by Sarah-Jane Sheppard
A routine surveillance mission backfires when Jack witnesses a murder, and in order to call off the hit Nat needs to find out who was killed and why, and get the tapes to the right people before the killers catch up with them...
Now, while Natasha Tyreen is one of my shows, a handful of its episodes this season won't be written by me so it seems only fair to include them in here. Besides, this episode marks the MZP debut of the talented Sarah-Jane Sheppard, who's bringing her quirky new drama The Company to our screens in August, so it's a chance to get her some more public exposure to make sure people know who she is. For those who don't already know, Natasha Tyreen follows the adventures of the titular character, a young female private eye operating in the major British city of Birmingham in a near future setting, ably assisted by her partner Jack and her police friend Detective Burton, handling a variety of unusual cases each week.
We open on an abandoned apartment building, with Natasha climbing the rickety stairs to the eighteenth floor, worn out by her trip but here to rendezvous with Jack, the duo operating a video-camera assisted stakeout on the building opposite. NT has quite a light-hearted, chatty style that Sheppard is obviously comfortable writing in, building up the characteristic flow of banter between Nat and Jack very easily. They're observing a potentially adulterous husband, and you get the feeling this is the kind of low-rent job that Nat knows is a necessary evil. Luckily for her, it's still Jack's shift, so she leaves him with some junk food and heads home. Rolling forward the clock a few hours, Jack finally sees something interesting - but in another apartment! Two men are having a heated debate that Jack supplies his own commentary for - before one shoots the other! Jack jumps up in alarm - and gets spotted. Bugger.
Nat returns to relieve Jack but finds their hidey hole in disarray - signs of either a struggle or a very thorough search, and no sign of Jack. A perturbed Nat rushes back to her office, calls Jack's home, but still has no luck. She returns to her own apartment to come up with a new plan, and sees a news report of the shooting Jack accidentally observed. It's not a huge leap of logic for her to work out that Jack must have seen the murder and done a runner as a result, so now all she needs to do is find him. She first heads to the murder scene (pulling a neat trick with a police logo jacket and a tray of coffee cups to get inside), where she encounters her arch-nemesis Detective Jessica Clemens. The two swap a few digs (and again, Sheppard demonstrates a sharp eye for witty dialogue here that elevates what is essentially a talking heads scene into a great little character moment) before Nat is forced to move on, calling one of Jack's friends in an attempt to track him down (and again with the comic moments!). She finally locates him in one of his usual haunts - a strip club (showing the close relationship Nat and Jack enjoy), and after a false start where Nat is mistaken for a wannabe dancer, she finally finds Jack in a back room with Freya, one of his, er, 'friends.' He's been getting trashed while he lays low, filling in the blanks of what Nat already knows. Freya manages to show some character in just a handful of lines through some nicely comic banter with the wine-guzzling Jack, and with a final, greatly quotable monologue about buckets, we end the Act with the duo getting ready to sort this whole mess out.
Act II opens with Nat badgering Burton for some help - he always finds himself stuck in an awkward place with her. There's an obvious closeness, and it's not that he doesn't want to help, just that he typically can't, what with him being a proper detective and her being a private eye and all. Burton tells her that Jessica is considering filing a formal complaint to stop him even talking to Nat, but she keeps asking him until she wears him down, and he slips her the name and address of the victim to go and check out. Nat and Jack stake out the home of Blake Hargreaves, with Burton's intel telling them he was a low-level government employee, fired for misconduct and harbouring an obvious grudge against his former employers. Jack breaks in and Nat hacks into his computer (thank you, male inability to think up complex passwords) to chase up some e-mails. There's mention of somebody dropping off some 'data,' along with correspondence with a former colleague named Aaron Burns. Posing as Hargreaves' niece, the duo get into Aaron's home to question him, and he tells them that Hargreaves wanted him to get involved with something shifty he was setting up, but Aaron wanted no part of it. They don't get a chance to say much more, however, as a burst of gunfire marks the end of Aaron's part in the conversation. Braving the gunfire, Nat goes back inside to grab a suspicious package from Aaron's mail before the duo arrive back at the office one dead cat later - you'll have to read it to see what I mean! The package is a set of DVD-ROMs, but the files on them are encrypted. Nat sneaks them to Burton, who runs them by his IT guy to unlock them, just as Jessica shows up to bust his chops for collaborating with Nat again. They're interrupted as IT bloke Chris cracks the encryption - it's the British Witness Protection Register!
