As the first episode of The Chelsea Detective begins, Detective Inspector Max Arnold (Adrian Scarborough) is shown on his boat where he is playing a piano. He forgets about the pot and has to put it in cold water to cool it off. While Max takes his bike out, we see a young man rushing through the city. Before long, the young man is caught trying to steal Max’s bike. When questioned about his name, the boy claims he is Jack Turner. He gives Max his bolt cutters Since Max doesn’t want to deal with extra paperwork, he decides not to arrest Jack. Instead, he tells him to buy him a bike lock and drop it off at the Chelsea nick. Once Jack leaves, Max looks at Arnold’s Books which was established in 1972. A sign on the door says the store has closed due to unforeseen circumstances. Meanwhile, an older man hears something upstairs so he gets out of bed to investigate.

He looks around until he finds a message on a mirror that startles him. It says, “the wages of sin is death”. He walks by the South Kensington Station where he runs into Nicholas Hewitt (James Boyland) who is playing a guitar. He repeats the words on the mirror until the guitarist pushes him away. The old man continues down into the station to wait for the subway. Something happens causing him to be knocked in front of the sub and killed. Once Max reaches the crime scene, Darren Goldfinch with the Chelsea Online News tries to get a statement from him. DI Arnold denies there is a mad pusher on the loose. Darren asks for something else since Huff Post is interested in the story. Max asks a police officer to make sure nobody steals his bike before going inside. As he descends the stairs, he is greeted by DS Priya Shamsie (Sonita Henry) who is back after giving birth to a baby girl. She shows him a picture of her baby girl named Poppy.

Priya says she is sorry about Max’s father before asking about him and Astrid (Anamaria Marinca). He admits he might still be on that smelly boat. A female witness claims the man was pushed while the driver suspects he jumped. He jokes it’d be less paperwork if the man jumped to his death. Max questions the woman who isn’t sure whether he jumped, fell, or was pushed now. She eventually says he fell. They watch CCTV of the man bumping into the busker outside. They question whether the busker could’ve gone to the platform to push the victim into the train. They watch the video of the fall, but it isn’t conclusive so they agree they need video from the driver’s cab. They go outside to talk to the busker who admits to taking a break after the victim bumped into him. He claims he went in the opposite direction to get a refill from the van around the corner. The busker tells them what the victim said and although he didn’t smell like alcohol, he was slurring his words.

Max and Priya go back inside to talk to Ashely who is working on collecting evidence from the crime scene. She identifies the victim as 62-year-old Andrew Knightley who used to live at 72 Denton Crescent. Ashley tells them about the stuff she has found down there, including a gym membership card, a pink false nail, a white button, a blue ripple, and many coins. They haven’t found his phone although they got his keys, wallet, and oyster card. The busker comes in trying to film so they have to escort him away from the scene. They ask him how he got by the police officer, Lana Appleby (Cecilia Appiah), who didn’t see him. He claims it was an invisibility cloak. Max uses Nicholas’s face to unlock his phone before deleting the video he recorded. While Nicholas is escorted out, Max checks on Priya since she seemed to be venting at a colleague. He says he is wondering why she decided to come back to work three months early, but she changes the subject to him and his relationship with Astrid. Max reveals they’re having a custody battle over his coffee machine even though Astrid doesn’t think coffee.

Priya says it is great to know he has been coping. Next, they head to the office where they say hello to DC Connor Pollock (Peter Bankole) and DC Jess Lombard (Lucy Phelps). Priya confirms she has the footage from the driver’s cab while Connor tells them what he has done to notify the next of kin. They watch the footage and find what looks like an arm pushing Andrew onto the tracks. Max instructs them to find everything they can on Andrew. Jess approaches Priya to ask about baby photos, but Priya says they can do that later. Jess asks whether they called her back in early and if that was a good idea. While waiting on the street, Max calls Astrid to talk about the coffee machine which her guests say is broken. The call ends abruptly before Max goes into Andrew’s apartment with Priya to look for evidence.

