Waking The Dead : What Happened and Why in
Subterraneans

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Subterraneans introduces us to Nick Henderson. Nick is that special kind of guy that likes to live life to the fullest, actually Nick lives a couple of different lives. In one life he is a married father and a brilliant scientist who may one day find the cure for all the ills of the world. In his other life he is pathological liar, kidnapper and murderer.

Most of the Cold Case Squad, Detective Superintendent Peter Boyd, Profiler Grace Foley, Pathologist Felix Gibson and New Girl Stella Goodman are on the scene at an old cement works. Someone on a police radio informs us, helpfully, that they are at the old Eldridge cement works near Dagenhaam. Detective Inspector Spencer Jordan pulls up in a car, Boyd tells us, he's late. Demolition workers found Michael Sharman's decomposed corpse. He had gone missing a year ago and the crime squad had been investigating but found nothing. The Cold Case Squad knows that it is Sharman because they found his wallet. Boyd jokes later that their personnel rates are lower than the crime squad so that may explain why they have the case.

Sprinkled in amongst the dialogue, we get a bunch of random images of a panicked man; someone clearly suffering duress. He cries out the name "Mary" in a haunting voice, over and over. He shakes at a locked gate over his head. Chances are good that these are glimpses of the last days of Michael Sharman. Sadly, nothing about who he was or what he did in life is important. It only matters who he knew and what he saw. But the only way we can know that is to get to know Sharman. Mike Sharman was a millionaire with a wife and two young kids, a daughter and son.  He made his money in the television industry and he was a governor at his kids' school. He was kidnapped on his way home from Heathrow and tossed into a locked area at the cement works for at least 37 days. His kidnapper fed him pineapple juice and cheese slices because they were his favorite foods.

They found a flashlight (something Brits call a torch, something I'm going to call a flashlight because it's a flashlight) with broken glass at the cement factory. They match this to a piece of glass the initial investigators found by the side of the road near Sharman's abandoned car.

Spence goes back to the cement factory and runs into a man walking around. He loses track of him because - well, there's no good reason for it. The guy, Gordon Christie, was a patient of the now defunct and demolished Argyle mental hospital in the area.

At the cement works, Felix finds a skeleton. She does some forensic magic and determines that the victim was a significantly overweight male, who died somewhere else from six blows to the head. He had a key and a leather key fob on him. The fob leads them to a car dealership. Stella gives the dealer the description of an overweight man, between 20 and 40 years old with dark hair who may have been a customer over the three year period when they gave out the fobs. Tina, a woman who works there says that it is Russell Tate. They were born on the same week, lived on the same block and worked at that same place. None of this has any real bearing on the case. Well, maybe a little bit. Russell was always Tina's bodyguard, even though his father would beat him and and his mother. It wasn't Russell's role as abused child that killed him, but rather as Tina's protector. Did you know that on "Fat Albert," the cartoon, Russell, Albert's younger brother, was the skinniest kid? Hey, hey, hey.

Barnes fired Russell in 2000 because of some conflict with Tina. It wasn't really a conflict, just Russell trying to protect her from Henderson. Russell's mother, Miriam tells Boyd that Russell's father, John, walked out on them when "Russell was little." The kids in school called him "lard ass" when was this kid ever little? Miriam also says that John would return for money and sex, "whether they were on offer or not." Why would money or sex ever be on offer to someone who beat you and your child - ever, ever, ever? After enduring one of his father's drunken tirades, Russell then spent his money that he saved from his paper route to get new locks and an alarm. How a kid can arrange to change the locks on an apartment without an adult around, I don't know, but that he could manage it, when Miriam could not, just makes me want them to get around to introducing the killer sometime soon.

Miriam throws Russell out of the house after Barnes fires him. Boyd asks her if she wondered where he would go, as if she should have known that he would run into the arms of his abusive father.

Stella reports that John Tate was in prison for 18 months for putting out a prostitute's eye. She comments that it was probably only 18 months because the victim was a prostitute. Boyd admonishes her by saying, "stick to the facts," "don't personalize it." It's Boyd's way of saying "do as I say, not as I do." Boyd does nothing but personalize this case, as he does oh so many others. John Tate used to work as a driver for a subsidiary of Eldridge Cement. It's what you call a coincidence or a red herring, depending on whether you live in real life or a tv show.

Boyd body checks Tate, sending him hard to the ground. He then says, "you didn't just hit me, did you?" Boyd gets Grace to lie and go along with his story. Grace resents it, but it is not as if he taking the case personally. He uses the tried and true method of showing a corpse to someone to get them to confess. Tate says, oops he's sorry about lying about he last time he saw his son. Tate says the blood in the apartment was from hitting Russell once, but they made up later.

They pull Russell's phone records and find that he called the International Health Authority in New York and Cambridgeshire. Mostly, he called his friend Tina a lot. Tina tells them that, oops she's sorry about lying about not speaking with Russell after he was fired. She says Russell was upset about a married doctor she was kinda sorta dating. Boyd pieces together that the her sorta doctor sorta boyfriend worked at the International Health Authority.

