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Ave Verum Corpus is the Mozart piece which Madison (Millie Brown) described to Karen early on in the last episode, shortly before smashing her brains in, in the roadside bathroom, and the piece we see her playing on a piano in a flashback just before she and her family moved into their current house, even though she hasn’t had any piano lessons. Obviously, it comes naturally to her, but her parents are baffled.
Then we cut to Gary telling Jack all about self-made billionaire Joseph Cranfield, since he was working for him, handling his financial affairs, until a year ago when the man asked him to start giving it out here and there, so that by the time he dies (even though there’s nothing wrong with him), there’ll be a billion apiece for Cranfield’s wife and family, plus a substantial amount to a charity and also $10m to Bill Anderson. In addition, only one building was put into trust, and that was the accountants where Amy (Mira Sorvino) went when she told Jack (John Simm) that she was at home, and the building is leased by Todd Crane (Andrew Airlie) – Amy’s boss, Marcus Fox and Cranfield himself, until he dies. After that, Cranfield’s share will go to Amy.
Jack wants everything that Gary (Tory Kittles) has on all this and Bill Anderson, and goes looking into Anderson’s house, but a mysterious phone call warns him off, sounding part-female and part-disguised. Being the maverick he is, he goes in anyway, looking for clues and finding the serial number of a machine which Bill was building in the basement, but is then stopped at gunpoint by a man who turns out to be a Seattle detective, investigating the disappearance of Anderson. They chat for a brief while, but this conversation all seemed inconsequential – typical cop waffle, castigating the man he’s just met.
Madison goes to confront Amy’s boss, Todd Crane, talking suggestively and then suggesting he’s having it away with his secretary, after getting in having pretended to be a classmate of his daughter. Why’s she being so nasty to him? Well, it becomes clear that she’s channelling the spirit of Marcus, the person in her previous body – which Todd figures out, given her demeanour – but she’s also having to fight the real 9-year-old inside who’s trying to burst out and is pining for her mother, so clearly taking over a new body isn’t a perfect science, and this goes some way to explain an earlier scene with her as she hitch-hikes a lift into town, saying she wants to be with her family but “the man makes me not remember”.
Also initially confusing, otherworldly noises are being heard down the phone, affecting Amy and Madison at first before moving on to Jack and Gary.
Jack and Gary’s covert investigation of Cranfield’s house which leads to him being mummified and then murdered, seemingly willingly, and who else is present apart from nasty Richard? It’s Amy!
It seems like the only man who can uncover all this is Anderson, himself, and Jack uses his former cop-like ways to put a message out there which only he can understand, and the best place is on conspiracy whacko Tim Truth’s radio show, where he spends each evening banging on about the missing man.
Conveniently, by the end of the episode, they meet up with Bill Anderson in a public bar who explains he wouldn’t take the $10m because to do so would carry a restriction preventing him from carrying on with his “infrasonics” research into low frequencies, which are so low they cannot be heard by the average human BUT… they can be felt. It’s basically a device that sees ghosts, but just as he gets that out, Richard – who was also conveniently listening to the radio – susses it out and turns up to bump him off, with Bill’s last words being “Qui reverti…”, repeated once or twice, rather like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, muttering, “The horror…”
In this episode, with the addition of the “9” Book revealing a phrase, “There are places where the living can cross over to the dead, and back again”, and with Amy seems to be going mad and seemingly hoping to resurrect Bix Beiderbecke, Ave Verum Corpus was posing more questions than it was answering, so it was the least satisfying episode so far. I hope it can get back on track for next week.
(And yes, I know it’s already aired in the US, so no spoilers please. I’m reviewing this at UK pace)
Intruders continues next week on BBC2 at 9pm.
Score: 5/10
Director: Eduardo Sánchez
Producers: John Martini, Angie Stephenson and Amy Hodge
Screenplay: Glen Morgan (based on the book “The Intruders” by Michael Marshall Smith)
Creator: Glen Morgan
Music: Bear McCreary
Cast:
Jack Whelan: John Simm
Amy Whelan: Mira Sorvino
Madison O’Donnell: Millie Brown
Richard Shepherd: James Frain
Gary Fischer: Tory Kittles
Tim Truth: Toby Hargrave
Todd Crane: Andrew Airlie
Evan Shepherd: Alessandro Juliani
Waitress: Lisa MacFadden
Allison O’Donnell: Sonya Salomaa
Detective Ron Blanchard: Daryl Shuttleworth
Daniella: Tasya Teles
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.