Touching Evil (TV Series) Deadly Web: Part 1 (1997) User Reviews

What Amathus Wants

[blanche-2 · 7/10 · 5 January 2011]

When horses in the United States, China, and England are all hurt with a knife at the flank in the same time period, Detective Inspector Dave Creegan (Robson Green) tries to find out the reason in "Touching Evil: Deadly Web" aka "What Amathus Wants." The order to do this is eventually traced to a site called Amathus, which has its origins in Greek mythology. Followers of the site are given orders and then are rewarded with money. The orders become deadlier, and finally, they seem to be copying murders of a serial killer (Linda Henry) from years earlier. She's now incarcerated, but she's questioned about devotees who have contacted her over the years, and is released temporarily to help catch the webmaster behind the Amathus site.

In the midst of all this, D.S. Jonathan Kreitman (Adam Kotz) tells Creegan something that rocks not only his world, but that of his partner, D.I. Susan Taylor (Nicola Walker) and others.

This was my introduction to the "Touching Evil" series, and I felt as I walked into the middle of something. Quite a few episodes preceded this one. I found the episode a little confusing. I think the characters and the general atmosphere of the show take some getting used to.

Nevertheless, "What Amathus Wants" is a good story with fine acting by the very interesting Robson Green, as well as Adam Kotz, Linda Henry, Toby Salaman, and Nicola Walker. I look forward to seeing more episodes.

Tedious

[Warin_West-El · 4/10 · 5 June 2023]

The first two stories were compelling and interesting. This story is tedious and I fast-forwarded through sections. It's a tech version of A Clockwork Orange.

Youngsters creating mayhem purely for the purpose of doing so. They derive their license for their anti-social behavior from a computer program called "Amathus." The logic doesn't make sense. You have four young people claiming to be free. Meanwhile, they're slaves to a computer program that tells them what to do.

Some of the scenes didn't ring true. For example: Dave Creegan bursts into a room looking for the ringleader, Jack McCaffrey. He walks right by a computer monitor that Jack had been using just a few minutes earlier and fails to look at the computer screen, which would have been the very first thing you would check.

The last two stories were more interesting because the villains were textbook psychopaths. In this story the villains are not truly pathological, they're just idiots so they don't have the gravitas of the last two killers.