1.5 Wanted Mans So, yes: the mystery of the music box has been solved. It was totally unremarkable, except that somewhere among its cogs and wheels it held a memory stick. And on that memory stick? A video of Scarlett having sex with a vaguely familiar-looking man. Throughout the series I’ve felt like I ought to be paying more attention to the news reports we’ve glimpsed every time Sam and Phil have passed through the Council’s reception area, and, yup, turns out they were absolutely there for a reason. Because the man on Scarlett’s sex tape is an MP, and he’s the one who’ll ultimately be responsible for the route of the high speed rail link that could cut out the heart of Bracknell’s tiny community. Gulp. And, oh God, poor Lizzie. The writing’s been on the wall for her big regeneration project since the beginning, really, but yikes. No wonder Reid didn’t want the project named after him – it’s all gonna crash and burn, making him a gazillionaire but leaving the County Council out of pocket and looking for scapegoats. And it’ll be Lizzie’s head that rolls, unless Sam and Phil can warn her and expose Reid before his dodgy deals go through. I’ve said before that I appreciated how fast each episode moves and how quickly each individual subplot gets wrapped up, and that’s still true, but I think this episode really kicked things up a notch. Suddenly, the writing seems more confident, more in control. It’s a show that can easily find room to let its characters reminisce about their childhoods or argue over pasties while simultaneously setting up an explosive showdown featuring at least three different modes of transport and unravelling an elaborate town planning plot. That takes some doing, but The Wrong Mans is pulling it off. The attention to detail is impressive, too – did you catch the Berkshire County Council eye test-style poster in the mail room, or Phil’s Bourne Identity mug? The only slight cockup I noticed was in the MI5 scene at the beginning: apparently Sam is 29, having been born in 1983, but Phil, born in 1985, is 31? Can intelligence agents not do basic arithmetic, or what? Perhaps I should cut them some slack, though: they did have the amazing Rebecca Front glaring at them while they read out our mans’ vital statistics. Maybe they got flustered. Read Sarah’s review of the previous episode, Inside Mans, here. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