As they go inside, Priya says the upstairs neighbor hear loud sobbing and moaning coming from this flat last Tuesday night. When he asked him about it the next morning, Andrew was mortified and claimed he got carried away playing. Neighbors said Andrew lived alone since his wife died six months ago. Max snaps pictures of family photos while Priya finds bank statements and an invoice for Brompton Stonemasonry with the proprietor being Andrew Knightley. She also finds letters from his GP. The letter from last week shows Andrew had been complaining of dizziness and was referred for a thyroid test and an MRI. While the house is spotless, Max finds a small bit of dirt near the mirror in the corner.

Although Andrew was slurring his word and stumbling around, they haven’t found any full of empty alcohol bottles in his flat. As for pills, there is nothing stronger than paracetamol in the flat. Priya wonders if his argument with Astrid is actually about the coffee machine. She offers to buy him one if it is, but Max says it was around five hundred pounds. For her 40th birthday, Nitin bought her a terrarium. While looking through the garbage, DI Arnold finds what looks like a spy camera that might be motion activated. On the boat later that night, Arnold hangs up pictures on the wall. The next day, Max and Priya go to the Chelsea Central Hospital to see what Ashley has to say about Andrew’s toxicology which contained traces of a synthetic opioid.

They checked with the GP who said he hadn’t been prescribed them, but it is possible he wasn’t aware he had been taking it. He had likely been ingesting it for a while. While Max and Priya didn’t find opioids in his house, Ashley says she did. Since there were traces in the stomach, she asked for further tests on foodstuffs from the victim’s kitchen. The tests revealed that the milk and sugar samples were contaminated. Someone had been drugging Andrew. Ashley shows them pictures of contact burns Andrew had on his upper shoulders and back that are likely less than a week old. They’re circular, different sizes, look like a drip pattern, and are possibly oil-based. Priya believes that might have something to do with the moaning and sobbing the neighbor heard on Tuesday night. According to Andrew’s medical history, he had an old fracture of his right humerus. It is well healed so it is hard to spot clinically. It has been treated and should be on his medical records, but it isn’t.

When they get back to the office, they learn that Andrew’s search history is very interesting. DC Pollock gives Max the bike lock that Jack dropped off for him earlier. Max checks through the search results and finds stuff like ghosts, ghost writing, automatic writing, reincarnation, and Gabriella Tottenham. Connor says he was searching genealogy sites too so he might’ve been building his family tree. Jess tells them that Andrew had purchased an expensive necklace and earrings a week apart on the 18th and 25th. He also withdrew 500 quid two days ago. Surprisingly, Andrew didn’t have any cash on him and the jewelry wasn’t in his flat either. Jess turns to his text messages while explaining he had an outgoing message at 21:05 the night before he died saying, “There is an evil in my home. Can you help me?” She called the number to leave a message and asked for a trace. The last ping from Andrew’s phone was at 7:55 outside South Ken Station so he likely had it with him when he died although it hasn’t been recovered.

Priya shows them the photos pulled from Knightley’s laptop with messages on the mirror in the corner of his flat. There are numerous religious statements such as, “The unrighteous shall not possess the kingdom of God”. The last message was taken six days ago. Next, they learn that the last text was sent to someone named Erin Murphy who is the chapel warden at the Brompton Cemetery. When they arrive, they hear Simon Turnball (Al Weaver) giving a tour and telling guests about Emmeline Pankhurst who is buried at the cemetery. As Simon goes inside, he seems to pay particular attention to Max and Priya. They speak to Erin who says she didn’t know what Andrew meant when he said something about an evil in his home. She was going to ask him about it yesterday morning since he is usually in the chapel when she arrives every morning. He has been coming daily for the past month. Since he looked pale, Erin wondered if he had gotten ill. She denies ever being in Andrew’s flat while saying she was dropping her husband at Saint Pancras tomorrow morning at 8 AM.

