DCI Banks returns to ITV for a new six-part series starting on Friday 16 September 2011, a year after the successful two-part adventure DCI Banks: Aftermath. Stephen Tompkinson returns to the title role of DCI Alan Banks and Andrea Lowe is also back as DS Annie Cabbot.
The original two-parter was shown in September and October 2010 and took about a quarter of the evenings’ viewers, enough to commission a second series. This will follow the same two-part format, but with three adventures to make up the six episodes. The three stories will be “Playing with Fire”, “Friend of the Devil” and “Cold as the Grave”.
In “Playing with Fire”, two bodies are found after a fire on some narrow boats and Banks and Cabbot find themselves on the trail of an arsonist who has killed two people. In “Friend of the Devil”, a young student is attacked in the middle of the city and in another part of Yorkshire a woman has her throat cut, but the two different murders have disturbing similarities. “Cold as the Grave” sees Banks asked by his boss, Chief Superintendent Gerry Rydell (played by Colin Tierney), to find his missing teenage daughter.
The Actors in DCI Banks
English actor Stephen Tompkinson first break into UK television was as unscrupulous reporter Damien Day in Drop the Dead Donkey (for which he won a British Comedy Award), but is now better known for playing Danny Trevanion in Wild at Heart, Father Peter Clifford in Ballykissangel, Trevor Purvis in Grafters and Paul Newcombe in Bedtime.
Andrea Lowe played Naomi in three episodes of UK soap Coronation Street. She also played Katie in the Torchwood episode “Fragments” and Melanie Woods in six episodes of Rescue Me. More recently, she was Donna Armstrong in Accused and Mrs Chadwick in Monroe.
Colin Tierney was DC Bobby Harriman in Cracker back in 1994 and ten years later played Oberwachtmeister Wimmel in Island at War. He has also had two separate roles in The Bill as Charles Vanderbilt and Rick Harris.
Also in the programme are Lorraine Burroughs as Winsome Jackman, Jack Deam as Ken Blackstone, Tom Shaw as Templeton, Marc Finn as Geoff Hamilton, Tamzin Merchant as Miranda, John Bowe as Dr Patrick Aspern, John Light as Mark Keane, Jade Williams as Gerry Siddons, Raquel Cassidy as Dr Elizabeth Waring and Anna Wilson Jones as Rosalind.
The Team Behind DCI Banks
The six hour-long episodes of DCI Banks from Left Bank Pictures were filmed on location in Leeds. The stories have been adapted from the novels of Peter Robinson.
The show was produced by Stephen Smallwood with Andy Harries and Francis Hopkinson as executive producers. “Playing with Fire” and “Cold as the Grave” were adapted by Robert Murphy and “Friend of the Devil” by Laurence Davey. They were commissioned for ITV by Laura Mackie, director of drama commissioning, and Sally Haynes, controller of drama commissioning.
Steve Rogerson - Steve Rogerson is a UK-based writer specialising in television, technology, sports and beer.
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