The woman in charge, Major Zsofia Arslan ( Dorka Gryllus), knows who he is and is not best pleased with his arrival. goes to Budapest because that's how he lives now. It's not until she finds Will's phone - his only method of communication - still in his room that she realizes something has gone very wrong and alerts assistant Nadeem ( Ace Bhatti).īaptiste was already running from case to case without stopping when he heard Chambers' plea from his hotel TV.
Her two teenage sons also resent her, especially since the death of their sister Laura, in an incident that left younger son Will ( Conrad Khan) mute, and only communicating with his brother, Alex ( Stuart Campbell), by text.Īfter an uncomfortable dinner where Emma drunkenly overshares their story with "hotel friends" Benjamin and Sally ( Rhashan Stone and Michelle Duncan) and ends with her and Richard having a row, she wakes to discover all three gone. Her husband Richard ( Adrian Rawlins) is a misogynistic jerk who's resentful of having to revolve his life around her ambassador job in Hungary. Her obsession drives this season, and her madness, which fully careens off the deep end by the end of the hour, is what's worth watching.Ĭhambers is not a happy woman. In this case, he's been given the great Fiona Shaw, who does not just co-star but takes the entire show wholesale and turns it into The Emma Chambers Mystery. It is a choice that will drive Celia ( Anastasia Hille) to leave him.īut like The Missing, Baptiste is only as strong as the guest star the BBC pairs with Karyo. Baptiste ( Tchéky Karyo) has fully dived into that, having lost his daughter Sarah, whose drug relapses were never far from the edge of the picture and whose death seemed to have taken the life of her child as well.
Baptiste Season 1 did not and is the weakest entry because of it.īut the new season of Baptiste fully returns to the series as a portrait of obsessive fixation, the personal belief that if someone can fix one thing, they can somehow fix their lives.
Both suffered for it, though at least The Missing Season 2 came up with a happy ending to make up for the loss. Baptiste Season 1 also attempted to move away from the central obsessive nature of Edward Stratton's search for Natalie. Season 2 downplayed the obsession angle some, relying more on star Keeley Hawes' emotional roller coaster to hold it up. But the final scene reveals the kidnapper is Tony, now gone utterly mad, having become the thing he believed himself chasing. Even after the truth comes out that the child was killed in a hit and run, Tony still doesn't accept it - and neither does the audience, having seen a bearded kidnapper figure stalking children who looked like Oliver. Tony could never accept his son was gone, convinced somehow Oliver could be found and Tony redeemed. James Nesbitt starred as Tony, who turned his back for a moment during a football match and never saw his eight-year-old son, Oliver, again.
What that is, the show will get back to before this is all over, but until then, it's time to jump 14 months previous to the night before she lost her family.Įmma: I always thought people who do their job for free are either delusional or not very good at it.īut before we cover the setup for this season of Baptiste, we should rewind to the show that initially introduced the character, the BBC series The Missing, which aired over here on STARZ in 2014. Though the show was billed as a mystery thriller, it was really a story about obsession. Emma Chambers ( Fiona Shaw) wakes up and lowers herself into her wheelchair before meeting Toby ( Jamie Maclachlan), assisting her with something not entirely above board. Like many prestige shows currently on TV, Baptiste's second season begins in medias res. Credit: Courtesy of (C) Two Brothers Pictures & All3Media