Bene Cumb Series with the "good guys" being unsocial and/or with special needs have recently become popular, with the Scandinavian The Bridge as evidently the most renown. Here, in Chasing Shadows, the roles are reversed: the male lead DS Sean Stone (remarkably performed by Reece Shearsmith, whom I have not knowingly seen/noticed before) is the one who has serious communication issues, and the others, including Ruth Hattersley (nicely depicted by Alex Kingston) have to deal with and tolerate him for the sake of solving serious crimes. Despite the fact that being rude to women is not pleasant to follow and my hesitations whether the British police can afford such a non-team player, the plots have been smoothly designed, the leading characters are not always right, the endings have nice twists, and the concrete person at fault is not revealed too soon. I would like to see more with these characters; the Episode 4 somehow promised a sequel, but no more episodes until now (1-4 were aired in September 2014).

melissagreer-51299 Hands down, only the UK knows how to execute a Crime drama ... detectives with nuances - hang-ups - quirks ... but with intelligence ... Chasing Shadows literally keeps me on the edge of my seat - heart pounding and Sean (Detective that makes you want to pull your hair out by the roots) is played to perfection. The only shows I watch from the USA are NCIS and Criminal Minds - otherwise, I'm plugged into ACORN TV or PBS (Downton Abby, Sherlock, Poldark etc.) Excellent Crime Drama - 9 stars versus 10 - I'm upset there were only 4 episodes in Series 1.Love British TV ... keep them coming ... please; with TV like this makes you wonder why you'd watch anything else :o)

alan-organ The whole concept of Chasing Shadows is a great one. The idea is good and the cast are absolutely brilliant. Sheersmith's Detective Stone alone is a character you will certainly want to see in a second series. Negatively, however, the plot lines are sometimes rather thin. Here are just a couple of examples: In episode three a prisoner (on medication) dies in hospital. Real police would have immediately checked up on who medicated him and the hospital drug records; thus revealing things weren't right and arresting his killer. It took the whole of episode four for said killer to be identified and caught. In episode four the killer disappears with a woman he is going to kill & DS Stone identifies a rubbish dump where they are likely to be. Real police would have sent up the force helicopter; yet the cops here turn up few in numbers and only just in time. Like I said though, the actors and the concept hold this show together and I'm looking forward to episode five.

Tweekums This new ITV series consists or two two-part stories, although I wouldn't be surprised if more are made. It follows DS Sean Stone, a skilled police officer who finds himself transferred to missing persons when his inability to be anything other than totally honest embarrasses his boss at a press conference. At missing persons he works with Ruth Hattersley although it isn't long before she is getting frustrated by his methods. He does have a knack for seeing patterns though and it isn't long before he works out that some missing people are probably the victim of a serial killer. In each of the cases he manages to offend almost everybody who he comes into contact with although he does get results.It is a pity that this series was so short as it was rather fun; Reece Shearsmith was great as DS Stone and Alex Kingston gave fun support as Ruth Hattersley. Stone is an interesting protagonist; much like Saga from 'The Bridge' he is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum… this is dealt with sensitively; we see that he does have some difficulties but is still highly competent when other people's emotions aren't involved. The stories are typical of the genre but still rather enjoyable; both stories featured plenty of suspects and in neither case was it either too obvious or too convoluted. It is a pity the two hour stories were each spilt into two episode; I can only assume it is because some of the material wasn't suitable for pre-watershed broadcast so it couldn't start at eight. With only two stories the series was a bit on the short side but the conclusion set things up for a second series so I'm sure we'll be seeing more of DS Stone… I certainly hope we do.