Messiah is a British television drama series, broadcast on the BBC One network and produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland, although the series itself is set in England. Made up of a series of occasional serials, the first, subtitled The First Killings, was broadcast in 2001. It has been followed by Messiah II: Vengeance is Mine (2003) and most recently Messiah III: The Promise (2004). The original production was based on a novel by Boris Starling : the subsequent instalments have been written directly for television. Starling has a cameo as a murder victim's corpse in the first serial.

A crime series, it follows the investigations of DCI Red Metcalfe, who often investigates particularly gruesome murders. Metcalfe is played by Scottish actor Ken Stott , and the other main regulars in the series are Kate Beauchamp (Frances Grey ), Duncan Warren (Neil Dudgeon ) and Metcalfe's wife Susan (Michelle Forbes). The deafness of Forbes' character necessitated both her and Stott learning British Sign Language for their characters' frequent exchanges.

The title Messiah, strictly speaking, relates only to the original series, where a serial killer sets out to kill twelve (actually eleven) men with the same names as the apostles, in the same way that the original apostles were killed, eg. St Bartholomew was skinned and St Peter was crucified upside down. The killer does this because he believes himself immortal, a second Messiah.

Messiah II deals with a serial killer (female) who murders all those implicated in the wrongful imprisonment of her father.

Messiah III begins with a prison riot, in which Kate Beauchamp is held hostage and almost killed. The action moves on to a hospital where those injured in the riot are being treated. From then on, everyone who threatened or harmed Beauchamp ends up dead.

External links

• Messiah 2: Vengeance Is Mine at the Internet Movie Database
• Messiah III: The Promise at the Internet Movie Database