Yahoo News Baptiste episode 1: Why is Edward Stratton lying?
Note: contains spoilers for episode one of Baptiste.
"I’m not the man I was."
Julien Baptiste might profess that his skills as an investigator have been blunted by age and a near-death experience, but his new spin-off show looks to be every bit as sharp and compelling as The Missing.
Opening with a brutal murder and a visceral dispatching of the corpse, Baptiste sees the now-retired detective called back into action and diving into the criminal underworld of Amsterdam as he probes the disappearance of a young woman.
As our lead, Tcheky Karyo is as quietly but fiercely charismatic as ever – incredibly still, but with a soulfulness, a pain, behind those twinkly eyes and dark glasses.
No question, we're hooked after the series opener, a twisty hour that left us with an entire caseload of questions. Join us as we dig into six of the biggest, and put forward a few theories of our own.
1. Who is Edward Stratton and why is he lying?
Tom Hollander is perfect casting as the disheveled, somewhat pathetic Stratton – you utterly accept him as both a heartbroken uncle desperate to reunite with his estranged niece and as somebody with a more sinister agenda.
Stratton tells Baptiste that 'Natalie Rose' (an alias) is his niece, raised by him and his ex-wife after her parents – Edward's brother and sister-in-law – were killed in a car crash when Natalie was 14.
The family moved to Antwerp after Stratton landed a job at a logistics firm (or so he says) – but Natalie developed a drug addiction that led to her becoming a sex worker in Amsterdam.
Stratton says he fears Natalie has been run out of town, or worse, by the notorious gangster Dragomir Zelincu. But Zelincu has disappeared – later resurfacing as the reformed Kim (Talisa Garcia), having transitioned but also undergone a crisis of conscience.
Kim says that Natalie was in debt to dangerous people, having turned to Romanian gangsters to finance her drug habit. But with Natalie having also learnt the truth about what happened to Zelincu, Kim offered her protection in return for keeping her secret.
This means that Stratton's story is at least partly true, at least in how it relates to Natalie’s circumstances, but when Kim gives up Natalie's current location to Baptiste, Natalie (Anna Próchniak) tells Julien that Edward is “not [her] f**king uncle".
"He’s not who you think he is,” she warns Baptiste. “Not at all.”
Fine... but if Stratton isn't Natalie's uncle, why was he so eagerly pursuing her, trawling the streets of Amsterdam, even before Baptiste became involved with the case? Why did he have a panic attack?
Alone in his hotel room, Stratton also seemed genuinely distressed when looking at a photo of Natalie on his phone, and again during a phone conversation with a woman named Clare (Clare Calbraith) whom we presume to be his ex-wife. So what gives?
The final scene also reveals that Stratton is in possession of a decapitated head, belonging to the man killed at the beginning of the episode. But is this as damning as it appears? Was he somehow involved in the murder, or did someone send him the head as a warning?
2. What have the farmer and his dog discovered?
Throughout this first episode, Baptiste occasionally cuts to scenes of a farmer who lives alone with his dog Caspar. The farmer finds a heart-shaped necklace among his field of tulips, inscribed with the letter "N".
Later, Caspar disappears and the farmer finds him digging up something else that's been buried in the field. We don't discover what they've found – could it be a body?
But if Natalie is with Baptiste, whose body is buried in the field? And if the 'N' necklace does belong to her, how did it get there? And if not, who does it belong to?
Given how writers Harry and Jack Williams are always loath to repeat themselves, we doubt the girl claiming to be Natalie is a fake – it'd be too reminiscent of the Alice Webster / Sophie Giroux switcheroo from series two of The Missing.
3. Who's holding Cristina captive?
An unsettling cutaway reveals a collection of young girls being held hostage as part of what appears to be a sex-trafficking ring, with buyers selecting girls via video phone.
There's a new arrival to the group, Cristina (Freya Kingsley), but she reveals that she's actually been held for a long while. "A few months ago, they had me somewhere else."
Cristina says she was "visiting her big sister" – you guessed it, Natalie – when a man she'd been speaking to at a bar lured her outside and bundled her into a car.
Who was this man? Was it Stratton? Where was Cristina before, and why was she moved? And is she really Natalie's sister? This damn show has us questioning everything.
4. What did the shell collector do to deserve *that*?
As we mentioned above, Baptiste kicks off with an older gentleman (Nicholas Woodeson) being horrifically suffocated and subsequently decapitated with a chainsaw, by the same Romanian hoodlum – Constantin (Alec Secareanu) – who may or may not be caught up in Natalie's disappearance.
Why chop his head off? And what was the motive behind the murder in the first place? It must be something significant given that the killer travelled from Amsterdam to Deal (in Kent) and back again in order to carry out the gruesome deed.
5. Who tipped Constantin off about Baptiste?
Shortly before he brains a debtor with a snooker ball, Constantin receives a phone call alerting him that the police have brought in a consultant – Baptiste – to investigate Natalie's disappearance.
He's alarmed enough by this discovery to have his men dig into Baptiste's background and later to arrange an 'accidental' run-in with Julien's wife Celia (Anastasia Hille) and plant a listening device on her.
But who warned Constantin? Is there a mole in the police department? And could it be related to our next question?
6. What is the Chief of Police hiding?
Martha (Barbara Sarafian) is Amsterdam's Chief of Police, as well as an old flame of Julien's. She also, it appears, enjoys the odd snifter while on duty, pouring booze from a hip-flask into a mug.
There's no question that this'll come back into play later on, but how? Will her police work be undermined by her alcoholism? Will the drinking spin out of control? And if she's hiding this, what else might Martha be lying about?
Trust no one, you guys.
Baptiste continues next Sunday at 9pm on BBC One.
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