They show her the writings they found on his mirror. Max asks if the language is standard King James so she goes inside to find out. Simon leaves with the tour group and stares at them all the while. Priya jokes that something might’ve followed Andrew home before apologizing when she suspects Max’s father might be buried here. Max asks if that person is Davinson Clarke. Once Erin returns, she confirms the man is Davinson and she knows all about his past because she volunteers with a place that helps ex-cons get work. She says they’d have to ask Davinson whether there is anything between him and Andrew. Then, she says the statements are from the Douay Rheims translation so it is Catholic and traditionalist. One is truncated. The full quote says, “Know you not that the unrighteous shall not possess the kingdom of God. Do not err, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers.” They decide to approach Davinson, but he begins running from them.

Priya keeps chasing him while Max calls for other units to search for him and warns that Clarke has previous convictions for GBH and aggravated robbery. After that, they go back inside to speak to Hayley Donohue who is creating a statue of sorts. She seems stunned and cuts herself once she learns about Andrew’s death. Andrew takes pictures of the statues while Priya helps with the cut. They learn that Hayley and Andrew were supposed to build the statue together, but he kept avoiding the work because he hated it. They worked together for nearly two years after she started under an apprenticeship and Andrew kept her on. She describes him as a good boss. They discuss Andrew being the married for life type. The jewelry he purchased was for his daughter’s birthday with Hayley helping him choose the gifts. Priya finds pictures from a charity barbeque that Andrew convinced her to help with. Andrew is with Clarke in one of the pictures and Hayley says they knew each other since Clarke helps prepare the plots.

Hayley did not socialize with Andrew outside of work and never went to his house. Max asks for a handwriting sample while asking her to write, “The Lord is Gracious and Merciful”. Once she finishes, she asks if this has to do with the messages on his mirror. Andrew showed her a picture of one message on his phone although she thought he was hoaxing it. They ask her for other handwriting samples since she already knew about the messages. Priya checks the handwriting sample and confirms it wasn’t Hayley who wrote the messages. When questioned about the video camera they found, Hayley says she knows nothing about it, but suggests he might’ve been trying to film his ghost. While leaving, Max calls to tell them to put some officers outside of Clarke’s flat. They find a sign for the Brompton Cemetery Tours and Max reveals he know about the Chelsea Historical Preservation Society because it is his aunt’s passion. They decide to visit since the tour guide was staring at them so much.

They visit his aunt who confirms she has already called Simon. Once they go inside, they learn that Simon is an actor and the tour is one of their most popular. He claims he barely talked to Andrew and he was staring because he was trying to muster up the courage to come over believing he has info about Clarke. He reveals he saw Andrew give Clarke what looked like a lot of cash roughly two days ago and he heard that Clarke was the person to talk to if you wanted drugs. He didn’t see them exchange drugs though. Before he leaves, they want him to give them a handwriting sample. He tries to write the sentence about the unrighteous not possessing the kingdom of God, but he struggles to spell the words. Max finds a book that his aunt intends to take to the library and sets it aside. They let Simon give up since he can’t spell the word before he reveals he was here at 8 in the morning because he is staying here now.

He is only staying for a few weeks while his flat is decorated. He tells Livvy not to wait up for him as he leaves. When his aunt comes back, Max tells her he doesn’t like Simon who he describes as shifty. However, she has known his mother forever. She suspects his police antenna makes everyone seem shifty. As Max and Priya leave, she talks to him about intergenerational relationships, but he claims Simon isn’t his aunt’s type. Hayley looks at the big card from the charity BBQ event and the writing inside. She places it in a box underneath a bunch of sketches so she is possibly hiding it. As Priya leaves for the day, she looks at the picture of her daughter on her phone. Max drives past the closed bookshop again before reaching his boat where he finds a box containing his coffee machine. He takes it inside and tries to get it working but fails to do so. He gets upset and contemplates calling Astrid although he doesn’t.

