Hidden Assets review: It's getting fierce fishy altogether as we reach the halfway point
As the series builds, Hidden Assets is now delivering real drama. Picture: Guillaume Van Laethem/AcornTV
Angeline Ball gives a good hard stare. As a CAB investigator the hard stare is a part of her DNA - and one filthy look from her gives the audience a good idea as to who she thinks is keeping secrets.
Unfortunately there are stares a-plenty from Ball’s Emer Berry in episode four of Hidden Assets as the investigation into a violent terror attack with Irish connections risks coming unstuck at a crucial stage.
Finding and facing down a terror cell was never going to be a straightforward task, no matter how good our Euro-cops are at tracking clues.
So episode four of Hidden Assets is mired in disappointment and frustration as Ireland’s Berry and Belgium’s Christian De Jong (Wouter Hendrickxx) bang their heads together - and frequently bang their fists off the wall.
Cracking crime can be an odious task - and it doesn’t help that a key player in the investigation, Fionn Brannigan (Peter Coonan) has gone AWOL, just as he’d agreed to speak to the authorities.
Emer hot-foots it to Antwerp to meet her colleague on hearing of Brannigan’s disappearance and questions his sibling, Bibi (Simone Kirby), who is shaken by a terrified phone call she received from her brother and is convinced something sinister has happened to him.
It emerges that she is right. A body identified as that of Brannigan is found in macabre circumstances in woodlands beyond the airport.
Christian, meanwhile is enraged to learn that a colleague has beaten a confession out of a Muslim man who knew the bombers. In a case where every element is now frantically playing out in the media and with the public, it undermines the investigation. And with growing evidence that another attack on Belgian soil is imminent, there is no time to waste.
RTÉ’s sturdy crime procedural has already given us storytelling and a nifty pace, and as the series builds it’s now delivering real drama. The writers and cast are doing a fine job at keeping audiences guessing and like the rest of us, our protagonists have a few ideas but little firm evidence as to which characters know more than they’re letting on.
Story strands reveal a possible connection to the dark web, a link to a secret property owned by Brannigan in India, and a link to a Colombian criminal which doesn’t add up. It’s all fierce fishy altogether.
A good detective series should have you guessing while making you feel clever when the reveals do come, and mid-series, Hidden Assets is keeping us nicely perplexed.
