A shadow falls across the manicured gardens and floodlit pools of Remuera when ex-model Julia Stevens is murdered in her own kitchen. In this first episode of award-winning series The Bad Seed — based on two novels by Charlotte Grimshaw — the Lampton family's comfortable world is rocked by their neighbour's demise. Many of the show's major players are introduced, including a deceitful doctor (Shortland Street's Matt Minto), his loyal brother (The Hobbit's Dean O'Gorman), an ambitious detective (The Breaker Upperers' Madeleine Sami) and a politician's glamorous wife (A Remarkable Place to Die's Chelsie Preston Crayford).