 

He smashes the back of his head on the shelf behind him. When Priya makes it home, her husband asks her if she remembers Jo Lyndsey who was covering for him. She called to say they need to review the Itsu campaign before it goes out so he needs to go. Priya says he must shower and eat though. The next day, DI Arnold plays the piano while thinking about the case. When Astrid calls, Max congratulates her and accuses her of breaking the coffee machine on purpose. However, he soon learns it is actually Connor calling to tell him to check his email. Someone has published the mirror photos of Andrew and there is a new one saying, “The wages of sin is death”. Max sees it is the Chelsea Online News so he knows it was Darren Goldfinch. He is brought to the station so he can be questioned by Connor and Jess. He claims an anonymous envelope arrived with a USB stick in it. He recycled the envelope and can’t remember whether the address was handwritten.

They threaten to take his computer to get him to cooperate. Darren explains a good journalist has to protect their sources, but he eventually admits the pictures came through a We Transfer link from the email address 1990superNH@protonmail.com. He can’t or won’t say whether 1990 is a birthdate or NH are initials. He quickly excuses himself after confirming he hasn’t been arrested. When he leaves, Jess tells Connor that Proton Mail is an end-to-end encrypted email service. Priya’s husband, Nitin, contacts her and lets her see Poppy using the smartphone. Connor tells Max that Andrew’s spy cam was purchased on the Internet from a firm in Hong Kong. It was posted to a PO Box in the name of Snap Dragon 2,000. There are no listings for it on Companies House. Although the camera was networked, they don’t know where it was pointed because it is untraceable. The IP was used by a VPN service called Surfshark.

Priya decides to sit down and do the paperwork. He suspects something is wrong with Poppy so he asks her, but Priya says she is fine. Max reveals he used to sit in his dad’s bookshop and listen to him talk to customers about getting lost in a book. For years, he thought everyone was permanently lost like him. He says he has found ways and pictures make more sense than words. His father found another reason he could be struggling with schoolwork, dyslexia. His father thought it was a good idea to read the books for him although the words didn’t matter. Max argues the only thing that mattered was his father’s words in his ears since he knew he hadn’t given up on him. Priya tells him to never change.

Max sits down and watches the video of Andrew bumping into Nicholas again. This time, he sees Nicholas stealing Andrew’s phone out of his pocket. They begin discussing the email address which had the letters NH and could stand for Nicholas Hewitt. He says TFL issues licenses for buskers and they can use that to get his address. He is brought in and questioned while being told Andrew’s phone was found at his girlfriend’s flat. They accuse him of stealing Andrew’s phone and sending the pictures to Darren Goldfinch. Then, they say he got mad and pushed Andrew in front of the train. He admits Darren gave him his card and offered him 100 quid for the photos, but he hasn’t paid him yet. Max tells Priya to process him for theft and obstruction. Nicholas blurts out that there is a video too and he was going to charge Goldfinch extra for it. They ask him how he got past the security when they stopped him recording.

He explains the fire door has a dodgy lock that you can jiggle open and let yourself in. When he was sleeping rough, he’d used it to get into the tunnels at night. Next, Connor tells Max the video was recorded by Andrew in his flat the night before he died. Andrew looks at himself in the mirror while asking if it is someone. He runs over to a picture of a girl and asks the same question. He asks if he is going mad. DI Arnold says they need to find out who the girl is. Priya returns home that night and finds Nitin sleeping next to Polly. He asks if she is okay. Priya says she knows what she is doing at work. However, it is different with Polly because she keeps feeling like she is going to screw something up. She doesn’t think her mom is fully responsible. As she starts crying, she asks Nitin to tell her if she begins messing this up and turns out to be a bad mother. In the morning, Max tells Priya they’re going to meet with Andrew’s daughter at his flat. She’ll be the only one who knows Andrew besides Hayley. He admits Jess is looking into her movements.

Once they meet with the daughter, she admits she barely talked to her father and he didn’t buy her jewelry for her birthday. They had no intention of mending bridges especially after her father said her mom’s death was God’s punishment for his sins. He was due a payout because of her mother’s life insurance. She doesn’t know who the woman in the picture is although she has seen her before. She tells them that Andrew used to do anything for you. One day, he just couldn’t care less. Mom blamed it on his accident when he wrote off mom’s car and broke his arm. It happened near the end of her second year at uni. Although her mother was a nurse, she can’t imagine her father not going to the hospital. She admits she was away when it happened. When she came home for Christmas, her father’s arm had healed but he was no longer himself. She found him staring at the picture in his workshop one day. She asked if he was okay before he shouted and pushed her out. Once she graduated, she moved out immediately. She doesn’t know who the girl is or what her father’s sin was either.

