For the fourth and reportedly final series of "Cardinal", the show returned to the wintry, snow-bound settings of the first run. There's a new serial killer in Algonquin, kidnapping apparently random citizens, securing their wrists with wire, coercing them to dictate a farewell message to a named loved-one before leaving them outside through the sub-zero night chill to die horribly of exposure, with a falcon's feather left beside them as a calling-card. The victims seem random, the first a well-to-do state prosecutor, the second a church-going elderly lady and we see their swarthy, coolly professional killer going about his business. Cardinal and Delorme initially struggle to connect the crimes but the killer isn't finished yet.
Things get personal for Delorme when the next scheduled victim turns out to be her ex-husband, now in tow with a new wife and child, but this is when things start going wrong for the killer and in a twist to events, the scheming paymaster behind it all has to come into the open, at this point revealing motive which goes back to a twenty year old miscarriage of justice involving the death by exposure of a young woman and its cover-up by the true perpetrators.
My suspicion and indeed fear, building up over the previous series, that Cardinal and Delorme would finally get it together personally, turned out to be well-founded, but in the end didn't spoil my enjoyment. Their coming together was handled tastefully with the only on-screen demonstrations of their mutual attraction being a hug here and some hand-on-hand action there. I doubt it will be the most loquacious of relationships given each character's reticence to speak but I wish them well for the future as they discuss their next gruesome case over morning coffee and toast.
The six-part story built up the tension gradually and convincingly, with both detectives as usual demonstrating Sherlock Holmes-type deductive abilities to join the, so far as I could see, wide-apart dots to crack the case leading to a tense conclusion fittingly set in the frozen wasteland of Algonquin.
Billy Campbell and Karina Vanasse as ever both ably inhabit their characters and there was strong support too from their regular back-up team especially Glen Gould and James Downing. Beautifully shot with countless drone-shots of the snowbound countryside turning up (or should that be down) the chill factor, this series was well up to previous standards. If the show is indeed now wrapped-up, then it certainly went out on a satisfying loose-ends-tied-up way, although while it might sound a bit masochistic to wish another serial-killer on the citizens of Algonquin Island, I would certainly like to see John and Lise team-up again in the future.
