Dalgliesh: Devices And Desires. Television Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Bertie Carvel, Carlyss Peer, Liz White, Adam James, Nancy Carroll, Lloyd Hutchinson, Catriona McFeely, Claire Goose, Kealan McCallister, Georgina Beedle, Chris Patrick-Simpson, David Pearse, Robert Lonsdale, Elizabeth Connick, Bradley Hall, Richard McFerran, Patrick FitzSymons, Will Close, Robert Wilfort, Matty Loane.

Whilst there are more novels from the illustrious P.D. James to uncover and place before the armchair detective in television form, it is perhaps fitting that the final story to be told across the three series of Dalgliesh is that of Devices and Desires.

Based on the book released in 1989, the two part tale of subterfuge, ideological destruction and murder, ranks arguably as one of the more dark and disturbing entries in the bibliography of the writers, but also that transfers that delicious and ominous feeling of permanent dread in the looming factor of the narrative, the volatile spectre of serial killers and nuclear energy being placed together in some eerie and unsettling marriage of convenience.

The dichotomy of death by hands unrelated but with one taking advantage of the other is palpable, almost unseemly when it comes to the idea using another’s despicable nature to achieve your own ends, and yet as the softly spoken but insightful Commander Dalgliesh once more teams up with the dedicated DS Kate Miskin to solve the death of a woman by the hands of the almost spectral serial killer acting in the Kent community.

Despite the change of landscape from the headlands of Norfolk to the Kent coast, Helen Edmundson’s script is detailed and precise, the intricacy if relationships, between Bertie Carvel’s Dalgliesh and Carlyss Peer’s Miskin, and those involving Hilary Roberts, Alice Mayer, and her brother Dr. Alex Mayer, portrayed by the genuine cool of Liz White, the understated gravitas of Nancy Carroll, and the assurance of Adam James, all weave themselves into a sense of cautionary upheaval, and one where only true respect can illuminate the cause of friendship beyond a professional manner.

Liz White’s convincing portrayal of a woman demanding an almost aggressive acquiescence of partnership with the doctor is a subtle inversion to the times in which the drama is set, the coming of Britain’s first Prime Minister, the sexual freedom and liberation that had been enhanced and enjoyed, all playing their part in the way that Hilary Roberts lived up that aggression, and how she ultimately meets her end. It is in this up-close dynamic that the stage is set for the crunch of the investigation; that whilst lies and deception are a cover for even deeper issues, it is the coming of the norm that sweeps away the old-fashioned and out-dated, but like Ms. Roberts, the price paid for such advance is one often paid by blood.

The third and final tale in the series reaches a climatic high, and if this is the last the audience sees of Bertie Carvel as the poet-writing Dalgliesh then the thanks from the armchair detective are assuredly loud and clear in their praise.

Ian D. Hall