastasia Reshetnikova, Anneke Sluiters, Lilana de Vries, Daria Zueva.
The murderer comes in many guises, and the serial killer is one to whom the appearance is arguably the most complex, and yet even they are often guided by rules, admittedly of their own making, which makes them perform in the public eye as if they nothing but what we might consider a normal person, a solitary figure maybe, but one to whom neighbours and friends see as a stand-up individual, the one they wave too in the mornings, the one who will do the cook out on a special celebration inviting all to eat the tajine, to ferry them to their appointment…in short they are always considered one of us.
The murderer, the serial killer with a systematic plan, the imagination to combine the act and the lead up to it via clues for the detective, they are the ones the television viewer are both intrigued by, and fearful of; for they are more than just random and arbitrary followers of chaos, they have given themselves over to being the personification of the Grim Reaper following a detailed structure of events that cannot be finished until the clues lead the police to their door.
The serial killer with a grudge, with an objective, to be feared above all, and one that is framed with fierce determination by Mark Warren’s Piet van der Valk as the titular Dutch detective returns for a second series in the opening episode of Plague On Amsterdam.
Long is the list of films and television series that have made the most of the city’s place in history, its famed canals, the legions of trades that focus around the diamond trade, the laid back attitude and resistance to those that would subsume it, but the prospect of a serial killer in the city, praying on seemingly random victims, that does not happen all that often, and whilst the business of murder is gruesome, it is with an interested eye for the armchair detective that such an event would take place in Amsterdam; let alone one with a trail of slaughter that is codified and teased through the killer’s lofty ambition of retribution and their silent rage consuming them.
The episode makes the most of Marc Warren’s own unnerving ability to make any character he inhabits to one skating close to the edge of mania, a class act in itself, and with the superb Maimie McCoy returning as Lucienne Hassell, the under-appreciated but always excellent value in her work Beatie Edney in excellent conniving form, and Darrell D’ Silva as the jazz loving Hendrik Davie, Van der Valk’s Plague On Amsterdam is a grand and insightful opener to a long awaited second series.
Beware the killer with a social conscious, for they bear witness to the sickness in modern society more than any other.
Ian D. Hall