Amazon.com
This episode of the acclaimed Granada TV/A&E series finds our hero, the hard-drinking, compulsive-gambling, arrogant yet brilliant Dr. Eddie Fitzgerald, forensic psychologist affiliated with the Manchester, England, police department, assailed from all sides. His long-suffering wife, Judith, is at the end of her rope with Fitz's destructive habits, and his law-enforcement colleagues have no patience with his reluctance to unilaterally decree that a prime suspect in their most recent sensational case is guilty. A man is found bloodied and dazed near a railroad track in northern England, suffering from that hoariest of TV conventions, amnesia. It turns out he jumped (or was he thrown?) from a train upon which a young woman--the third in a series--was brutally slashed to death. Fitz must determine whether the soft-spoken, clearly well educated fellow is in fact innocent--or whether he is playing a deadly mind game. The title refers to a typical Fitz remark--that lost memory is like the madwoman locked away in the attic: occasionally you hear a scream but you don't dare go near the door. Sometimes it's hard to like the pigheaded Fitz, but the direction of Michael Winterbottom (who also directed the acclaimed feature
Welcome to Sarajevo) and the stellar writing make for a terrifically satisfying--and occasionally unsettling--armchair detective experience.
--Anne Hurley
