It was all going along so well I thought. The first two episodes of the new series of "Bancroft" had picked up well on the remaining characters and situations from the first series with two main stories running in parallel fashion. The main one concerned her only son Joe, whose police girlfriend from series one she had of course murdered (at the second attempt) to save her own skin but from whom now, not surprisingly given that he strongly suspected her, she was estranged. Unfortunately, Joe's bad luck with women continues when the father and stepmother of his new Emo-type girlfriend are murdered in their Gothic-sty!e mansion. Not before long, the hapless Joe is moved up to prime suspect status which naturally triggers the avenging smother-love of our anti-heroine top-cop when she's naturally sidelined from his case owing to her conflict of interest. While all that's going on, Bancroft is earning kudos for overseeing a marked reduction in drug-re!ated crime on her patch, but unsurprisingly this is less to do with good policing than her secretly collaborating with the drug tsar she's installed, again from the series before. Careful though Bancroft, your passed-over DCSI rival from before, Ade Edmundson is still looking over your shoulder, now convinced of your bloody misdeeds the first time and highly suspicious about the convenient accidental death of the new rival (actually his own mother) of her stooge drug-baron.
Like I said, these two strands are deftly played out alongside one another in the first two parts of this new three part series. Bancroft displays her good points as a super sleuth by breaking the case against Joe, naturally streets ahead of the younger 'tec appointed to run the main investigation which leads her back to ye olde country house where the bloody double murder was carried out, in pursuit of her quarry. Unfortunately for her, the other case isn't going so well. Her junior lieutenant in the drugs-racket has gone rogue, partly down to his own coke habit and has to be taken care of but this time Edmondson displays a Bancroft-esque combination of illegality and clever detective work to finally catch her up just at her moment of triumph.
In those first two episodes, after you naturally suspend disbelief at the actions of a front-line senior policewoman, you're hooked on both stories and well set for the cliffhanging conclusion but unfortunately it's all wasted on a ludicrous resolution which seems to have wandered in from a Jason-meets-Freddie-Kreuger slasher movie. Even harder to believe was the final unravelling with Bancroft clutching defeat from the jaws of victory and being led kicking and screaming from her own cop-shop to face a whole new challenge again.
If the promise of the first two episodes had been cogently followed through I'd have been elevating my estimation of the show to Lutheran standards but it was all blown away in a hurried, bloodied, muddled mess of a conclusion which was a real let-down, almost as if a different writer was brought in to rush through a quick-fire ending for some unfathomable reason.
Anyway, it's still worth watching, certainly again for Sarah Parish's larger than life turn in the title role but it's just a shame it all implodes in the last hour.
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