Hayley is brought to the station where she is questioned about the jewelry Andrew purchased. He bought the jewelry on the 18th and 25th. Phone data shows she was at Andrew’s address on the 5th and 12th of this month. He often asked her to drop things off at his home and he had a habit of leaving his keys behind. She denies being in his home and knowing why he withdrew 500 pounds on the day of his death. Hayley thinks the idea of being in a relationship with Andrew is absurd. As for the picture of the girl, she says it is some woman from the Internet and the reference photo for the carving of the angel. She insists she knows nothing about the opioid-laced items and denies they’d find similar substances in her flat. They suspect someone was gaslighting Andrew to con him out of money and expensive gifts, but she denies being involved. Hayley insists she didn’t know about the payout for his wife’s life insurance and says she was at home on the morning he died. Her flat mate will confirm she was at home. When Max goes home that night, he finds a brand-new coffee machine waiting for him. He immediately takes it back to Astrid saying he doesn’t want it. She admits she felt guilty for breaking the old one so she replaced it. He eventually goes inside for a drink as Astrid reveals she is jealous that Max seems to be doing okay without her. Arnold doesn’t think she is jealous and angry, but suspects she is upset that she can’t control what he does anymore. Astrid tries to convince him to take the coffee machine and threatens to give it to someone else when he says he is going to repair his old one.

Max accuses her of creating these dramas so she can remain in control. Astrid claims she outgrew him and most definitely doesn’t miss him. Once she asks him to leave, she causes a fight. Again, Astrid tries to get him to take the coffee machine which he thinks she should keep for her guests. She has no guests and Max likes his houseboat. He leaves without it. In the morning, Max’s aunt yells at Simon to say she is doing some washing. Livvy looks through his room and finds an order invoice as Simon calls her name from another room. He walks in and claims she asked him to sell those, but she must not remember it now. Simon admits it was his fault since it was after they had drinks and spliffs. She tells him she’d like it if he packed his stuff and left before reminding him it is Olivia and not Livvy. She takes that information to Max at the station and explains he has been selling his dad’s book. Olivia looked at his eBay account and this is the sixth one he has sold. Max looks at the invoice again and sees that Simon is using the username snapdragon2000.

He quickly checks the handwriting and it looks like a match so he intends to rush to Olivia’s place to get Simon before he can leave. Clarke shows up at the place first and asks Simon for a word about a video. He pushes his way inside as they begin fighting. He hits Simon in the back of the head knocking him out as Max opens the door and steps inside. Moments later, DI Arnold gets the bag containing Clarke’s items. He walks over to him to say they’ve taken Simon to the station for a scan. He knows about the money he received from Andrew and Andrew withdrawing 500 pounds the day before. Max suspects the money in the bag is what is left of it. Clarke says he’ll have to ask Knightley, but they can’t do that since he is dead. After Max asks if Andrew asked him to visit Simon, Clarke says he saw Simon arguing with Knightley at the beginning of the week about a video. Simon was trying to get him to pay five grand and threatened to put it on YouTube if he didn’t. Clarke offered to help for 500.

Back at the station, Max learns Simon takes a lot of selfies and Priya reveals she found a Bible in Simon’s room. The passages on Andrew’s mirror are marked in Simon’s Bible. They find a picture of Simon with Hayley and immediately wonder if they could be more than just friends. Then, there are pictures of Simon with the mirror messages and Priya suspects he was drugging him too. In an unnamed folder, there are spy cam videos of Andrew in his house. One of the videos shows Hayley pouring candle wax on Andrew’s back and shoulders. Hayley is brought in for another interview and asks about Andrew’s keys. They show her the video with the candle wax before she quickly closes the computer. She says was working late with Andrew last month. He was acting oddly like he didn’t want to go home and explained a ghost was leaving him messages to punish him for his sins. She didn’t know it was Simon until much later. Andrew thought the only way to stop the message was to punish him. She reluctantly agreed to help despite not knowing what he had in mind until she showed up.

