HAUNTED suffered from the beginning from a severe case of schizophrenia. In some episodes it wanted to be a supernatural show full of weird ghostly happenings and things that go bump in the night whilst in others it wanted to be a simple cop show full of simple cop procedural stuff solving the case. This episode is one of the latter. Frank takes a case from his psychoanalyst who has lost an incriminating videotape. The clues lead to two men, one of whom quickly ends up dead. The links between the men are two women, one being the shrink and one being this week's ghost who seems to be responsible for everything whilst not appearing to do very much of anything except pop up at the end to make sure that everyone except Frank end up dead. The best thing about this episode is the ongoing thread with Simon, Frank's nemesis spirit. He has driven Frank to the very edge of suicide and the opening sequence is a startling one. The final shot sets up the show for a continuing battle of wills that never came to pass because the show was cancelled. That's a real shame because, whilst this episode keeps up the the uneven tone of the show, it has a very real sense of potential and of ideas that could bear some future examination. Sadly, that was not to be, but at least the whole series got to be shown on ITV4 in the UK. This episode, amongst others, was never transmitted in the US.
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