To Be a Somebody

"'To Be a Somebody'"
Cracker episode
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 1, 2 & 3
Directed by Tim Fywell
Written by Jimmy McGovern
Original air date October 10, 17 & 24, 1994

To Be a Somebody is the first episode of the second season of the British television series Cracker. It was divided into three parts. It served as a breakthrough role for actor Robert Carlyle. Unlike other episodes, it is connected with a real life event, the Hillsborough disaster, and the surrounding circumstances. It is also the final episode to feature DCI Bilborough, and the first to feature DCI Wise and DC Harriman.

Plot

Part One

Albie Kinsella, a lonely and bitter manual worker who has been divorced from his wife for quite some time, attends the funeral of his father, Albie Sr., along with his ex-wife and daughter, who help him clear out his father's house. Despite his exterior, Albie is in fact more intelligent, hard working and educated than he appears, but is frequently looked down upon as a working class good for nothing.

Albie confronts Shahid Ali.

Fitz, meanwhile, is suffering from his own problems. Although his wife and daughter have moved back in with him, his addictions to gambling and alcohol further strain his relationship with his wife, Judith. Albie finally reaches his breaking point when he goes to buy a newspaper and teabags from a shop, and the mean Pakistani shopkeeper, Shahid Ali, refuses to sell them to him as he is four pence short. Fed up, Albie impulsively goes home, shaves his head, dresses like a hooligan and begins "behaving like scum", and his first act is to murder Ali in his shop and leave the number 9615489 sprayed on the wall. A local sees Albie leave the shop and finds Ali's corpse, calling the police. DCI Bilborough investigates and concludes that it may have been a racist crime, so they begin investigating several white power skinhead parties to find the killer. Bilborough orders his officers to keep quiet about this, but a yellow journalist, Clare Moody, prints a half-fabricated story about the murder in the Sun. Bilborough confronts Moody and threatens to arrest her, but Moody only tells him that one of Bilborough's officers gave her the news, refusing to tell him who it was. Bilborough suspects and questions DS Beck and rookie DC Harriman (Giggs's replacement). Beck furiously denies it, but Harriman admits his guilt for leaking the news. Though greatly annoyed, Bilborough does not punish Harriman.

Albie sees Moody's story in the paper and decides to make her his next target. He attempts to corner her in a multi-storey car park, but he is impeded by a crowd in a lift and fails to catch Moody. Fitz, while making a bet on a horse race, comes across two skinheads discussing Ali's murder in the toilet. He attempts to provoke them into possibly admitting their guilt, but they instead break his nose. Fitz sees the bulletin of Ali's murder on the news and attempts to reconcile with Penhaligon, but Penhaligon, still upset with him for standing her up (in One Day a Lemming Will Fly), refuses to listen to his advice to let him join the investigation. Distraught, Fitz returns home to his son Mark's surprise birthday party and drinks himself to the point of having a heart attack. He is rushed to the hospital, and survives. Meanwhile, an autopsy is performed on Ali, and the pathologist concludes that a British Army Bayonet was used to stab Ali to death.

Bilborough agrees that a criminal psychologist is needed, but refuses to hire Fitz, who severed his ties with him for charging Nigel Cassidy for a murder he did not commit for the sake of a fitting result rather than the truth (in One Day a Lemming Will Fly). They hire a psychologist from another University, Professor Nolan, who comes to the exact conclusion Fitz said would most likely be wrong. Albie overhears Nolan speaking with Bilborough and Penhaligon in Ali's shop on a bus, naming Albie as all the things he is not. Albie tails Nolan and attends one of his lectures in the University. Following the lecture, Albie corners Nolan in his office and kills him, photocopying his lifeless face various times and taking a copy, and leaving the same number.

Part Two

Albie catches Clare Moody.

Realising that the murderer may be more complicated than Nolan said, Bilborough asks Penhaligon to bring Fitz into the investigation, which she does only reluctantly. Fitz agrees to help on the condition that they seek truth and justice instead of a superficial result, although Bilborough fails to respond to this properly. Fitz and Penhaligon visit Ali's family, and despite being received coldly by Ali's eldest daughter, Razia, Fitz cracks Razia into helping them. Searching the store, Fitz notices that the newspaper and the teabags are on the till roll, and the buyer has not come forward. Furthermore, he notices four pence on the floor behind the till. Fitz theorises to Bilborough that the ordinary man who was seen rowing with Ali over four pence may be the murderer, but Bilborough refuses to listen.

Albie makes another attempt on Moody, and corners her in her car. As he forces her to drive at knifepoint, Albie spills it out: he killed Ali and Nolan, and wants to kill Moody because she wrote and printed the controversial TRUTH front page about the Hillsborough disaster, in which ninety-six people died (or were "killed by the police", in Albie's words) and were insulted by the lies the police told the Sun. Moody, however, escapes and informs the police. As the police question Moody in her flat, Fitz realises the meaning of the number 9615489: ninety-six people died as a result of what happened on the fifteenth of April, 1989, the day of the disaster, and also theorises that Albie is going to kill ninety-six people to avenge the people who died, and most of them will most probably be policemen. Meanwhile, Albie sees Bilborough on the news and chooses him next.

