  messiah is a british television drama series, broadcast on the bbc one network and produced in-house by bbc northern ireland, although the series itself is set in england. made up of a series of occasional serials, the first, with two parts subtitled the first killings & the reckoning, was broadcast in 2001. it has been followed by messiah 2: vengeance is mine (2003), messiah iii: the promise (2004), messiah iv: the harrowing (2005) and most recently messiah v: the rapture (2008). the original production was based on a novel by boris starling: the subsequent installments have been written directly for television. starling has a cameo as a murder victim's corpse in the first serial. a crime series, it follows the investigations of dci red metcalfe, who often investigates particularly gruesome murders. metcalfe is played by scottish actor ken stott, and the other main regulars in the series are kate beauchamp (frances grey), duncan warren (neil dudgeon) and metcalfe's wife susan (michelle forbes). the deafness of forbes' character necessitated both her and stott learning british sign language for their characters' frequent exchanges. ==the series== messiah, strictly speaking, relates only to the original series, where a serial killer sets out to kill twelve (actually eleven) men with the same names as the apostles, in the same way that the original apostles were killed according to tradition, e.g. st bartholomew being flayed alive and st peter crucified head down. the killer does this out of revenge and the deluded belief of being himself also immortal, a second messiah. messiah ii: vengeance is mine, deals with a serial killer who murders all those implicated in the wrongful imprisonment of his or her father. messiah iii: the promise, begins with a prison riot, in which kate beauchamp is held hostage and almost killed. the action moves on to a hospital where those injured in the riot are being treated. from then on, everyone who threatened or harmed beauchamp ends up dead. messiah iv: the harrowing, deals with metcalf and his team having to catch a killer who murders his or her victims in elaborate / strange ways. the killings are based on the divine comedy by dante. messiah v: the rapture, marc warren is the new lead, starring as dci joseph walker. the two-parter, which aired in january 2008, featured a crack den massacre, an acid attack, and a murder victim with her heart cut out. also two sisters are hanged wearing menâs clothes. == cast overview == {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- !character!!actor |- |eric metcalfe||kieran o'brien |- |charlotte||juliet diamond |- |d.c.i. redfern 'red' metcalfe||[[ken
2000s_British_television_series 2001_British_television_programme_debuts 2008_British_television_programme_endings BBC_television_dramas British_Sign_Language Sign_language_television_programs