Andrew gave her jewelry to thank her for helping him. When Simon told her what he was doing, she urged him to stop. She didn’t know he was filming it. Simon said she was doing the right thing by helping Andrew. Priya joins Max on the boat where he makes them a cup of coffee. They look at Max’s wall of evidence and prepare to separate the murder from the mirror writing. They can’t place Simon, Hayley, or Clarke at the tube station. Max theorizes that Andrew thought the girl in the picture was the ghost who was writing to him. Priya reminds him that Hayley said Andrew hated working on the state of Gabriel. Max begins saying Gabriella. He remembers Andrew searching for Gabriella Tottenham just before he died. They discuss his accident in June or July of 2012. Priya uses that information to find a news story about a hit and run incident in which a charity worker died. 19-year-old Gabriella Hadlow was killed.

It is the girl in the photo and she worked for Crisis. Max mentions the BBQ charity that Max dragged Hayley to. Priya finds a page for Hadlow House which is a charity combatting homeless that was founded in May 2013 by family and friends of Gabriella Hadlow. Max suspects he has spotted that logo somewhere before. Jess goes through the records and finds evidence that Andrew was driving Katherine Knightley’s vehicle when he hit Gabriella. Once he hit her, he scrapped the vehicle to destroy evidence. A woman named Jane Erin Reece survived the incident despite being with Gabriella at the time. Once the call ends, Max says Erin told them she volunteered for a charity and he saw the logo on the busker’s coffee cup. Although there was no sign of her on CCTV, Max remembers something about the white item with a blue ripple. They visit Erin to ask about the 2012 hit and run accident. She was serving food and drinks for the charity a short distance from the tube station on the morning Andrew died.

They show her the button and that proves she was at the tube station when Andrew died. She sits down and tells them how she was walking back from the college bar with Gabriella. A car came out of nowhere. She wasn’t sure it was Andrew Knightley until she saw him again. She recognized him when she started working there about three years ago. She suspected he was drunk. Regardless, she did what Gabriella would’ve done so she wanted to understand and forgive him. He offered to pay for the BBQ and she thought he was remorseful. Then, she learned about his ghost and described Gabriella as an evil in his home. They believe she went to the platform to punish him. She argues a good man would’ve taken Gabriella to the hospital so Andrew wasn’t a good man before confessing to pushing him. She is transported away in a police car moments later.

Max and Priya agree to leave the paperwork until tomorrow because Priya wants to go home. She says she is getting better. Max and Olivia go to Sebastian’s grave. He admits he has been avoiding it. He puts the Arnold’s Books sign in front of the headstone. Olivia says his dad would’ve loved it before Max says goodbye to his father and they leave. Later, Astrid visits Max at the boat as he listens to music. When she hears the music, she turns around and leaves without seeing him.

 

The Chelsea Detective Review

Based on the first episode, The Chelsea Detective is an ordinary police drama with a few unique aspects here and there. The cast is excellent thanks to the likes of Adrian Scarborough, Sonita Henry, and Anamaria Marinca. It was also nice to see Al Weaver in a different role even though he wasn’t very likable. The episode wasn’t bad, but I am not sure it was good or enthralling enough to justify giving it an hour and a half.

Midway through, I found myself begging for something to happen and the episode to just move forward already. The series may transform into a worthwhile drama, but I worry that the runtime is going to scare a lot of viewers because it is just too much without the need for it. It also didn’t seem like there was a lot of investigating going on besides countless interviews.

Instead, evidence just seemed to come to the detectives and magically fall into their laps. I won’t rush into watching the next episode because recapping something this long is a difficult task. The opening episode scores a 6.5 out of 10. Recaps of The Chelsea Detective can be found here. Learn how to support the Reel Mockery project by following this link.