One: Compassionate Leave
Edge of Darkness is a BBC drama series from 1985, famous for its inclusion of environmental themes long before those became mainstream - although not nearly so early as Doctor Who's 1973 serial The Green Death, which it resembles in enough ways that this could be considered to be an attempt at a gritty reimagining; telling the story of how events might have played out if the Doctor had been a policemanny from Yorkshire instead of a Time Lord.
It starts with policemannys turning on a lot of lights in a very short pretitles sequence. It will be a long time before the significance of this bit becomes fully apparent, but it is already clearly meant to be ironic given the title.
After the titles we are introduced to the main character Ronnie Craven (Bob "clever girl" Peck), a police inspector and part-time presenter of Newsround, when he is already on a case investigating electoral fraud in a trade union, and facing political pressure from union official Godbolt to "delay" his investigation.
The environmental theme is subtly introduced early, when we see a brief clip of newsreader Kenneth Kendall on TV talking about the government courting the "green vote" in its manifesto.
Ronnie collects his daughter Emma from a political meeting to give her a lift home in his car. They are going from the car to their house and casually talking about noms when a manny starts shouting at them. He then shoots Emma with a shotgun and runs away. The violence is over just as suddenly as it started out of nowhere, which adds to its shocking power. This is the first twist in the tale, and kicks off the main plot.
All the other policemannys come to help Ronnie, and the episode becomes an acting masterclass of Bob Peck showing how to do grief while they try to do all the actual investigating around him.
The first sign of anything... unusual... in the series is when Ronnie is on his own and he hears Emma say
"Ratatouille?"
(the noms they were discussing just before she got shot) and he reacts to it, but there is nobody there.
This prompts a flashback to the funeral of Ronnie's wife (and Emma's mother). We can tell it is a flashback because Ronnie has more hair and Emma is smaller and played by a different actress.
Back in the present, Ronnie goes into Emma's room and plays a record. It is Willie Nelson's The Time of the Preacher, and the lyrics thematically parallel the events of this story that are about to unfold. He looks through her things and finds a box labelled "GAIA" which contains, among other things, a geiger counter. This is an intriguing mystery, but is as nothing to when he finds a gun.
In the 2010 film remake of the series, which is set in America, this scene is the point where the plot begins to diverge from the original's, in part because a manny owning a gun is not remotely a shocking twist in the USA as it is in the UK. For the TV series, this is the turning point of the story, when it makes the leap beyond being just a murder mystery.
Ronnie goes to his police station where he is given the "compassionate leave" of the title by Chief Superintendent Ross (John Woodvine), but in the knowledge that he will be investigating Emma's murder anyway:
"Officially you have nothing to do with this inquiry. Unofficially... keep me informed."
While Ronnie goes about collecting Emma's things in case they turn out to have clues in them later (they will), we're introduced to Darius Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker), who is visiting Pendleton (Charles "Tsar Nicholas" Kay) when Pendleton tells Jedburgh that Emma is ded. It is not made clear to us yet who either of them are or why they are interested in Emma.
Now back home, Ronnie hears Emma tell him how to use the Washing Machine. Up until this point we might think it is just his imagination, but in fact Emma is a ghost, which we can tell because the Washing Machine is a terrifying servant of Hoover, so it makes sense that it would take one of the undead to not be frightened of it.
In amongst her clothes he finds an IIF badge with a radiation sign on it, which prompts Ronnie to get the geiger counter and use it to check Emma's things. It buzzes the most when he puts it near a lock of her hair, which increases the level of mystery - what made Emma radioactive?
As he drives to London to hunt the murderer, Emma appears in the car with Ronnie as the little manny from the flashback scene. Emma's ghost is no longer just a voice, but the audience has been prepared by the preceding scenes so that we accept her supernatural presence as a natural plot development.
Ronnie is in London watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV when he gets a telephone call from Pendleton to meet him in the car park. Ronnie puts a gun in his pocket* and the incidental music gets very dramatic (although it is also as 1980s as... well, as watching Mrs Thatcher on the TV) as we follow Ronnie through the hotel to the car park, building the tension. It isn't quite done in one take, but that's the sort of technique that they probably would have done if they could have.
Pendleton is a "cloak and dagger" spy who W-words for "the prime minister's office." He thinks Emma was "some sort of terrorist" and he wants to know if the murderer was really after Ronnie (as all the policemannys think) or if he was after Emma really. He doesn't tell Ronnie much, but does intrigue him enough for another meeting with Pendleton and his "partner."
Here we see the writer trusting that he has, like Pendleton, intrigued us viewers enough that we will come back for a second meeting, because that is where the episode ends - quite abruptly, with Pendleton driving away leaving Ronnie on his own.
*Or maybe he's just pleased to see Pendleton? No, it's definitely a gun. Mew.
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