Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Directors: Roger Bamford, Paul Harrison, Reel DVD.
Cast: David Jason, Bruce Alexander, John Lyons.
Detective Inspector Jack Frost (Jason) has a work ethic that’s dogmatic. His one and only drive in life is to work. Being preoccupied by cases precludes him from forming romantic attachments.
It’s amazing to see him on duty, diligently solving the spate of crimes that come his way. His scruffy clothes, and sometime abrupt manner, can be overlooked because of the zeal with which he approaches all his cases.
Series Nine, titled ‘Mistaken Identity’, sees Frost welcoming a new member of the CID team, DC Ronnie Lonnegan (Michelle Joseph). They begin investigating a mysterious death when a body is found in the local water reservoir. There is no identification on the body and no indication of how he got there. The post-mortem indicates however that he didn’t drown in the place where his body was found.
They also investigate the death of Paul and Jean Harris who are killed when an assailant tied them up and set their house on fire.
The two-part season sees Frost taking the main suspect Mike Patterson into custody. He fervently denies having anything to do with the death of Paul and Jean. Toolan thinks that Patterson is their man, but Frost isn’t so sure and believes the solution lies elsewhere.
Series 10 comprises three episodes. The first, titled ‘Hidden Truth’, has Frost protecting Cathy Thompson, a vital witness to a murder committed by Jack Flynn, who has hired a hit-man to eliminate her. He requests the help again of Sergeant Terry Reid because of his contacts in the London underworld, where Flynn comes from.
‘Close Encounters’ is the title of the second episode. Laurence Burrell, an autistic young man, is the only witness to an attack on a security guard at Denton Quarry, but he claims that aliens were responsible. He gets bail and returns to the quarry and threatens to blow it up. Superintendent Mullett asks Frost to investigate a series of burglaries on homes that have been recently occupied, and drafts him in some help, in the form of Detective Sergeant Hazel Wallace. Frost is also suspicious about the link between a local takeaway delivery service and another series of burglaries.
Frost has a new secret admirer in the third episode, named ‘Held in Trust’. He is up for promotion, but Mullett seems to be more enthusiastic on his behalf .
Bobby Palmer has gone missing while at a football match with his father, and there seems no doubt that the corpse discovered in a shed is his. The body of a second, malnourished boy is also found dumped, but Frost manages to save a third child.
Anton Caldwell is a known paedophile, living unsupervised in a local hostel. This fact fills Frost with rage, causing him to berate the psychiatrist who can only point out to him the failings of the system.
