BBC One’s adaptation of JK Rowling’s Strike series, written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, is set to return later this year.
Strike‘s fifth season will be titled Troubled Blood, like the novel it’s based on, with Holliday Grainger and Tom Burke reprising their roles as Robin Ellacott and Cormoran Strike respectively.
It looks like the pair have quite the challenge on their hands as they take on a cold case that dates all the way back to the 1970s. Grainger revealed how the pair deal with the investigation into a doctor’s disappearance back then – and it will definitely put their skills to the test.
“A lot of the witnesses and the people involved are old or dead now, so it’s a case of tracking people down and slowly putting together the notes of two different police detectives,” she explained.
“For Robin and Strike this case is quite different from the others, in that it’s digging into the past and trying to trace people that are hard to track down.”
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Tom Edge, the series’ writer, also gave some insight as to what viewers can expect from the cold case.
“The case that Strike takes on in Troubled Blood is the case of a missing person, Margot Bamborough, who has been missing since 1974 and it’s her daughter who approaches Strike and asks him if he would take one last shot at finding out what happened to her,” he said.
“Strike and Robin set about turning over the old police files and interviewing the very few colleagues that are still alive, most of whom are in their 80s, while they begin to discover the deeper story of what may have happened to Margot Bamborough.
“I think they also find themselves wrestling with their own memories of motherhood and what it is to be a child whose mother doesn’t come back – that’s very potent in Strike’s case.”
Edge revealed the case will also be poignant for Grainger’s Robin, who as “a female private investigator, it’s a world which traditionally feels quite boysy and which she isn’t necessarily confident about being taken seriously”.
The series will feature flashbacks of ’70s London, which the BBC says will include “Soho vice dens and clubland and the daily misogyny of Margot Bamborough being a woman in a man’s world working as a female GP with some other stuffy patriarchal colleagues”.
Strike: Troubled Blood will premiere on BBC One soon, while Strike seasons 1-4 are available now on BBC iPlayer. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our TV Guide or visit our dedicated Drama hub for the latest news.
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