The police begin searching working-class streets near Ali's shop and inquiring about people who recently shaved their heads. Beck is told about Albie and pays him a visit, failing to notice the pictures of Ali and Nolan pinned to Albie's wall (Albie removes them while Beck's back is turned). Albie, who had shaved his head again, this time completely, lies that he has cancer and is on chemotherapy, which is the cause of his baldness, and proves it by showing Beck his father's hospital papers. Feeling sorry for Albie, and noticing Albie's cat and kittens, Beck believes him and leaves, feeling slightly embarrassed for harassing a poor man. Beck tells Penhaligon, but Penhaligon is sceptical and speaks on the phone with Albie's employer, who tells her that Albie has not missed work once for two years, contradicting what he told Beck. Fitz, in the meantime, returns home and finds that his wife has left him again.

Bilborough, stabbed and left for dead by Albie.

Albie tails Bilborough to a store where he is shopping with his family. He molests Bilborough's wife, Catriona, to get Bilborough's attention. Realising Albie is the killer, Bilborough chases Albie through the streets, all the way to his house. Albie corners Bilborough in the lounge and fatally stabs him, fleeing and leaving him to die. Bilborough manages to survive long enough to radio his colleagues for help. Fitz asks if the man had a cat and kittens, which Bilborough confirms, identifying Albie as the killer. With his last breaths, Bilborough begs Beck to catch Albie no matter what, and dies just as the police and ambulance arrive.

Part Three

As Bilborough's body is taken away by the ambulance, the Chief Super arrives with Bilborough's replacement, DCI Charlie Wise, whom he introduces to Beck. While investigating Albie's house, Beck secretly takes the hospital papers with him to a records hall and realises that they were for Albie Kinsella Sr., Albie's father. The Chief Super and Penhaligon inform Catriona of his death. Meanwhile, Albie breaks into a construction site and steals some explosives, killing a labourer who attempts to foil him and burying him on his father's allotment.

The police arrest Albie's wife, Jill, and question her on Albie's whereabouts. Fitz gets her to explain what she knows by telling her what Albie has done, particularly to Bilborough's family. The police also find a fixture of Liverpool's next football match, against Manchester United at Old Trafford. As Albie supports Liverpool, Fitz insists that Albie will be there. Wise, aware of Beck's friendship with Bilborough, sends Beck to return some of Bilborough's things to his home. In the process, Beck expresses that he loved and respected Billborough like a brother. Later, while Fitz speaks with Catriona, she mentions Fitz and Bilborough's previous falling out over the Cassidy case. Catriona remains confident that Bilborough would never lock up an innocent man and come home with a clear conscience, and Fitz, in a moment of kindness and compassion, rewards Catriona's faith and tells her that Cassidy was guilty.

As expected, Albie attends the football match. Wise enlists Moody's help in locating Albie on the security cameras, unaware that he is not with the Liverpool supporters, but is instead in with the home fans.

All but defeated, Albie breaks down.

By the time Beck points this out, Albie has been evicted by stadium officials for attempting to cause a riot with his Liverpool chants among the United fans. Fitz and Penhaligon are told to guard the front door. Fitz makes amends with Penhaligon, who admits to Fitz that she was secretly in love with Bilborough. As the guards take Albie out of the stadium, he passes Beck, who recognises Albie and chases him down the streets, calling for backup. Beck corners Albie in an alley and beats him brutally until he is restrained by two officers. Wise reprimands Beck for this, and takes him off the case as punishment.

Fitz and Albie finally meet face to face, and after a long discussion, Fitz finally cracks Albie into admitting that he and his father both felt distraught over the Hillsborough disaster, but it contributed to his father's cancer and ultimately led to his death, and now Albie wants to take his revenge for his father and those who died that day. Fitz realises that Albie will most probably do this via letter bombs, and indeed, Fitz finds a package addressed to Jimmy Beck on the front desk, and believes there will also be one where he buried the foreman. Fitz has Penhaligon vacate the building, leaving only himself and Albie in the station. Fitz dares Albie to open the package and kill the two of them. He does so, but nothing happens: Fitz switched the packages. At the same time, Fitz warns Wise and the others at the allotment of the second bomb, and they escape in time. With his revenge plans foiled, Albie flies into a rage and tries to attack Fitz, but suffers a mental breakdown as Fitz pins him against the wall.

However a letter bomb sent to Moody at her office explodes when she opens it. Fitz hears the explosion from a distance.

Cast

Reception

Despite being hailed as probably the best episode of the entire series, To Be a Somebody led to complaints from the families of the Hillsborough disaster's victims. In response, McGovern agreed to write a television drama about the Hillsborough disaster, which was screened in December 1996 on ITV television network in the United Kingdom. Actors from To Be A Somebody who participated in the television movie were Christopher Eccleston, Ricky Tomlinson and Edward Peel. John Graham-Davies (who featured in the previous Cracker episode) and Ian McDiarmid (of Star Wars fame) also featured.

Robbie Coltrane and Robert Carlyle would later co-star again in 1999 in The World Is Not Enough, playing Valentin Zukovsky and Renard, respectively, although they did not share any scenes together, along with David Calder (Father Harvey in Brotherly Love) in a minor role. Robert Carlyle and Ricky Tomlinson also previously co-starred together in the 1990 film Riff-Raff and would later co-star again in the 2001 film The 51st State and later the 2002 film Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.

The Full Monty would later feature Robert Carlyle alongside fellow Cracker actors Paul Barber (Ian McVerrey in Best Boys) and Dave Hill (Mr. Franklin in Best Boys).