At last we meet up with Nick Henderson. He seems to be a mild mannered family man who lives on a gorgeous plot of land. The interior could use some work. Nothing a wrecking ball could not fix. Nick tells them that he works in Cambridgeshire, just around the M25. Earlier, Grace concluded that the killer's home turf, his comfort zone, was the M25.

Nick makes up some story about Russell not liking Nick giving Tina insider information. There may have been some truth hidden in there, like Nick may have given Tina some good investment information, but it would not be insider information because Nick wasn't on the the inside. But Nick would not be able to confess that he wasn't guilty of insider trading without revealing he was a fraud. Assuming, of course, there was even an investment offer. Nick was living off an investment scam he was running on his best friend, so maybe he was expanding his base.

Nick's wife, Julia gives us a clue how she has managed to live with a man living a double life all these years. He gets caught in a lie, tells another lie to cover up and she says, that's nice, honey. He does not waste time on little lies. He tells whoppers. Then he gets her to join in with his lies. Whoa wait, didn't Grace and Boyd have a scene just like that?

Nick also has some sort of magic power over his best friend, Dr. Jonathan Lynch. They went to medical school together, only Jonathan actually finished. They play squash together on Mondays when Nick isn't out killing someone. He convinces Jonathan to provide him with a false alibi for the killing days.

Grace calls Boyd out on the whole personalizing the case thingeee because it is obvious that Boyd wants Nick to be guilty because he does not like the guy.

Spence tracks down mental patient Gordon Christie. Okay, not really, Christie comes into the station voluntarily. He says Nick used to do volunteer work at the hospital, but they never even knew his name. The lesson learned for us is that Nick is a liar who fears the police. He used to spend full days there for months, so it is hard to see him holding another job. He has some capacity tobe an actual do gooder. The mental hospital was near the cement works, so he knew about it and that it was secluded. It would be interesting to learn if Gordon Christie is related to DAC Ralph Christie who vanished after the first series. Boyd did seem to drive Christie crazy.

Nick drives up to a shack and we see how he concocts his lies for his wife and friend. He has lots of books and even some models to study. Thank goodness for cellphones. This way he can call his wife and not have caller id reveal his location. Although, it would not matter he could tell her that the call only says it is from southeast London because of solar flares, really he is in Vienna.

Boyd and Stella visit the International Health Authority and Stella gets to use being French. Boyd gets to use being Boyd. Nobel Prize winner Professor Rosenthal has never heard of Nick, but his French PA remembers Nick used to use their public library everyday for years. You do have to acknowledge that Nick was somewhat studious. But he gets to pick and choose what he learns. Best friend Jonathan tells us that just before finals in med school, Nick went home to revise. In America, he would have gone home to study, prepare, prep, or review. Coincidentally, his parents perished in a fire while he was there. I suppose it could have been an accident or they found out that there was no way he could pass his exams. His parents were known to be the type to put a lot of pressure on him.

Felix, with perennial wedding guest Spence's help, decides that Nick killed Russell with a lemon squeezer. They find remnants of a blood bath on Nick's kitchen floor, which turns out to be horseradish. Julia calls Nick when they show up with the warrant and questions. Nick tells her more preposterous lies and she says, I love you. They agree to meet at her sister's house and Nick spirits her off. Spence is supposed to be keeping tabs on her, but oh well.

For his part, Jonathan comes around to the truth a little easier than Julia. He spills the beans that Nick knew Sharman through Julia. It is an essential part of their understanding of Nick's motive to kill. They know Nick saw someone he knew at a gas station. Now they know that Sharman could tell Julia he saw her husband somewhere he had no business being.

Julia almost sees the light, but Nick dims the light with more lies. However, the "I have stomach cancer" lie may have been one lie too many. She says she doesn't believe him and he clunks her in the skull. She doesn't die, but when she wakes up he tells her that she hit her head tumbling over. He takes her to his hideaway shed and tries to burn her to death. For better or worse, Spence and Boyd show up, after discovering that Nick had been renting the house for some time.

As much as the squad is convinced that Nick is guilty, they have no real evidence and they need Nick to confess. Julia does her best to do the stand by your man bit, even though she has just returned from the hospital because her man tried to kill her. Julia cracks only when she sees Mary Sharman's agony for herself.

They seem to want to leave the audience with the question of whether there was one event that led to another event and then a sequence of events that caused Nick to become who he was. I suppose it is interesting, but it is not real helpful in distinguishing this one killer from everyone else in the world. Nick made a choice to do the wrong thing each step of the way. His parents may or may not have set standards that were too high for him. It was his choice to respond by setting fire to the house and kill them. It was his choice not to finish school, his choice to lie about his education, his choice to lie about his job. He chose to marry Julia and lie to her every hour of every day. Nick chose to defraud his one and only friend. He chose to murder Russell Tate and Michael Sharman. At some point, it really does not matter why he did any of it.