Hidden Assets review: Blistering pace continues as new terror attack looms
Angeline Ball as Emer Berry in Hidden Assets.
RTÉ’s latest crime series Hidden Assets is moving along at a blistering pace as our Euro-sleuth detectives piece together evidence linking an Irish family to a shocking terrorist attack in Belgium.
Following the dramatic events of the first episode, the Criminal Assets Bureau’s Emer Berry (Angeline Ball) and Antwerp Inspector Christian De Jong (Wouter Hendrickx) agree to work together to crack the crime.
The spin-off from 2017’s Acceptable Risk so far marks a vast improvement on its predecessor, as they bang their heads together, looking more closely at the two warring siblings of a once-powerful family dynasty.
Barry and her colleagues unearth a valuable piece of evidence - an abandoned motorcycle connected to the killing of drug dealer Darren Reed, primed with a detonator to explode. She becomes increasingly convinced that a highly professional hit squad were involved in the killing of Darren Reed and there’s a high probability it was linked to the bombings.
Reed, it’s revealed, had asked his lawyer about doing a deal - information in exchange for immunity from prosecution - shortly before his death.
One person of interest is Bibi Melnick (Simone Kirby) who employed a young Muslim woman killed in the attacks. Her late father was the powerful head of a hedge fund company who lost everything amid dodgy business dealings.
Aware that she is on the radar of the authorities, Melnick tries to get ahead of the story by doing a TV interview. But the stakes have been upped - Christian believes another terrorist attack is imminent so the investigation becomes a race against time.
They are frantically trying to track the numbers Darren Reed used before he died. They include calls to Fionn Brannigan (Peter Coonan), the son of the top businessman and estranged sibling of Bibi.
Bibi tells them she left the country because her sibling brought her father’s business crashing down and he took his own life. “I’ve been trying to escape from it for years, but Fionn has a way of always dragging me back into his own shit.”
Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan (Silent Witness), Hidden Assets is the second crime caper from Peter McKenna, following his work on Kin. If the criticisms of Kin being too slowly paced were ultimately justified, the first two episodes of Hidden Assets are almost too stuffed with leads and plot developments.
But the promise is here, and the two engaging leads are supported by a strong cast. Let’s hope there aren’t too many red herrings along the way and the story gains more focus as it builds.
