Crimes With a Past

For Rap Sheet readers in Britain, a quick programming reminder: This weekend will bring the debut of Fallen Angel, a three-part ITV1 presentation based on Andrew Taylor’s acclaimed “Roth Trilogy” (The Four Last Things, The Judgement of Strangers, and The Office of the Dead). As the show’s publicity reminds us, “This is the story of the making of a murderer, told in reverse starting with the modern day.” It will feature Charles Dance and Emilia Fox. Here’s a plot synopsis:

Fox stars as Rosemary, the beautiful, disturbed daughter of an English vicar (Dance). Part family saga, part crime drama and thriller, it is overall ‘an investigation without policemen’. In the first film, set in contemporary London, we meet Wendy, whose granddaughter Lucy is abducted by a sinister woman known only as ‘Angel’. Having shown the full horror and evil Angel is capable of, our trilogy then rewinds back in time to see Angel’s past, growing up in the idyllic English countryside--set in 1991 and 1979 when Wendy knew her as a teenager and then as a toddler. We ultimately discover that Wendy is motivated by guilt--having covered up Angel’s first terrible murder, many years before. Fallen Angel reinvents the crime genre, by revealing a murderer and then rewinding back through her life to show us how and when she became so twisted.

A preview of the series, which will run from Sunday through Tuesday of next week, is available here. And, as Euro Crime reminds us, “If you miss the TV show, the DVD is out [in the UK] on the 19th, and of course there’s always the omnibus edition of the books.”