Every Breath You Take – The episode begins by flashing between two shots. One is of a man riding a hose and the second is of a naked, blond-haired woman. As the scenes flash between the two briefly, a man talks over them, presumably telling the woman how much he misses her and wants to feel her.

In the present, DI Kat Donovan (Rosalind Eleazar) tells her date how lucky she is to be an air hostess. She claims she gets to travel, wear a uniform, make people feel reassured, and look nice. Before flexing, her date tells her that is why he works out so much, he wants to look nice for people. When the waitress (Chloe Lemonius) interrupts to see if they want anything else, Kay says that she has alcohol at home. While the waitress steps away to get the check, Kat steps away to take a call from Aqua Vanech (Mary Malone). The call doesn’t last more than several seconds due to Kat hearing disturbance from the kitchen. In the kitchen, she finds a chef on the ground bleeding out and another holding a female at knifepoint. She tries to talk the man down before he attacks her and she has to disable and arrest him. Little does she know that when she identifies herself as a cop, she reveals her true identity to her date as well.

The next morning, Kat arrives at work to learn about a 42-year-old missing science lecturer, Rishi Magari (Rudi Dharmalingam), who hasn’t been heard from since leaving work Friday. The conversation doesn’t last much longer thanks to DCI Ellis Stagger (Richard Armitage) who interrupts to introduce the team’s new tech guy, Charlie Pitts (Charlie Hamblett). As if Charlie’s introduction wasn’t embarrassing enough, it only gets more so when he gets caught searching Kat online. She doesn’t get long to confront him about it thanks to a lead on Rishi’s car coming in.

Charlie tries to apologize to Kat when they arrive at the car but she jokingly tells him that everyone Google searches their boss on their first day. Despite this, he does impress her later when he uses prototype software to pick the lock and bypass the alarm on Rishi’s car. By the time they get the car open and discover nothing, a quick scene reveals Rishi to be the man from the opening scene.

Kat attends a yoga class with Stacey Embalo (Jessica Plummer) and gets goaded into using a dating app that Stacey had previously signed her up for. Kat only briefly looks at the app and doesn’t check her matches until much later that day. When she does, she is stunned to see that she matched with Josh Buchanan (Ashley Walters). The next couple of scenes reveal that Kat and Josh were once on the verge of getting married.

Kat attempts to share her new discovery with Aqua but gets no further than telling her about it before Stagger calls her to the office to discuss something important. This important thing is later revealed to be that the man who killed Kat’s father, Monte LeBurne (Marc Warren), has been given a few days to live. Apparently, his cancer came back several months ago and no one remembered to notify the authorities. Kat wants to meet with him but Stagger advises against it and shows no sign of agreeing to help. On her way out of the office, Kat stops by the ‘Killed in the line of duty’ wall and remembers her father’s, Clint Donovan’s (Lenny Henry), funeral.

Later that night, Kat stops by her mother’s, Odette Donovan (Brigid Zengeni), for a night of conversation and Dominions. The conversation goes from lively to quiet when the topic switches to Kat’s love and work lives. Once the other women are gone, Kat tells her mother about Monte’s cancer and Josh’s return. Although Kat’s mother begs her not to speak with Monte, she encourages her to speak with Josh but warns her to be careful at the same time.

While walking home that night, Kat receives a call from Charlie, who tells her that Rishi’s e-mail address has registered on a couple of data breaches. In addition to that, he signed up for a couple of sites, including a cottage for rent only a few miles from where his car was found. After hanging up with Charlie, Kat texts Stacey and asks her to come over. Once Stacey hears everything that Kat has to say about Charlie, she mentions having a client at the prison who might be able to arrange a visit. Kat also tells Stacey that she confirmed her match with Josh. Stacey isn’t too happy about this and warns her to be cautious. Sometime later, Kat gets word that Josh confirmed her match and sends him a message.

The following day at work, Charlie tells Kat that Rishi made a booking at the cottage for last Friday. While Kat and another investigator visit the cottage, a man is shown chasing Rishi on a tractor (Felix Garcia Guyer) and zapping him with a cattle prod when he catches up. At the cottage, Kat finds a leather bra and the other investigator finds a bottle of champagne in the fridge. The owner had already confirmed that Rishi booked the place for 2 but the neighbor confirmed he was alone when he arrived. Just as Kat receives a message from Stacy, confirming that she can get her into the prison, the other investigator tells her about forensics finding dents in the back door.

Kat has second thoughts when arriving at the prison but decides to go ahead with the visit. She regrets her decision when Monte jokes about her father squealing and refuses to share any information, even after Kat threatens to tell Calligan (James Nesbitt) that he ratted on him. Much to Kat’s surprise the ward nurse helps her uncover the truth by giving Monte a mixture of morphine and something else to get him to talk. Kat is even further surprised when Monte mistakes her for his sister and tells her that he was paid to take the fall for killing Clint because he was already doing life. Despite telling her this, he refuses to tell her who paid him to take the fall.

Before Kat’s visit is completely finished, she receives a call from Stacey, who has used her prison contact Tamsin (Alice Offley) to get all of Monte’s logs. As it turned out, Josh visited Monte in prison the day before he left her.

The episode ends with Kat learning that Josh has muted her on the dating app.

 

Missing You Review

Harlan Coben is the master of the twist. I didn’t think the episode was that great but the twist at the end was worth the effort. It was pretty obvious that there was going to be more to the story but I didn’t expect Josh to have something to do with Clint’s death, if that is, in fact, the case. I didn’t think the acting was all that horrible but there were some horrendous parts.  Also, did anyone else notice that Kat is missing a quarter of her index finger? I wonder if that will play into the story. I’d have to give this first episode a 5.4 out of 10, only for the ending.

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