‘Professor T’: ITV Sets July Premiere For Ben Miller Cime Drama
ITV has set a July premiere for ‘Professor T‘, a new crime drama starring Ben Miller, based on the hit Belgian series of the same name.
Every aspect of Professor Jasper Tempest’s (Miller) life is precisely calibrated and rigidly structured. Impeccably dressed and meticulously punctual, he lectures daily at the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, teaching students imaginatively, if pedantically, about the science of crime. And each evening, he returns home to his apartment, which is as sterile and systematically ordered as a science lab. Thanks to this strictly regimented approach, his OCD and germaphobia are under control.
But Professor T’s buttoned-down world is slowly undone when he is persuaded by one of his former students, Detective Sergeant Lisa Donckers (Emma Naomi – ‘Bridgerton’), to assist her in investigating a serial rapist who has started attacking young women again after a 10-year hiatus. The Professor’s encyclopaedic knowledge of criminal psychology and his brilliant mind prove invaluable to the under-resourced CID team, but the cracks in his carefully constructed emotionless carapace also begin to show.
Working with the Police – and the fiery, instinctive, and occasionally chaotic Lisa, in particular – drags Professor T far from his comfort zone and forces him to confront his painfully suppressed feelings for an old flame, Detective Chief Inspector Christina Brand (Juliet Aubrey – ‘Snatch’, ‘Primeval’, ‘The White Queen’).
After deciding, in an uncharacteristically irrational moment, to move into his dusty and derelict family home, he also finds it increasingly difficult to escape the influence of his imperious mother, Adelaide (Frances De La Tour), with whom he shares a harrowing family secret that has cast a long shadow over both their lives.
Professor T is a classic crime procedural, featuring a brilliant criminologist and amateur sleuth who solves a succession of quirky and baffling cases. At the same time, it explores the complex private lives of a diverse and engaging cast of characters, not least Professor T himself and the troubling effect that childhood trauma invariably has on adult psychology.
The series also stars Barney White (‘Social Suicide’) as Detective Sergeant Dan Winters, Andy Gathergood (‘Hatfields & McCoys’, ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’) as Detective Inspector Paul Rabbit, Sarah Woodward (‘Queens of Mystery’, ‘The Bill’) as Ingrid Snares, Douglas Reith (‘Downton Abbey’) as “The Dean” – Wilfred Hamilton, and Ben Onwukwe (‘Safe’, ‘Doctors’) as Jackson Donckers.
‘Professor T‘ Season 1 premieres Sunday, 18th July 2021 at 9pm on ITV.
