BBC Collateral recap: episodes 1 - 3

BBC Collateral episode 1 recap

The first and possibly best episode of this state of the nation drama: Carey Mulligan plays cop DI Kip Glaspie, who attempts to investigate the apparently random murder of an illegal immigrant and pizza delivery boy.

The only witness to the crime is Linh, played by Kae Alexander, a illegal immigrant, who was on a lot of drugs. There's Billie Piper's Karen, an out of control single mother with a dissenting daughter who ordered the pizza that lead to the murder.

Glaspie's investigation leads her to the 'home' of two Syrian immigrants – relations to the murdered pizza delivery boy – who are found shivering in an unused garage.

A tense first episode and a stinging commentary on the state of our institutions

BBC Collateral episode 2 recap

Episode two takes pleasure in turning all the preconceptions and expectations made at the end of episode one on their heads.

Mona and Fatima, the two 'Syrian' refugees found in a mouldy garage, are being processed at Harsfleet detention centre and may not be as innocent as they seem.

Murderer Sandrine (Jeany Spark) is back at her army desk job with a brilliant storyline of her own that hits with painful foresight into the conversations we're having about sexual harassment and abuse of power. Laurie (Hayley Squire) is having uncomfortable conversations with the gay female vicar before disappearing. Nothing is as it seems.

The action is fast and slick, the characters are compellingly three-dimensional, the storylines are varied and interesting, and the mystery at the heart of it all is utterly gripping.

BBC Collateral episode 3 recap

Writer David Hare got a little bit theatre-y and self-indulgent in episode three of Collateral, veering away from the heat of drama into a series of monologues about the failure of British public life.

Local MP David Mars (John Simm) gets himself into political hot water by wading in on the debate surrounding the ethnicity of the pizza man who was shot, the murderer becomes a sympathetic character listing the failures of the British military forces to adequately support returning soldiers and Carey Mulligan's DI Kip Glaspie is moved to offer economic migrant Fatima help, despite it being far outside her remit.

Excitement came from Billie Piper's over-blown, mug-smashing, drug-riddled hissy fit – where she claimed to have been traumatised growing up in a war zone – and Sandrine's appearance outside her Weinstein-like senior officer's house at the end of the episode.