Manhunt Season 2.3-4: Profound and Engaging Snapshot

I saw the conclusion of Manhunt Season 2 -- episodes 3 and 4 -- last night on Acorn on Amazon.  Colin Sutton and the police hunting the serial rapist of elderly women were in top form.

There's something about these UK police series that really get it right.   Maybe it's the pacing.  American police dramas move more quickly, which can be exciting, but that often happens at the expense of important little details.  Colin's conversations with his wife, for example, are not the most pressingly germane to the police story, but they help us understand how Colin can be so calm and understanding in the face of such human depravity.

It's also fun to see the technological progress and savvy the Brit police evince in 2009.   They understand DNA well enough to know that the rapist's attempt to implicate his son (a real piece of work, this guy) won't work, because although twins share identical DNA, fathers and sons do not.

The excellent finale, though, didn't answer every question.  How did the rapist, a man at least in his late 40s or 50s, manage to outrun the Brit copper who was in his 20s, and a marathon runner, no less? I'm also wondering how many of those exquisite coincidences really happened?  Did the elderly woman victim who was "interfered" with by the rapist really pass away an hour so before her daughter arrived from New Zealand to see her?   And was the rapist really caught on the day Colin took a day off to get some well earned rest?

But these are minor quibbles indeed.  It was a great pleasure to get to know Colin Sutton (wonderfully played by Martin Clunes) in this short but profound and engaging series, and I wish him the best in his post-police endeavors.

See also Manhunt Season 1 and 2.1-2

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