Flashback: Murder Investigation Team

In 2003 ITV took a second stab at creating a successful spin-off series from The Bill by launching MIT: Murder Investigation Team. The series revolved around a medium team of detectives that investigated the gruesome murders that took place in the capital and their first investigation was into the fatal shooting of a Bill regular.

In 2002 ITV’s long-running police drama The Bill underwent a radical revamp under the leadership of new executive producer Paul Marquess. It was the cop-drama’s biggest overhaul in its history as Marquess moved the series away from being about cops and robbers and towards a more soapy series with the personal, and often love lives, of the main characters taking centre stage. The revamp was ordered by ITV as ratings had declined somewhat and the average audience of the show was middle-aged men – ITV wanted to attract a younger audiences and to do so felt the series should become sexier and more like its soap counterparts.

The revamped series was marked with kicked off with a huge explosion at the Sun Hill Police Station which killed off six characters and during Marquess’ time as Executive Producer the coppers would drop like flies – barely a month went by without another regular meeting a nasty end. In 2003 with the revamp of the series well underway and ratings having improved work began on another spin-off series from The Bill. A previous spin-off in 2000, focusing on the popular character of DCI Burnside, had failed to attract strong enough ratings for ITV for a second series to be ordered.

The new spin-off would revolve around a team of detectives who worked for the Murder Investigation Team – a unit of the Metropolitan Police that investigation the gruesome murders that take place in the capital. To launch the spin-off the team would be introduced as investigating the fatal shooting of one of The Bill regular characters – and would investigate the other officers to see whether any of them were responsible for the shooting. The character of Sergeant Matthew Boyden [Tony O’Callaghan] had become deeply unpopular with his fellow officers and own daughter during 2003. He was having an affair with the Abigail Nixon, the daughter of DS Samantha Nixon, was homophobic towards Sergeant Craig Gilmore and was generally not a pleasant person. When Boyden was shot in the street alongside credit shark Dexter Barnes the police are unsure who the intended victim actually was – and so M.I.T are called in.

The style of the first series was very much “cinema verity” – a realistic shooting style with handheld cameras, fast close-ups and a gritty feel to the piece. The same style had also been introduced to The Bill in the weeks leading up to the spin-off launch – to introduce audiences to the style and get them accustomed to it. As with any radical change, especially in filming techniques, not all viewers were happy with the change and complained the filming techniques made them feel “sick”. This style of filming would later be dropped from The Bill and also from the second series of the spin-off.

The two central characters for M.I.T would be female detectives – a move at the time which was heralded as unique. Murder detective series, such as Inspector Morse and Dalziel and Pascoe, usually focused on two male detectives so the move to focus on two female detectives was seen as original by some. Former EastEnders actress Lindsey Coulson who, unlike some former soap stars, had found success after leaving the genre was cast in the role of DC Rosie McManus while Samantha Spiro, known for her stage work, was cast as DI Vivien Friend. While the two central characters were female the rest of the regular cast were male – to demonstrate perhaps the issues of how tough it is for females in a male dominated profession. Certainly such issues had been covered before in shows such as The Gentle Touch, Juliet Bravo and Prime Suspect. Steven Pacey, known for his role as Tarrant in Blakes 7, was cast as DCI Malcolm Savage, Vincenzo Pellegrino [Casualty], Joe Shaw [Bad Girls], Richard Hope [A Perfect State], Richard Huw [Van Der Valk], Michael McKell, Andrew Somerville [Hollyoaks] and Howard Ward were also cast in the series as part of the investigative team. All the actors had previously appeared in The Bill as other characters – so were already known by the production team.

The actual shooting of Matthew Boyden was filmed twice; once for the episode of The Bill in which it featured and then again – from another angle and on film – for the opening episode of Murder Investigation Team. The two different versions of the shooting scene were also shot on different days. The character was killed off in The Bill on Thursday 1^st May with the first episode of MIT airing on Saturday 3^rd May. As the opening episode dealt with Boyden’s murder several regular cast members of The Bill crossed over for the episode with DS Samantha Nixon [Lisa Maxwell], PC Nick Klein [Rene Zagger], Roberta Taylor [Inspector Gina Gold] and PC Ruby Buxton [Nicola Alexis] all appearing and although Cyril Nri is credited at the end for his role of Superintendent Adam Okaro his character doesn’t actually feature in the episode. The episode did have a cameo appearance from Sir Trevor McDonald as well reporting on the shooting. The investigation discovered that Boyden had been shot by a hitman ordered by his junkie daughter, Amy, who had fallen out with her father and saw his death as a quick way to get cash.

After the first episode there was little to connect the two shows in terms of crossovers with them both essentially feeling like different crime dramas which both happened to be set in the same city – London. The first series ran to eight episodes and focused little on the private lives of the officers – occasionally offering glimpses – but instead focused on the different weekly murders. At the end of the first series the character of DC Scott Granger [Joe Shaw] is killed off during the course of an investigation.

ITV commissioned a second series of MIT but it would undergo some big changes – whether these were ordered by ITV or not is unclear. The show would drop the MIT from its name and simply become Murder Investigation Team and most of the characters were not carried over to the second series. Most notably Samantha Spiro did not reprise her role of Vivien and in fact only three cast members returned – Lindsey Coulson, Richard Hope and Michael McKell. Lindsey Coulson’s character of Rosie MacManus was promoted to DS for the second series. They were joined by a medium cast of characters with Meera Syal playing the new overall head of the unit DCI Anita Wishart, Will Mellor playing DC Jed Griffins and Hugh Sachs and Abhin Galeya also playing new characters. To strength the ties with parent series The Bill it was decided to move across one of the characters as so it was announced that DC Eva Sharpe [Diane Parish] would leave the series to join the cast of the second series. It was also widely rumoured amongst fans that the character of DC Mickey Webb [Chris Simmons] would also be part of the second series but these proved to be untrue.

Other changes to the second series were to the format of it with only four episodes being produced but they were 90 minutes long instead of the 60 minute episodes of the first series. The episodes of the second series lacked names whereas the first series contained titles for each episode. Broadcast of the second series was constantly delayed by ITV resulting in it airing in Australia before the UK. It was eventually shown on Monday evenings in February 2005 but the delay certainly had an impact on the ratings with audiences struggling to remember the first series. As there was little continuity between the two seasons – in terms of characters, storylines and references – this also had an impact.

Unsurprisingly given the fact the series was so delayed in being broadcast, an obvious sign ITV didn’t want the spin-off any more, no further seasons were commissioned. Jonathan Young who was one of the producers on the second series later took over production of The Bill and is still in charge of the series to date – which has undergone several big changes in the past few years.

The first series of MIT is available to buy on DVD but five years on and the second series is yet to be released. All images copyright of Talkback Thames Productions.