Product Description

Robson Green (Reckless) stars as the smart, sexy, brash, and slightly mysterious Detective Inspector Dave Creegan in these three gripping and gritty mysteries that follow the exploits of the Organized and Serial Crime Unit.

Maverick police detective Creegan is the newest member of London’s Organized and Serial Crime Unit (OSC), an elite, rapid-response crime squad. The OSC uses their diverse crime-fighting skills to bring justice to society. Along with his stalwart partner D.I. Susan Taylor (Nicola Walker, Four Weddings and a Funeral), Creegan squares off against some of England’s most dangerous criminals–a serial murderer of children, a killer intent on murdering hospital patients, and a cyber-criminal who lures young Web-surfers with a gothic fantasy game and manipulates them into committing violent crimes.

Special DVD features include: link to the Mystery! Web site; scene selections; and closed captions.

On three DVD5 discs. Region coding: All regions. Audio: Dolby stereo. Screen format: 4 x 3 full frame.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29841 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-06-29
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 360 minutes

Amazon.com
This three-volume set captures a police force totally unlike the ones U.S. television and film audiences regularly see. Gone are the gunshots and widespread violence that afflict characters on NYPD Blue and Homicide. This dark British miniseries has an unflinching focus on the pensive, slightly spooked but always confident Detective Inspector Dave Creegan (Robson Green). Of course the caseload isn't entirely alien to a pop culture audience, weaned as it is on crime novels and American television-style plots. There's an aging geneticist who is possessed by an odd infatuation--apparently not a sexual one--with children, keeping them penned in an all-white room while watching them on a remote video cam, and other deviants just interesting enough to capture extended interest. Touching Evil's pacing is intricately slow, such that evidence gathering can be seen from an inchworm-like perspective (showing tweezers extracting a single hair, for example). Green's role is structured like Fox Mulder and other U.S. television creations. Moody and a bit inscrutable, Creegan comes to the Organized and Serial Crime Unit after a long sabbatical, triggered (no pun, really!) by his getting shot in the head. Rather than give up police work after meeting with the bullet, however, he recommits to the job, treating cases as if they're his personal obsession. And they are. Creegan violates all the conventions his American TV-cop counterparts break in their unbridled passion to solve crimes, but he does it with unforced and unhurried relish. The plots in each of these episodes are singular, allowing the story lines to develop like good mysteries, even driving the viewer to suspect that Creegan's passions are leading him waywardly away from the cases. Shot with mostly stoic camera angles, the show's energy changes significantly when Creegan's heart begins to pound, the camera catches in halted visuals, and the drama builds and builds until, well, until it avoids resolution time and again, much to the viewer's delight. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

The best thing on TV in years.
Flipping through the channels late one night, I happened across a particularly dark, yet compelling show that I discovered was a 4-episode British television program (aired on PBS' Mystery) called Touching Evil. The show, and the lead character, Inspector Dave Creegan (played by Robson Green), sucked me in immediately. With his piering blue eyes and slightly bemused manner, Creegan is at once haunting and haunted.

We follow Creegan and the OSC, a fictional serial crimes unit, as they investigate various bizarre crimes. Touching Evil is only structurally similar to your standard crime drama, going so much deeper in regards to characters and their quirks. Throughout the course of the series, we watch one investigator's life fall apart just as Creegan's is coming back together.

Touching Evil is dark, moody, and irresistible; it's like nothing else on television. And it's the best thing I've seen on TV in years.

Intense, Brooding, Chilling Mysteries
Without doubt the Touching Evil series is, along with Prime Suspect, Wire in the Blood (also with Robson), one of the finest mysteries ever developed for television. Once again British television leaves its Stateside counterpart in the dust when it comes to creating a well-reasoned, educated yet infinitely watchable "who-done-it?"

Robson Green's Creegan has a intensity that is deeply affecting and eminently watchable. Just shy of being over-the-edge, Creegan is instantly likeable yet worrisome; like an old friend whom one is justifiably concerned about. Yet he's not so "out there" that we find it difficult to identify with him. Quite the opposite.

Nicola Walker is his perfect partner, D.I. Taylor. Like the best entertainment, Touching Evil isn't a one man show and while the major burden may fall to Robson, he is surrounded with a rich and varied supporting ensemble with a genuinely stand out performance from Shuan Dingwell as D.C. Rivers.

I'm glad to see Season 1 finally making it to DVD! Dare I wish for "Touching Evil IV?"

p.

Very Absorbing
This is one of the best mystery series I have seen. It's moody and dark and has an excellent storyline. I was hooked from the beginning. I loved Robson Green in Reckless and this shows he can certainly carry off a drama as well. The thing I really liked about this series is that you really felt like you knew a bit about the characters and their quirks. Also, you got the impression of something dark and sinister going on w/o actually seeing blood and gore. American television could certainly use a few lessons!