Nat and Burton discuss their find, but Burton blocks Nat's requests for the discs back. She knows she'll need them to get the hitman off Jack's trail, but Burton is professionally obligated to hold onto them. They argue about it but Burton doesn't back down, managing to wound Nat's pride in the process. Back at her office, Nat and Jack have a frantic conversation as they try to come up with a plan 'b,' before inspiration strikes. Nat sets up a meet to hand the discs back - despite not having them. What's she planning here, then? We zip ahead to the handover itself, with a classic Clapper gag as Nat meets Mr. Smith, the hitman with Jack's name on probably an awful lot of bullets. They trade tough talk, with Nat getting a fantastic line out about the difference between fish and fishes before she hands over a dummy set of discs. Luckily for Nat, the hitman doesn't have a chance to call her bluff - Jack's recording the whole thing from across the street, too - but unluckily someone new bursts into the room, shooting Smith and grabbing the discs for himself. The new shooter exits when Nat points him towards Jack, taping the whole thing as a guarantee that no violence will follow, and the hitman ducks out. Unseen by Nat, however, a second hitman shows up, kills the first and heads back in to finish off Nat! Eep...
Luckily for Nat, Jack's seen the new arrival, and he quickly calls Nat to tell her to get out of there. Watching helplessly from the building opposite, her phone runs out just as he explains what's going on, and with a neat little Rear Window homage, we stay with Jack as Nat ducks from room to room, trying to stay one step ahead of the new hitman. Nat barricades herself in but the blockade won't last long, so she dashes through the apartment looking for a way out. She opens a window but elects to hide under the bed instead. The hitman stalks in, checks under the bed - but Nat is just out of sight. It's a credit to Sheppard's writing here that she manages to build up a genuine sense of tension in these scenes - witty repartee aside, there's a real feeling of menace to the new hitman as he tracks Nat down, and as his preset charge blows the lights in the room, he finally pounces! Nat just manages to wriggle free, running off and hiding again (after a comedy 'it's a door! no... it's the closet' moment), but it isn't long before the hitman finds her, finally preparing to have his wicked way with her - until she jabs a gas lighter into his eye! This slows him down for long enough for Nat to almost make it outside, but as he grabs her again just as she exits, the cavalry arrive. Jack called the police, and the hitman is taken into custody as Burton and Clemens come to the rescue. Jessica tries to arrest her as Burton tries to thank her for her help solving the case, and Burton gets to pull rank on her to keep Nat out of jail - this time - but only if she hands over the tapes of the original murder. Jack has no option and does so, and there's a touching little moment between Nat and Burton to remind us of the romantic tension between them as he leaves. Back at the office, however, the duo have a surprise waiting - the real Witness Protection discs! Somebody within the department seems to think keeping them away from the potentially corrupt police is the best thing to do, and as Nat and Jack muse on beefing up their office secuirty, we black out.
Wow. A tremendous episode from start to finish, even if I do say so myself. Sheppard's dialogue leaps off the page, and while possibly a little too joke-centric in places, she more than makes up for that with some genuinely dark moments, as well as a high body count that keeps you, the reader, on their toes until well into Act IV when the situation at the apartment is finally resolved! With every character shining through some sparkling banter, a fast-moving plot that never leaves you behind and the chance to show a new facet to Nat's character - mainly her resourcefulness under pressure - then you've got all the ingredients for a top-notch slice of virtual entertainment here. Great stuff. I know I'm going to get accused of bias for my high mark here, but honestly - this is that good. In fact, I'd rate it above all three of the episode I've done for the show thus far! Ego? Moi? Never.
ZPM RATING:
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