Just when Sarah Manning and her husband of a year and a half, Lee (Paul Popowich) have got their whole lives planned out, he is murdered and dumped in the streets of Montreal while on a business trip for Gumbiner-Fischer, the pharmaceutical company where he works and where Sarah formerly worked. Sarah is devastated, especially since she lost her husband Ciaran, three years before, when he slipped into a canal while walking home after a night of drinking. Coincidentally, Ciaran also worked for Gumbiner-Fischer, although he was in PR and Lee was the VP of Sales and Marketing.
Desperate for answers, Sarah holds out hope that Detective Emer Byrne (Angeline Ball) will be able to solve the case, although Byrne is merely on hand to give Sarah the bad news, but she soon finds herself drawn into the mystery surrounding Lee's death. Sarah turns to her former work family at Gumbiner-Fischer for answers, but soon realizes she is being completely shut out, by paperwork she helped draft back when she was head of Legal. Determined to figure out what happened to her husband, and what he was really doing while working for the pharmaceutical conglomerate, she begins to uncover the life of a man she thought she knew, but clearly didn't.
There are plenty of other people who are also seeking answers or trying to hide the truth, including her sister Nuala Mulvaney (Lisa Hogg); Mila Beck, a member of the German government; a Canadian cop named Dusquene (Geordie Johnson); a member of the FBI working at the American Embassy named Anna Coyle (Kate Morgan); a member of Irish Parliament named Morrice O'Hanlon (Rory Nolan); and even the top dog at Gumbiner-Fischer, Dr. Hans Werner Hoffman (Morten Suurballe). Several more bodies will pile up as the investigation unfolds and Sarah will realize that nothing is as it appears and she can't be sure who to trust.
Acceptable Risk is a decent drama that is well-acted, but I just didn't find it really compelling. It seemed a bit slow and, while the ending was satisfying, it took a bit too long to get there and it was so far removed from the dramatic first scene of the mini-series that I had actually forgotten that scene had happened by the time it all wrapped up. I guess that was the intention, to have a shocking ending, but it just felt a bit discordant with the rest of the show, which was more slow and somewhat boring.
There are several hefty behind-the-scenes featurettes that talk about everything from writing the script, to filming in Dublin, to the themes discussed in the show, and there are also short interviews with all of the major players in the film. None of these were super compelling, but if you are looking for more info on the show and the actors, you'll find it here.
I don't feel like Acceptable Risk was a waste of my time, but it just didn't grab me like so many other mysteries do. If it sounds like it might appeal to you, you can also catch it on Acorn TV.
