Identity

9:30pm – Friday, December 10 on ABC1

In the Identity team, uncovering thieves of other people’s lives, it’s the worst day of DI John Bloom’s (Aidan Gillen) life.

The Identity unit has had a tip-off to the location of Atif’s body. DS Anthony Wareing (Shaun Parkes) followed Bloom and saw the whole thing and he’s intent on making Bloom squirm.

Bloom soon catches on that Anthony knows something, but when Adile (Agni Scott) is brought into the unit for interviewing, Bloom sees he has no choice but to resign.

His ‘other life’ comes back to haunt him in the worst way when DSI Martha Lawson (Keely Hawes) is abducted by Halit (Ken Bones), Adile’s father.

Final

9:30pm – Friday, December 3 on ABC1

When Miriam Brolin’s (Jenny Seagrove) DNA matches that of a wanted criminal ‘Nadia’, a revolutionary turned terrorist who’s been on the run for 25 years, the Identity Unit’s job is to get her to confess to the murder of an innocent bystander that her fellow comrade Marco Robson (Clive Russell) was convicted of committing.

Miriam and Marco abscond together and help comes in the form of DCS Robert Thacker (Tom Mannion), the original investigator on the case.

Soon he is forced to reveal that before Miriam was ‘Nadia’, she was ‘Sandra’, an undercover officer infiltrating the terrorist group for Thacker. It eventually transpires who really killed the bystander, but Miriam will stop at nothing to prevent her cover being blown to Marco.

9:30pm – Friday, November 26 on ABC1

The elite police Identity squad investigates a businessman called Bansi (Ramon Tikaram) who is about to buy a UK company and the British Government is very keen to see the deal done.

When Bansi’s dentist claims a substitute has taken Bansi’s place, the IDU is asked to surreptitiously get a DNA swab to prove he is the real Bansi so the government doesn’t hand over 50 million pounds to an impostor.

DI Bloom (Aidan Gillen) has to work undercover and get a swab, but Bansi is ill, reclusive and highly protected. When Bloom finds the real Bansi imprisoned, Bansi’s nurse, Jamilla, (Shivani Gai) stymies him.

She knows Bloom has a dead body in his car and she will blow his cover if he blows hers.

Bloom has to decide what’s more important, saving his skin or doing his job.

9:25pm – Friday, November 19 on ABC1

The identity team is called in to help protect Amy Quilan, a woman on the witness protection program when her identity is revealed on a blog. She was convicted of helping her husband, Brian, kidnap a 10- year-old girl, for whose murder he was subsequently convicted.

Her son Sam is abducted on DI Bloom’s (Aidan Gillen) watch and the team have to work out a way to meet the kidnapper’s ransom demand – and that means finding out one way or another where Brian buried Lucy.

But DI Bloom can’t help feeling Amy is holding something back and that she is not as innocent as she seems.

9:25pm – Friday, November 12 on ABC1

The identity squad investigate the murder of a wealthy British traveller, Olivia Knighton, in Sydney, hours after which Jane Calshaw (Joanne Froggatt) returns to the UK on her stolen passport.

A game of cat and mouse ensues between the team and the impostor. Jane pretends to be a travelling friend to Olivia’s mother, even going to lunch with her.

When DI Bloom (Aidan Gillen) and DSI Martha Lawson (Keeley Hawes) close in with a wild chase through Knightsbridge shops, she snatches a baby and poses as its mother to elude detection.

Bloom realises they are not dealing with a seasoned identity thief, but a terminally ill woman fulfilling a desperate psychological need rooted in childhood. He peels back the layers of Jane’s past lives and unearths a damaged girl who survived a brutal childhood by locking her sights on a far-off world of metropolitan gentility.

He gets results with an eventual confession, but his methods are unsettling to his team members.

9:25pm – Friday, November 5 on ABC1

The first of a gripping new series that follows an elite police unit fighting criminals who steal others’ identity.

Led by DSI Martha Lawson (Keeley Hawes), the unit has as its own secret weapon, DI John Bloom (Aidan Gillen), an ex-undercover cop who knows firsthand what it’s like to pretend to be someone you are not.

Justin Curtis (John Hopkins) has shot a policeman who wanted to arrest him for a hit and run. Curtis claims he has been set up by ‘Smith’, a sadistic identity thief intent on destroying his life.

The Identity Unit prove Curtis could not have committed the crime. They go back over all the cases of wholesale identity fraud over the past few years and two similar cases emerge.

Bloom is convinced that ‘Smith’ is punishing his victims for similar misbehaviour. He persuades Curtis to tell him about his own secret life which leads DSI Lawson and him to his vengeful enemy.

British drama-series Identity is on its way to Australian screens following ABC’s announcement that they have acquired the show.  

The six-part ITV series, focusing on an elite police unit formed to combat the explosion of identity-related crime, stars Keeley Hawes (Ashes To Ashes) and Aidan Gillen (The Wire).

Identity tackles the darker side of reinvention: murderers who literally take other people’s lives, criminals who create new personas to escape evil pasts, impostors who look, talk and sound just like us but would kill you in a heartbeat.

The unit, lead by Hawes’ DSI Martha Lawrence, works any case where making an identification is a significant part of solving the crime by outsmarting, hunting down and unmasking the modern day Jekyll and Hydes.

Kate Bartlett, Controller of Drama at ITV Studios, says: “This is a unique crime series, with an exciting cast, that explores the theme of identity.  The psychology behind the issue of identity opens up a whole world of stories.  We take for granted that people are who they say they are and a person’s ID is sacred.  However, when that trust is violated it can provoke a special kind of fear, one that cuts to the heart of our sense of self and the world around us.”

Filmed in and around London, the series is written and created by Ed Whitmore (He Kills Coppers, Waking the Dead) and directed by Australian Brendan Maher (Spooks).

Source: ITV