Warning: The following article contains spoilers for the premiere of Bancroft.
ITV kicked off four straight nights of hard-boiled detective drama with the premiere of Bancroft tonight (December 11).
The gritty crime thriller pitted Broadchurch's Sarah Parish against Game of Thrones' Faye Marsay as two detectives whose intertwining murder cases put them at odds.
Monday's series premiere slowly unravelled the troubled past of Detective Superintendent Elizabeth Bancroft (Parish), who was desperately trying to keep her own dark tendencies a secret while investigating the Kamara street gang.
When DS Katherine Stevens' (Marsay) own probe into the 1990 unsolved disappearance of a local woman named Laura Fraser put her in Bancroft's crosshairs, an inevitable conflict started building.
It was clear from the off that Bancroft wanted Stevens nowhere near the Fraser case, which she originally investigated more than 25 years earlier. Maybe that's because Bancroft was much more involved in the disappearance than anybody knows?
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Those tuning in were mostly gripped by all of the twists and turns of the Fraser case:
However, some fans couldn't quite get past a few technical problems. First, the scar on Bancroft's cheek seemed to, ermm, move quite a bit.
Bancroft borrowed from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story playbook in using CGI to digitally de-age Sarah Parish for the scenes taking place back in 1990. It was a controversial choice, to say the least.
If you were intrigued by the opening of Bancroft (and not put off by the weird CGI), the series continues on Tuesday (December 12), Wednesday (December 13) and Thursday (December 14) at 9pm on ITV.
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Justin is a freelance entertainment journalist and writer. He first joined Digital Spy as a freelance entertainment reporter in 2010 and also worked as a sub-editor for the brand, serving as Night News Editor from 2016 to 2024. Over more than a decade, Justin has covered numerous major entertainment events from the US and has interviewed a wide-ranging group of public figures, from comedian Steve Coogan to icons from the Star Trek universe, cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reality stars from numerous Real Housewives cities and the Below Deck franchise. Justin has also been on the ground to cover major pop culture events like the Star Wars Celebration and the D23 Expo. He's written for titles across the Hearst network, plus the likes of CBR and Us Weekly.
