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Time Has Come Today begins with Karen (Rukiya Bernard), the woman who was paid by 9-year-old Madison (Millie Brown, acting everyone off the screen) to drive her to a destination of her choosing, having reservations about taking this on, switching off a piece of classical music, which is playing on the radio, and deciding to turn back, only to be decidely told by Madison to switch it back on.
As she does, the girl displays immense knowledge about the work of Mozart on the radio, like someone about 50 years older who has listened to it all their lives. How did she get like that? “I was there, that night. I played in the orchestra.” Spooky!
Richard meets Marcus Fox (Alex Diakun), with the intention of killing him, as per his order, but Fox digs out one of those prawn cracker-shaped discs, suggesting they do a deal which involves his life being spared, and Richard profiting greatly, in return for the risk of the job.
Jack gets back home and finds Amy in bed, back from her apparent busines trip, but making bizarre moaning noises like some sort of creature developing into their new body in a sci-fi film. She gives plausible excuses for her actions and movements, and he puts his anxiety of her going missing down to something from the past which we’ve yet to discover. While she continues to act all spooky-like, and although we know that she’s obviously not being on the level with him, having lived a previous life – or lives, he just puts it all down to her being a woman.
While Madison snores away loudly, Karen stops off to call the number she’s just found on the back of the girl’s “9”-embossed card. It turns out it’s creepy Richard, which irks Madison big-time, causing her to bark an order at Karen to hang up the phone like she’s Samuel L Jackson in Die Hard With a Vengeance. Using the fake excuse that it was wrong for her to call him because he’s basically the local Jimmy Savile, she gains Karen’s trust, just before murdering her in the restroom, sadly off-screen.
Amy hides a private phone call from Jack, while she gets back into her smoking habit. Jack’s clearly so upset about all this that as he tries to turn off her radio, emitting jazz music, the music doesn’t stop until just after he’s let go of the “off” button. She’s not the only one being secretive. As he goes, on request, to get her phone, he disconnects it from his laptop, leaving the screen brightly displaying the fact that he’s just cloned its contents. Duh!
Understandably, Jack believes she’s cheating on him when she wants to split up, or rather, she doesn’t want to leave him, she says, “I need to become who I am meant to be… I’m leaving myself”.
However, for a cop-turned-writer, predictably he has drink and anger issues, resulting in the patio window coming off worse. However, he’s going to need the whole Scotch bottle when Amy comes out with “We don’t die. Thoughts of death are for the ignorant.”
Is she then going to come out with a load of Christian reincarnation nonsense or, as Jack believes, “new-age hippie shit”?
As we reach the end of the episode, Richard arrives at Madison’s location, but only finds Karen’s bloody-stained body being chewed on by a rat, and Jack meets up with his friend Gary (Tory Kittles), who doesn’t have good news for him about Amy – he believes she’s linked to the people who killed Bill Anderson’s family…
Intruders is bringing me in slowly, with this episode – the title, Time Has Come Today, coming from a Ramones song – feeling better than the first two now that the groundwork has been laid out, while at the same time giving us titbits of new plot to chew on, such as filling in the truth about about Jack’s reason for his anxiety, a night in Los Angeles where he shot three men.
Score: 7/10
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
Richard Shepherd: James Frain
Madison O’Donnell: Millie Brown
Karen: Rukiya Bernard
Gary Fischer: Tory Kittles
Marcus Fox: Alex Diakun
Bobbi Zimmerman: Karin Konoval
Principal: Nneka Croal
Tim Truth: Toby Hargrave
Allison O’Donnell: Sonya Salomaa
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.