Waking The Dead

13 January, 2007 by The_Boss

Boyd (Trevor Eve) is on the trail
of a missing skull

BBC ONE Sunday and Monday 14th + 15th January 2007 9.00-10.00pm

Khaled Ahmad, a Sudanese politician in the UK, goes on hunger strike in protest at the UK's continued refusal to hand over the skull of the "Mahdi" – a Sudanese ruler from the 19th century – originally stolen from a Sudanese mausoleum by British Forces, in the first of a Waking The Dead two-parter.

Boyd and the Cold Case team are asked to investigate the current whereabouts of the skull so that UK authorities can return it to Sudan.

At the same time, a retired MI6 agent, Sir Cyril Barrett, asks Boyd to reopen the case of Omar Jaffiri, an Iraqi refugee found murdered in his London grocery shop 20 years previously. Barrett tells Boyd the two cases are connected. The team discovers that Jaffiri was tortured before being murdered, and that his young daughter, Leila, may have witnessed the killing. The team questions Leila, now in her twenties.

Meanwhile, Michael Leonard from the Foreign Office tells the team that he used to be a member of the Fakirs, a university drinking society, and that they have a skull which he suspects may be the Mahdi's.

The team breaks into the Fakirs' house during an initiation ritual and takes the skull away for forensic examination. Boyd questions both James Andrews and Elaine Wilson, the married couple who are in charge of the Fakirs, and bullies Wilson into giving him information about the skull.

Trevor Eve plays Boyd, Sue Johnston plays Grace, Wil Johnson plays Spence, Felicite du Jeu plays Stella, Tara Fitzgerald plays Eve, Alex Jennings plays James Andrews, Polly Walker plays Catherine Braithwaite, Graham Crowden plays Sir Cyril Barrett, Abdi Gouhad plays Khaled Ahmad, Alex James plays Michael Leonard, Houda Echouafni plays Leila Jaffiri and Lisa Jackson plays Elaine Wilson.

To complement the new series of Waking The Dead, the BBC is launching a groundbreaking interactive service which is available via broadband and the Red button. By pressing the Red button, or visiting the Waking The Dead website, viewers can discover more about the facts behind each story from the team of experts in forensic science and psychology who work alongside the production team.