Originally telecast over Britain's ITV1 in 2000, the two-part mystery miniseries Thursday the 12th began with the discovery of an unidentified body on the estate of Marius Bannister (Ciaran Hinds), a wealthy dentist and politician. As an investigative TV reporter
Julian Glover sifted through the particulars of the case, the viewer was introduced to the
dramatis personae: Bannister; his wife, Nina (Maria Doyle Kennedy); their troubled adopted teenaged son, Martin (
Jim Sturgess); and Nina's predatory sister, Candice Hopper (
Elizabeth McGovern). In
Rashomon fashion, a series of flashbacks indicated that any one of these worthies had motive aplenty to be a murderer -- and in fact, one of them was the victim. The key to the mystery was in the hands of Marius' supposedly senile father, Edgar Bannister (
Peter Vaughan). In the U.S., Thursday the 12th first aired over the Bravo cable network on June 4, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide