Originally posted here. Posted with permission from Pinkamethyst.

The resident crazy-psycho-bitch (aka Miranda) coerces her friends into committing murder for her. Said friends almost get away with aforementioned murder, but darling Leo, Harry and their collection of rather nice detectives, figure out what�s going on and almost save the day. Almost. Miranda ends up slashing her wrists in front of her webcam with her mother in hysterics. Hey, it�s a shame but these things happen I guess.

Episode Four - Supernova [part one].

There are lots of wind chimes at the beginning. I spent most of the first and second part wondering what wind chimes had to do with anything. I have some wind chimes outside my bedroom window. In the winter, it�s really quite annoying because it�s very windy and very hard to sleep when all you can hear is bloody wind chimes. Anyway. Irrelevant. A light shines on a stage and people play drums and guitars. A girl runs out of a school door. Lots of other teenagers follow. They end up finding one of their friends, Alison Garland, with her wrists slashed in the playground. Who slashes their wrists in the playground anyway?

A message flashes up on a computer screen. One of the users is called �Supernova�. I suspect this is where the episode title comes from.

Harry arrives at a crime scene. A car�s tires have been stolen. Nearby, there is a dead body. There�s blood on the front seat; Harry thinks this is a shame (it�s such a nice car). Turns out the dead body has a lot of stab wounds on his back and vomit on his tie. The dead guy was stabbed, transported and dumped.

Leo has also arrived at a crime scene, where Alison Garland lies dead. At last, Leo gets some interesting on screen time! A knife was found in Alison�s hand, and this is presumably the knife she used to kill herself. Leo remembers his daughter, Cassie.

There are yet more wind chimes before Leo begins the autopsy. Turns out Alison had been cutting her arms for some time before she killed herself. Charlie Ferguson thinks she killed herself. I like the detectives in this episode. Leo says Alison had sex shortly before her death, but it could have been rape. He then remembers Cassie some more.

Nikki wanders into his office and Leo asks her when she first had sex. She says she was just fifteen. I love that Leo thinks it�s perfectly okay to ask Nikki about her sex life. Anyway, Nikki gets a new case before she can ask Leo if he�s okay.

I love her jacket here too. It reminds me of one I have, but mine is not half as cool as Nikki�s. Anyway, Nikki meets up with Julian Vincent, who shows her the dead body: Kay Owen, who is old. She�s been dead a few days already. Julian thinks maybe she was a victim of a burglar who�s been going around pretending to be a meter reader and stealing things.

More messages flash up on a computer screen. A press woman is being a nosy bugger and asking people about Alison. Sylvana tells her about Alison before wandering off and looking sad.

A man who I believe is the headmaster waffles on about the school and Alison. He then introduces them to Caroline, who is the psychologist. Leo tells Caroline that Alison possibly killed herself and Charlie tells her Alison had sex. Caroline doesn�t think Alison killed herself. Leo points out that Alison had been cutting her wrists for quite a long time. Personally, I think Caroline�s right, but only because no one ever kills themselves in this program because that would just be too simple. (Well, obviously the exception to this is Mind and Body, but there was a reason for those people committing suicide).

Nikki, meanwhile, is getting Kay�s son, Robert Owen, to formally identify Kay. Julian asks Robert about Kay while Nikki shows Stephen, his son, how a microscope works. Really, it�s cute, seeing her with kids. And also, Stephen is sweet. Stephen says Kay used to let him wind up the clock and they watched old movies together. I think Nikki�s remembering her own grandmother when Stephen�s talking about Kay. Anyway, we get a flashback of Stephen winding up the clock and Robert coming downstairs. Back to the present, and Nikki�s wearing another headband. I hadn�t noticed it before, but it�s really nice.

Harry is examining the shirt of the dead guy. There are eight stab holes. �This is going to be a stubborn stain isn�t it.� Sometimes, I love Harry and his inappropriate sense of humour. The guy�s name is Chris Duncan and he ate a crinkle cut chip shortly before he died.

Harry and DI Shirley go to Chris�s workplace � Duncan Prestige Motors. Harry strokes a car that reminds me of how Captain Jack strokes his ship in Pirates of the Caribbean. A guy at Chris�s work says that Chris hasn�t been in for three days. Harry thinks the workshop smells rather strongly of disinfectant. I�m thinking Chris got murdered and somebody cleaned up the blood. Shirley goes to see the chip shop owner saw Chris in there on Friday night. Whoever killed Chris locked up behind them.

Sylvana is talking to Caroline and Charlie about Alison. She says Alison was a nice girl.

Shirley and Harry go to see Chris�s wife, Mary Duncan. Mary hasn�t seen him since Friday morning. She says Chris was a work-a-holic, that he never came home very much. Mary says he needed some time on his own. Mary also says that her daughter is in France on an exchange visit and her son is at university in Bristol.

There are yet more wind chimes and more messages on screen. Leo and co. watch a video of Alison beating up a girl called Kelly Wetherby. Caroline says she counsels Kelly and that her job is to help Kelly fight her own battles.

Nikki does the autopsy on Kay. She has minor cuts and abrasions and a large wound on her left shin, which looks infected. The shin wound occurred three or four days before death. There�s a very distinctive pattern to the mark. Julian says her son paid for a carer to come in every day, but he still thinks it was a robbery. Nikki says not: there�s no way she could have got up and opened the door after her shin was injured.

Kelly and her father are talking to the Caroline and Charlie. Kelly says Alison used to beat her up once a week. Kelly�s father gets rather pissed that the school didn�t do anything. Kelly says that Alison did this because she was an evil troll. She also says that she never told anyone because she didn�t want this to happen because Alison would�ve killed her.

Leo sits down to have lunch with Caroline. I wish Caroline would stay, actually � I love her and Leo together. Leo still thinks Alison killed herself. Caroline still thinks he�s wrong. Charlie comes over and tells Leo that Gerard Brown just sold a load of CDs about his love for Alison. Gerard Brown suddenly appears on the roof. Caroline and Leo go up to find �Fish� as he is now known apparently. �Fish� draws graffiti on the roof and is then removed from the roof by police officers.

�Fish� admits to having sex with Alison the day she died. He gave her cannabis, she gave him sex. �Fish� says that when Alison died, he was with Sylvana. Charlie holds him on suspicion of rape.

Harry is explaining vomit to Shirley. It contained tofu and other healthy stuff. Tofu�s quite nice actually, if you haven�t had it before. Shirley asks Mary what she ate the night Chris Duncan died. Mary kind of admits to murdering her husband, providing they keep her children out of it. I�m sensing that maybe she�s covering for someone.

A woman enters Kay�s house. She says she�s Rosa and that she�s Kay�s carer.

Sylvana says �Fish� was her boyfriend and is not all that bothered to find out he had sex with Alison. She says he didn�t rape Alison and that she was with him when Alison died. Turns out she�s lying. But, hey, everybody lies in this program.

Enter Miranda, who we have seen before, but didn�t know who she was. She�s Caroline�s very strange daughter. She�s actually completely mentally unstable, but that�s not important right now. Caroline tells Leo �Fish� didn�t rape Alison because he�s not a violent type. Caroline stalks off with Miranda.

Rosa, meanwhile, has been brought in to talk to Julian and Nikki. Nikki doesn�t think Rosa�s the burglar. In fact, there isn�t a burglar, so, y�know, all this is irrelevant. Rosa says she was in Glasgow working with a photographer to build up a modelling portfolio, and that Kay told her to do it. Rosa says she loved Kay. Rosa�s sweet. Nikki chews her pen.

Leo goes a-calling on Caroline to sort things out. Seriously, those two could be so cute together, as friends or more. Leo offers her wine to make up for him being a moron earlier. I love it when people offer alcohol instead of saying sorry � alcohol can go so much further than a word. Miranda listens in to their conversation. Leo wants Caroline to see the cuts on Alison�s arms.

The police, meanwhile, are searching the Duncan home. Hannah and John are back now, it seems. Harry needs John to identify his father�s body. A photo frame is found with blood on it. Both the brother and sister deny knowing anything about it. Sometimes I wonder why people bother lying on this program � it�s so obvious they�ll get found out.

Leo and Caroline talk about Alison cutting herself. Caroline says that when girls cut themselves, it�s about communicating something. I find it annoying � and slightly unbelievable � that Caroline gives only one explanation for Alison cutting herself. Surely she realises, as a psychologist, that everyone is different and you can�t just group every female self-harmer together and say �these girls cut themselves because they want to communicate something�. But, anyway, Leo and Caroline decide that Alison had stopped cutting herself because she�d fallen in love with �Fish�.

Hannah and John are at the lab. Leo sees Hannah�s uniform and thinks she�s there about Alison. And there�s more wind chimes before a computer screen with the names �Warrior Queen�, �Supernova� and �Perfect Ten� pops up.

Nikki is being clever and working out what happened to Kay. I�ll summarise: Kay tried to get out of bed with her bad shin. She put her hand out to support her, but the table had wheels so she fell sideways. So she grabbed the dressing table, but her hand slipped on a hanky. She whacked her head on something else and died. Which is unfortunate and very unlucky, but an accident. Kay�s son wants to sue the care company. But Nikki can�t sign off on the post-mortem report because they don�t know what happened to her shin.

Harry and Leo are discussing Chris and Alison. Leo thinks they�re connected because Chris was murdered the day before Alison, and Hannah is in the same class as Alison. He also does flashy things on the shiny board and proves that Chris and Alison�s wounds were inflicted with the same knife. Woah, coincidences! So basically, this means that whoever killed Alison killed Chris too. And Alison�s tox report shows that she had chloroform in her blood � the killer subdued her using that. Harry thinks maybe the key to it all is the Duncan family.

Shirley is talking to Mary again. Mary confesses to the murder of her husband. She�s lying too.

The blood on the photo frame matches John�s DNA. John has an icky cut on his head. John says he and Chris had a row a couple of weeks before. John says the row was about cars. He�s lying too. But John didn�t kill Chris � he has an alibi for both Chris and Alison�s murders.

Mary, however, thinks John did kill Chris and so is lying for him. But now she can stop lying for him because Shirley has kindly informed her that John is innocent. Mary did find his body though � so I guess technically she�s probably guilty of perverting the course of justice or something � because she moved the body so it wouldn�t be found. Mary won�t say why she thought John killed Chris.

Caroline tells Leo that Chris Duncan was a parent volunteer on a school trip the year before. A pupil told her that �Fish� was caught by Chris going into Alison�s room, but �Fish� denied everything so nothing happened. So maybe �Fish� was angry enough to kill Chris?

Charlie talks to Sylvana again. She eventually tells him that she wasn�t with �Fish� when Alison was killed: she lied for him because she wanted to keep him interested.

Charlie then says that Kelly Wetherby has gone missing, and that she was going to meet up with �Fish�. �Fish� grabs Kelly in the street. Lots of words flash up on the screen about little piggies � presumably a reference to the fairy tale.



Episode Four � Supernova [part two].

Of course, it turns out that Kelly and �Fish� were just out on a date. Or something. Kelly is grounded, �Fish� is innocent and all is well. And there are yet more wind chimes. And more words on the screen. �Supernova� is coercing her friends into committing murder for her. Which is kinda mean, to take advantage of them like that.

Nikki has apparently figured something out. So she goes back to Kay�s house and bumps into Julian. I love, adore and worship her boots. Nikki has founds a footprint on a piece of mail. Now, to normal people, this would be very boring, but Nikki uses said footprint to work out that someone must have visited Kay after she had hurt her shin but before she died. Nikki also discovers how Kay hurt her shin: she went to get her loft ladder down and it hit her in the shin.

Cut back to the school. Hannah is looking around. Kelly is looking around. Sylvana is standing alone. Hannah catches Kelly�s eye. I�m sure Sylvana is only in this bit to make us think that she has something to do with it, when in fact she�s perfectly innocent. Hannah and Kelly, however, are about as guilty as you get.

Shirley and Charlie are talking to �Fish�. To summarise the interview, �Fish� did not kill anyone; he got Sylvana to lie because he was shop-lifting at the time of her murder. �Fish� says he keeps hearing Chris�s voice all the time. He says on the field trip, he went into Alison�s room and caught Chris Duncan having sex with Hannah.

Caroline arrives at the school looking for Hannah. She eventually finds her eating lunch in the toilet�which is weird. I wouldn�t eat my lunch in my school toilets if you paid me to do it. Seriously. Who wants to eat on a toilet seat? But I digress.

Harry and John have a heart-to-heart on the stairs. Harry�s very nice to John actually. John tells Harry that Hannah told him that Chris and her had been having sex. John and Chris argued over it. hat�s how John�s head got whacked against the photo frame. Mary told John to go back to uni, that she�d deal with it.

Nikki and Julian are going through Kay�s old mail � apparently, Kay fell in love with one of her patients. They sent each other love notes. Until he got blown up. That�s all very nice, but doesn�t solve the mystery of who came to visit Kay. However, Nikki is about to have an epiphany (I love that word) because she has discovered that the clock in Kay�s hallway is still ticking. Basically, Kay�s son lied about visiting her seven weeks ago: he actually came a couple of days after she was hurt. Stephen wound up the clock, just like he always did. Kay told her son to bog off because�I don�t know why, but that�s not important. Nikki looks pretty, which is always a bonus.

More message flash on-screen. I love how these teenagers actually write properly. It�s nice.

Shirley talks to Hannah about her father abusing her. Hannah, apparently, is almost as mentally unstable as Miranda because she�s invented a whole fairy story type thing instead of actually talking about her and her dad. Still, Hannah has a reason to be all messed up; Miranda is just strange. I�m a little confused about whether Hannah wanted to have sex with her dad or whether she�s just screwed up in the head and he manipulated her into thinking that was what she wanted. Anyway, Hannah says she had �Supernova�, who would do anything to help her.

Miranda walks down the street, looking fairly normal for a complete psychopath.

Leo and Caroline are discussing �Supernova�. Caroline explains to Leo that her ex lives in New York and that Miranda gets great holidays. Yay, Miranda. She�s still a psycho though. Leo tells Caroline about his wife and Cassie dying in a car accident. Kelly turns up on the doorstep, wanting to talk to Caroline. Now that�s dedication � giving your pupils your home address should they need you! Miranda and Leo watch TV together. Miranda says that it was horrible after dad left and that she was expelled from school. Miranda says there�s nothing wrong with friends doing things for each other. Miranda is looking more unstable by the minute. Kelly is talking about something. I have no idea what she�s on about. Never mind.

A guy named Walter Best, who I think is the headmaster of the school, gets stabbed. Unsurprisingly he dies. Leo gets called out to investigate it. Harry is already there. So is Nikki. What is Nikki doing on this case anyway? Anyway, she�s found a fingerprint on his back-pack.

Harry does autopsy things. Nikki writes notes. She�s right-handed, if anyone�s curious. Harry finds residue under Walter�s fingernails.

Nikki�s hair is particularly pretty in this scene. The DNA under Walter�s fingernails has the same mitochondrial (I�m so amazed I can actually spell that) DNA as Mary Duncan. So therefore it must be Hannah Duncan�s. Charlie is confused � everyone who has a motive for the murders has an alibi. Leo deduces that all three (Walter, Chris and Alison) were murdered by three different people. They get Hannah�s DNA from a hairbrush to check it against the DNA found under Walter�s fingernails. And they get a fingerprint to match against the fingerprint on the back-pack.

Leo goes to see Caroline again. Caroline thinks maybe Hannah�s working with her friends. Got it in one, Caroline! Leo cannot figure out why Hannah would have wanted to kill Walter, though she had a motive for killing her father. Leo then figures out that all three involved were swapping murders. Got it in one, Leo! These two work so well together. Basically, Kelly had a motive for killing Alison, Hannah had a motive for killing Chris and �Supernova� (god, if you haven�t figured out who it is yet�) had a motive for killing Walter Best.

Kelly and Hannah meet up and discuss how �Supernova� is coming. Kelly talks about Holloaks. Hannah is weirded out after having killed Walter.

The wind chimes finally have some relevance � they�re like a curtain of chimes in a club Miranda goes to. Miranda � yes, she is �Supernova� � wants photos of dead Walter for her website. She says she wanted Walter dead because he kicked her out of school. She then goes off and gets alcohol illegally. But that�s okay because it�s the least of her crimes: no one really cares if you buy alcohol illegally when you�ve committed murder. Miranda calls Caroline and says they�re going down the Crypt, which is the name of the club with the wind chimes.

