INJUSTICE - EPISODES TWO & THREE (ITV1)

It certainly takes ITV a lot of confidence, the name of acclaimed screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz and the magic memory of his Collision, to air since monday the five parts of Injustice on a whole week. Particularly with Episode Three preceded by the irritating You've Been Framed! and facing The Apprentice.

Will Travers (James Purefoy), a once successful defence barrister, recovers from a nervous breakdown far from London. Yet he takes the case of Martin Newall (Nathaniel Parker), an old university friend accused of murdering his secretary. No matter his wife Jane (Dervla Kirwan), now an English teacher in an institution for young offenders, had to give up a commissioning editor job to follow him. Meanwhile, the police finds the body of an itinerant worker shot in the head. Misanthropist DI Mark Wenborn (Charlie Creed-Miles) is assigned the case with his new colleague DS Nick Taylor (Obi Abili). He finds out the man was an animal activist and a client of Travers, whom he's not precisely a fan.

With a troubled marriage and a career under scrutiny of his hierarchy, Wenborn can and must focus on the investigation and on the lawyer. But Will's attention is all on his new case: his friend Martin, an oil trader, was having an affair with his secretary in an hotel room where she was found dead and his computer went missing. And some persons are worrying about its content and what Newall's barrister could possibly discover. Another source of problems for Will is his old adversary Jeremy Forbes-Watson (Nick Dunning), who wants to settle the score with him.

Already three episodes aired, thanks to "stripped" programming, and Injustice is definitely deprived of the originality and sensitivity of Collision, with which it shares some structural elements. The premiere cleverly gave enough to lure to the next one but Episode Two, centered on the murder of Martin's secretary, already lost steam. Episode Three surprisingly cremated one of the key plots of the serial, revealing what lead Will Travers to his personal issues. Even if Will's idealism is hard to swallow at least he's more interesting than his wife. Maybe if we could discover she has a pact with Cybermen. Other options than the book subplot will be happily considered.

As anticipated the premiere of Injustice hurt the excellent Case Histories on Monday with an average of 5.32m viewers (vs 4.46m for BBC One's new drama). But Horowitz's new serial lost 1.04m on Tuesday. However we're still curious to see what Anthony Horowitz has in store, and Charlie Creed-Miles as "DI Bastard" is fantastic. Wonder what the character could do in the Apprentice boardroom if Lord Sugar took a day off.

Episode One: http://tattard2.blogspot.com/2011/06/injustice-itv1.html

http://www.itv.com/injustice/
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a323582/injustice-beats-case-histories-in-monday-ratings.html
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a323787/angry-boys-debuts-with-nearly-600k.html