Blue Flower (15 Oct. 2012)

The team reopen the murder of East German refugee Max Klein, whose last words were 'Blue Flower'. Visiting the site of his death Sandra and Steve meet Grace Cusack, whose son was killed at ... See full summary »

Director:

Philip John

Writers:

Simon Allen, Roy Mitchell (creator),

Stars:

Alun Armstrong, Amanda Redman, Dennis Waterman

Cast

Episode cast overview:
Alun Armstrong	...	Brian Lane
Amanda Redman	...	Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman
Dennis Waterman	...	Gerry Standing
Denis Lawson	...	Steve McAndrew
Anthony Calf	...	DAC Robert Strickland
Edward Baker-Duly	...	Max Klein
Elizabeth Berrington	...	Grace Cusack
Alex Blake	...	Paul Armitage
Aislinn Sands	...	Alicia Frei
Jordan Long	...	Corey Murgins
Nicholas Burns	...	DCI Rosser
Kate Bracken	...	Mia Adler
Roger Evans	...	Damon Rapley

Storyline

The team reopen the murder of East German refugee Max Klein, whose last words were 'Blue Flower'. Visiting the site of his death Sandra and Steve meet Grace Cusack, whose son was killed at the same spot a year before Max's death and tells them he came to England to look for his daughter Mia who had escaped East Berlin ahead of him. Meanwhile Gerry and Brian visit a recycling centre where Max worked and learn that he stole bundles of documents but are challenged by arrogant Inspector Rosser, who claims that they could interfere with his investigation of the centre in connection with identity fraud. When Mia is located she denounces her father as a member of the Blue Flower group which was pro-Stasi though ultimately the deaths of Grace's son and Max prove to be related and less political than expected.

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Drama | Mystery

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Details

Country:

UK

Language:

English German

Release Date:

15 October 2012 (UK)

Filming Locations:

Goldhawk Road, Shepherd's Bush, London, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Wall to Wall, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Goofs

When the team are in the house, Det Supt Pullman rubs a blue flower on the wall and it triggers a switch to open the door to a secret room. One of the characters says in a male voice 'What the...', but the voice is too high pitched to match any of the male characters. Obviously dubbed later.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Gerry Standing: ...I thought the whole gang were wearing that unif...
Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: [entering] Morning!
Steve McAndrew: Morning.
Gerry Standing: Hello, gov'nor.
Steve McAndrew: What have you got there?
Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: Electricity bills, bank statements, letters, all belonging to different people, and all recovered in a raid on a lock-up.
Steve McAndrew: What were they doing there?
Det.Supt.Sandra Pullman: Serious and Organized were acting on a tip-off and they found a huge heroin stash, but also discovered a whole stockpile of documents. These are just a sample.
Brian Lane: But why pass them on to us?
[...]

User Reviews

Was the victim a hero or a villain?

This week's case involves the murder of Max Klein, an East German man; he was killed five years earlier and the case has been reopened because bank statements with his fingerprints on were found as part of an anti-fraud operation. This leads Brian and Gerry to the recycling centre he worked at; a bit of nosing around there suggests there is certainly something dodgy going on but no indication of any involvement with a murder. Before moving to London Max worked as a 'puzzler' piecing together the shredded Stasi files left behind when the Iron Curtain fell. There aren't many clues left to investigate and his cryptic final words 'blue flower' had no obvious meaning. The only person who seems to have known him was a woman who had lost her son when he was hit by a taxi; she explains that Max was looking for his daughter; he told her that he'd managed to smuggle her out of East Germany two years before the communist state fell. DNA leads them to the daughter he never found and she has a very different story to tell… she has files showing that far from being a good man he was in the Stasi and arrested his own wife as she tried to escape.

This was a decent episode with a good number of suspects including; the fraudsters working at the plant, the taxi driver who killed the child and even Max's own daughter. During the course of the investigation there are plenty of laughs to be had; I particularly liked the scene in a bar where Gerry prevented a crook from getting away while relaying an anecdote concerning a villain with a sawn off shotgun and a parrot on his shoulder! There is also some tragedy; we see how the taxi driver still hasn't got over killing the child even though he was cleared… who would? If there was a fault it was that it fell into the TV cliché of having the only major character that didn't have an obvious motive turn out to be the killer… still it was entertaining and that is what matters.