4 October (2023-10-04) – 8 November 2023 (2023-11-08)
Payback is a six-part British crime thriller television series broadcast weekly on ITV1 from 4 October 2023, executive produced by Jed Mercurio and starring Morven Christie and Peter Mullan.
Synopsis
Following the murder of her accountant husband, a woman learns that he had been laundering money for criminal organisations.[1]
The six-part series was created by Debbie O'Malley and had Madonna Baptiste and Jed Mercurio as executive producers for HTM Television. O'Malley drew inspiration in part from a true-life unsolved crime in Nairn, Scotland of the Murder of Alistair Wilson, a banker shot dead on his doorstep in 2004. Mercurio was keen to examine the role of accountants and accountancy in illegal operations following the leak of data from the Panama Papers scandal. The series had an advisor named Kenny Thomson, a former DCI in financial crime for Police Scotland.[2] The series was also executive produced by O’Malley and Diederick Santer on behalf of BritBox International and Polly Hill for ITV Studios. Eric Coulter was series producer.[3]
The series had Jenny Darnell as the lead director, with Andrew Cumming also directing episodes. Filming took place near Glasgow in Scotland.[4][5]
The series was broadcast weekly in the United Kingdom on ITV1 between 4 October and 8 November 2023.[7][8]
Reception
Gerard Gilbert in the i praised the lead performances saying that the "excellent but unshowy Christie belongs in the same pantheon as Nicola Walker and Vicky McClure" while…Peter Mullan "returns to his menacing best".[9]Lucy Mangan in The Guardian also praised the cast, saying that it "offers the inordinate pleasure of watching quality, understated actors do their quality understated work, without a weak link among them".[10]
