Killing time

THE bad news is that we are racing through the second series of The Killing that has kept us firmly on the edge of our seats and peering from behind clenched fists for the past seven weeks.

And worse luck, there isn’t actually any good news to follow it up with – a third series is yet to be confirmed or commissioned, so make the most of Sarah Linden and co while they are still about.

When the drama hit our screens amid rather a lot of hype back in 2010, it seemed that actress Mireille Enos had been plucked out of nowhere. In truth, she was well-known on the stage after starring in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? on Broadway, where she earned herself a Tony Award nomination, and then for a decent-sized role in US drama Big Love.

Admittedly, though, it is the US version of The Killing for which everyone is raving about her recently.

Enos has landed on her feet in bagging the part of long-suffering Sarah Linden, and that’s something that the actress noted in a recent interview with Digital Spy.

“I think of the show as being an ensemble, but because I’m thought of as the lead, that has led people to think of me as someone who can carry a story,” she says.

“I’m getting more film opportunities...The whole thing has definitely put me in a different category.”

She’s certainly proud of the show. “It’s so rare that you get to create someone who’s three-dimensional,” she says.

“The writing of the show was, I thought, very filmic, but then there’s the additional benefit that I got to spend 13 hours telling Sarah’s story, instead of the two hours that a normal film would spend. She’s really an incredible person to spend all that time with.”

Of course fans of the show will know that the series started life as Forbrydelsen (aka The Crime), won a Bafta, was nominated for an Emmy, and that each series covers a crime investigation in one day (such as 24).

In the latest episode, Sarah is understandably shocked after receiving a disturbing call from Holder’s phone. It sounded like he was being beaten up, so she orders a police search team at the Wapi Indian Reservation.

However, far from happy that Ms Linden defied his orders and visited the casino outside their jurisdiction, Lieutenant Carlson refuses permission for the search, so a guilt-riddled Sarah returns to the reservation alone.

DOES broadcaster Cherry Healey have a clause somewhere in her contract that states her name must be included within the title of her telly shows?

The presenter has done a lot of work for BBC3 over the years, and earlier this year, even managed to break in to mainstream Beeb. She’s certainly busy.

However, she has taken time out recently to look after her daughter, but the fact that she is trying to get back into a normal way of life of course makes for another decent documentary.

In Cherry Healey: How to Get a Life, she wonders if she has been left behind, and explores modern relationships. This means chats with identical twins, one of whom is married and the other single, teenagers who have threesomes and a man who is desperate to meet “the one”.

BARRISTER and historian Harry Potter – he’s probably heard all the jokes – is looking into the development of the English judicial system in The Strange Case of the Law.

“The story of English law is one about which we can all be proud,” he says. “It is an important aspect of our national history, a boon we have given the world, and has been largely one which has ensured liberty and justice in equal measure, the two greatest attributes of civilisation.”

He begins by looking at the rise of trial by order, in which painful tests would be conducted to determine guilt or innocence, and explains how trial by jury replaced systems of religious “proof”.

He also looks at the Magna Carta, the most famous legal document in history.