Get
the lowdown on the new spin off from The
Bill - M.I.T. We have a show overview, interviews
an episode
guide and more.
M.I.T. – MURDER INVESTIGATION TEAM
“No greater honour will ever be bestowed on an officer, or a more profound duty placed upon them than when entrusted with the investigation of the death of a fellow human being”
M.I.T, the new THAMES TV police drama series from the same team responsible for the recent success of THE BILL, is set to have viewers on the edge of their seats this spring with eight chilling one-hour episodes on ITV1.
The series, created by Paul Marquess, will give viewers an opportunity to see a murder investigation through the eyes of those closest to the action, the Murder Investigation Team
(M.I.T.).
LINDSEY COULSON (EastEnders) and SAMANTHA SPIRO (Cor Blimey, Tomorrow La Scala!) star as DC Rosie MacManus and DI Vivien Friend, heading the
M.I.T., part of the Met’s elite Special Crimes Unit. DI Friend is the polished, professional type with a highly organised way of working and a regimented lifestyle, whereas DC MacManus has a chaotic family life juggling husband, career and kids.
Viv is fastidious and clinical in her approach to crime-solving, but Rosie is instinctive and perceptive. Rosie’s hunches often turn out to be correct, but it’s Viv who can prove them right with her talent for being able to uncover and analyse even the tiniest scraps of concrete evidence.
The all-male team in which Viv and Rosie operate include actors RICHARD HOPE, RICHARD HUW, MICHAEL
MCKELL, STEVEN PACEY, VINCENZO PELLEGRINO (Casualty), JOE SHAW (Bad Girls), ANDREW SOMERVILLE
(Hollyoaks) and HOWARD WARD – and together they make a case-cracking team on the
M.I.T.
Each gritty episode will begin with the discovery of a body and continue as the investigation unfolds. We’ll only see what the
M.I.T. see, including the countless red herrings and mysterious shreds of evidence that are part of every murder enquiry.
JACKIE MALTON, ex-DCI for the Metropolitan Police and Story Consultant for
M.I.T, says, “The concept of the programme concentrates on the process involved in a murder investigation. The detectives have to work hard for each piece of evidence. There are no clues which come from left-field, no rabbits out of the hat and, much like a real murder investigation, the process is linear and full of exposition.”
The female DC from the Metropolitan Police who advised Lindsey Coulson on
M.I.T, says, “An officer’s role is different in every case – one minute you’re a family liaison officer, the next you’re in charge of looking after the exhibits. With each case you can be doing something you’ve never done before and there are so many different qualities needed.”
The female DI with whom SAMANTHA SPIRO spent time researching her role, says, “People don’t necessarily know what we do, which means there’s the unknown factor which is automatically exciting.”
In M.I.T, every possibility has to be explored, no stone left unturned – whether the victim has been deposited in the Thames, pushed from the balcony of a high rise flat, or ritually dismembered. And the first victim proves to be a very familiar face from THE BILL…
Executive Producer PAUL MARQUESS says, “Although
M.I.T. was sold on the success of THE BILL,
M.I.T. will only feature any of our Sun Hill regulars in the first episode. We like to think that the unfortunate copper who meets his end in
M.I.T. will be the first TV character ever to be killed off in an entirely different series!”
As part of the research for the series, the cast spent time with their real-life
M.I.T. equivalents from the Metropolitan Police. A pathologist and advisor on the series, says, “There’s certainly a morbid fascination with murder. People say, ‘that’s horrific – show me again’.”
JACKIE MALTON spent nearly thirty years in the force before using her knowledge and experience to create realistic and absorbing crime drama. She says, “I think people are interested in murder and crime because this genre is the best format for unmasking human nature. A prerequisite for murder is the emotion of lust, greed, power, revenge, gain, jealously, thrill, hate or love. Through the genre of murder we can examine people’s lives through victimology of the victim and profiling of the offender.”
The original concept behind
M.I.T. was to focus on attaining as much realism as possible and distinguishing the series from other current crime dramas. Malton says, “I think British audiences like to be armchair amateur sleuths. I also think they want to be entertained, to learn something along the way from the process of murder investigation or forensic knowledge and to be the Chief Detective. I don’t think the majority enjoy gratuitous violence - they much prefer a psychological thriller element rather than blood and gore.”
M.I.T. is filmed on location in and around London.
THE
M.I.T. BIBLE
·WHY + WHEN + WHERE + HOW = WHO.
·A body is discovered – the
M.I.T. have to think murder.
·M.I.T. detectives do not assume - they investigate.
·Murder investigation is very intimate - immediately the
M.I.T. has to enter the dead person’s life.
·M.I.T. deal with the evidence and the facts.
·The crime scene is the most important aspect of a murder - the offender leaves clues about himself. The
M.I.T. will reconstruct the events.
·The location of the body can give indications to the
M.I.T. about the offender, and the relationship between the offender/victim. How did he get there? How comfortable did he feel? Was there an escape route for him?
·What was the offender’s motive - jealousy, greed, thrill, hate, love, revenge or gain?
·The M.I.T. examine the victimology of how the deceased lived their life and, more importantly, how the victim lived on the day of their death. What was the victim’s personality, relationships, associates and precursor incidents?
·Forensics are crucial to the
M.I.T. - what does the crime scene tell the detective about fingerprints, shoeprints, DNA, blood pattern analysis, body fluids, hair, fibres, paint, glass, gun residue, soil, insects, vegetation, etc?
·M.I.T look at geographical profiling – with up to 3 crime scenes in an investigation - where the murderer first encountered the victim, where the attack took place and finally the body deposition site. By examining geographical boundaries the
M.I.T. may identify where the offender lived or worked.
·Murder investigation is a search for the truth.
·The most famous case of assumption was made by George
Oldfield, the detective leading the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper. He assumed (wrongly) that the voice on the tapes which were sent to him personally, was the voice of the killer – giving Peter Sutcliffe free range to murder again.
“Any assumption is the death of a good investigation” - FBI.
