My Review of New Blood's 1x04: "Case 2, Part 1"

Written by Anthony Horowitz
Directed by Anthony Philipson

Stefan: "It wasn't your fault."
Rash: "I know it's not my fault. It's your fault."

The start of a new case and we've moved from evil drug testing to counter terrorism, shady antique owners and the development of a London building with the sharp name of Scimitar attached to it as Stefan and Rash find themselves working together and clashing for the second time again.

The death of a Polish construction worker named Adam (who got conveniently blown to bits whilst on his job) certainly kicked off the story well enough but as the episode progressed, things somewhat meandered again until the final five minutes delivered something genuinely riveting.

I do appreciate that this show has gone with such a different approach for Stefan and Rash's partnership seeing as they strictly have two different jobs but have become friends and frequently defy their bosses orders to try and get results. Here they decided to do a little snooping on snarling antique owner Gulliver and managed to miss the guy being burned alive with his shop towards the end of things.

I'm not particularly sure where this one is strictly going but the sinister couple whom Stefan has played undercover driver for are interesting enough along with the bloke who attempted to murder Adam at the start and succeeded in killing Gulliver towards the end of the episode.

However four episodes in and there's still some problems. Rash's bosses are too poorly defined as characters to care about and the whole Stefan/Leila feels just a tiny bit contrived as well. On the plus side, at least Eleanor is a solid female character and I quite like trying to guess what Peter's motives as well. He's quite a fascinating character, though we're seeing little of him so far.

- Stefan and Rash have yet to move in with each other. I thought they were going to at the end of the previous one.
- Stefan does seem to put on an access every time he goes undercover, doesn't he?
- I guess we're waiting for the last episode before anyone realises that Peter and Alison are actually uncle and niece. I find their rapport pretty interesting.

Not a terrible episode as such but a bit too dull and plodding in some parts. It was only really in the last five minutes that things actually livened up. Hopefully the second part of this will end it on a better note though.

Rating: 6 out of 10