Payback

An apparently happily married-with-children male accountant is ruthlessly stabbed to death by a bunch of young thugs one Edinburgh morning while his wife looks on aghast nearby. Apparently he was the bookkeeper of a heavyweight gangster Peter Mullan who's managed to live very comfortably on his ill-gotten gains just outside the reach of the law.

However the gangster it seems was just about to break cover with the purchase of a small, populated island in the Outer Hebrides, only it seems that before he inconveniently got killed, the accountant scuppered the transaction with 28 million unaccounted for. Mullan still wants his island, for a very good reason which will become clear later, so he goes after the dead man's widow, Morven Christie, also an accountant and co-partner in the family firm, using every dirty trick in the book short of physical violence to coerce her into tracking down and retrieving his money.

He allocates his short-tempered young nephew to be her minder but even as she's reluctantly forced to turn forensic detective for this sinister criminal, she's also the focal point of two separate police investigations, the first rather improbably trying to fit her up for organising her husband's death and the other seeking to use her as a mole to bring down Mullan and his empire from the inside.

I did find it a bit difficult to follow the paper trail to the missing millions with its surreptitious accounting practices and obscure terminologies and of course the plot itself was far-fetched in the extreme with a number of contrived cliff-hanging situations and unlikely plot developments but somehow by the end the Gordian knot was duly untangled, just desserts duly administered and there was even a happy ending of sorts for Christie, her family and that Edinburgh essential, the foreign family nanny, that's if you consider going into the witness protection programme a good thing.

As a Scot, I enjoyed the familiar Edinburgh settings and the acting of the principals, Christie and Mullan plus it was nice to see Steven Mackintosh back on the small screen as Mullan's financial fixer although some of the support acting was rather mixed in quality.

Nevertheless, my wife and I enjoyed this roller-coaster six-part series and can think of worse ways to spend the cold dark winter nights than watching this.

I thought that the first episode was a bit slow and had too many plot holes although, as I am not going to write "spoilers", I won't list these. But they did reduce my final rating from 9 ot 8.

However, having now watched all the remaining 5 episodes, it does get better as it goes along - with fewer plot holes - and finishes with a good last episode, with no open ending laying the ground for another series.

I thought that all the actors playing the main characters did well, and there were few weaknesses. I also liked the writing and direction and, unlike so many crime series these days, didn't rely any chases between the "goodies and baddies" to bolster the plot.

This series is well worth four hours of your time.

I made the mistake of reading some bad reviews and almost didn't watch this. It's way better than average and how anyone can give it only one star is beyond me. It was produced by Jed Mercurio the creator of Line of Duty so it was a cut above. The plot is unusual in that it involves finance and the hiding of illicit profits. It is well written, well acted, well directed and has great pace. What's not to like? Morven Christie, Peter Mullen and Derek Riddell are good as always and it's great to see Steven Mackintosh on our screens again. DC Kahn played by Prasanna Puwanarajah is an interesting conflicted character. Well worth a watch. My only quibble was Lexie being in tears the whole time.

Excellent crime drama from ITV set in Edinburgh. Lexi Noble, played by Morven Christie, loses her husband in a street stabbing by a group of young thugs. It turns out he was the accountant for a major crime lord, Cal Morris, played by Peter Mullen ably assisted by Malky Roberts played by Steven Mackintosh and was completely ripping him off. Lexi is unaware of this until she is approached by Cal who is demanding to know where his money is. Under threat of harm to her two kids she is forced to use her own accountancy skills to track the money through a web of fake companies and foreign bank accounts. It was well acted and a very entertaining ride. ITV have produced plenty of rubbish recently but this was definitely a good offering. Highly recommended.

This really is a great mystery/thriller series. Top realistic performances from the cast especially Morven Christie and Derek Riddell was just like a driven but honest senior cop..

They also got the police scenes right = None of that business of D. C.s calling their guv'nors by first name or kicking off with the higher ranks for 'dramatic' effect as we saw in Line of Duty...well done. More from the writer of this series please! Also having two super actors in the form of Steven Mackintosh and Peter Mullen really adds a great 'heft' to their various scenes.

Morven Christie's performance was so skilful, she must have been exhausted. A character under huge stress throughout and yet never puts a foot wrong..a great naturalistic performance. It was so rare in thriller/dramas where the central character doesn't have a trusty sidekick or friend with specials skills...she's all alone.