Hannah cries. When Hannah first met Miranda, she wished she could cry. Wow. That�s nice: her daddy�s dead and now she can cry. Miranda wants Kelly to kill another one � turns out it�s her mother. Miranda tells Kelly that if she does this, she�ll love her forever. Miranda is also convinced they�re fighting evil. I�m really beginning to suspect that Miranda is several sandwiches short of a picnic.

Kelly almost murders Caroline, but in the end can�t go through with it. Or something along those lines. Anyway, the long and short of it is that Caroline is not dead and Kelly won�t tell the police who �Supernova� is. Caroline asks Leo to pick up Miranda from the Crypt. Kelly laughs hysterically because Kelly is a bit crazy�

Nikki and Harry go looking for motive to kill Walter Best. I�m still infatuated with Nikki�s hair.

Leo picks up Miranda. Miranda acts very weirdly in the car, asking about Leo�s daughter and her death. Leo thinks Miranda�s drunk. He drops her home.

Harry says Walter Best hasn�t done anything to anybody except teach them Geography again. Well�there�s your motive! Geography�s pretty boring � no wonder Miranda wanted to murder him. Nikki, however, has discovered the real reason for Walter�s death: he excluded Miranda. Harry asks if this is a motive. Nikki asks if she is very disturbed. In answer to your question, Nikki: yes, she is very disturbed.

Caroline suddenly has an epiphany (I�m still not tired of that word) and realises her daughter is a crazy murderer who incites her friends to commit murder too. She also finds Miranda�s book: �Supernova�. Instead of being a normal person and running as far away from Miranda as possible, she goes to see her. Miranda tells her poor mother to sit down and ask her how she�s feeling. Miranda is filming the whole thing with her webcam.

Leo also has an epiphany and also realises that Miranda is a crazy murderer who incites her friends to commit murder.

Miranda says she has 30,000 hits in 45 minutes on her blog. I�m actually quite jealous � I probably wouldn�t get that many hits if I kept a blog for 45 years. But then I don�t have videos of me murdering people on mine so perhaps mine does not really compare to Miranda�s. Miranda has also slit her wrists. Caroline panics. Miranda waffles on.

Leo breaks down Caroline�s front door and tells her to call an ambulance. Miranda dies. Caroline goes into shock. Miranda�s webcam films it all. Leo probably thinks about his daughter. If you�re curious, Miranda�s website is called ihateponies.com. Nice name, right?

Nikki calls Leo to find out how he is. Leo sits in his car looking shocked. Nikki�s hair still looks very cool.

There�s a very nice bit at the end, where we see people playing drums and a kid runs out of the school and it�s just like it was at the beginning. Messages flash up on Supernova�s website. Some of the people there are seriously disturbing. But I like the drum playing. Weirdly, all these angsty teenagers use proper spelling and grammar. They might all be complete weirdos (and at least three are murderers) but at least they use proper English. It makes me happy when people do that.

And so let�s sum up: The resident crazy-psycho-bitch (aka Miranda) coerces her friends into committing murder for her. Said friends almost get away with aforementioned murder, but darling Leo, Harry and their collection of rather nice detectives, figure out what�s going on and almost save the day. Almost. Miranda ends up slashing her wrists in front of her webcam with her mother in hysterics. Hey, it�s a shame but these things happen I guess.


Dr. Caroline Anscombe (Ingeborga Dapkunaite)
Tom Wetherby (Amerjit Deu)
Chris Duncan (Pavel Douglas)
Alison Garland (Lilly Driscoll)
Hannah Duncan (Tamsin Egerton)
David (Gregory Foreman)
Kay Owen (Jean Grover)
Sylvana (Laura Harling)
Robert Owen (Jonathan Keeble)
Kelly Wetherby (Natalia Keery-Fisher)
DI Shirley Maugham (Sarah Malin)
Stephen Owen (Toby Marlow)
Mary Duncan (Barbara Marten)
Det. Supt. Charlie Ferguson (John McEnery)
Walter Best (Jon Millington)
Miranda Anscombe (Rebecca Oldfield)
Ollie (Daniel Opoku-Awaboa)
'Fish' Gerrad Brown (Paul Richards)
DI Julian Vincent (Simon Tcherniak)
John Duncan (Jonathan Warde)
Martin Gibbs (Albert Welling)

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