Home / Series / Hot Metal / Aired Order /

All Seasons

Season 1

  • S01E01 The Tell-Tale Heart

    • February 16, 1986
    • Channel 4

    Entrepreneur Twiggy Rathbone buys a failing Fleet Street newspaper, The Daily Crucible, and the first coup of the new managing editor Russell Spam is an exclusive smear of Prince Andrew's latest girlfriend and the discovery of Nikita Khrushchev, alive and well in Switzerland.

  • S01E02 The Modern Promethius

    • February 23, 1986
    • Channel 4

    The Crucible launches an all-out campaign supporting a return to capital punishment by interviewing murder victims through a seance and interviewing the brother of a state executioner who hanged himself. Spam discovers the man identified as Khrushchev is a fake, and the fellow dies during a live televsion interview.

  • S01E03 Beyond the Infinite

    • March 2, 1986
    • Channel 4

    Spam launches an anti-Red campaign against Father Teasdale, and introduces ""Wobblevision"" to the page three beauties as a circulation ploy. Bill Tytla receives a mysterious tip that a nurse knows something sinister about the death of Donald Kubelsky, the Khrushchev impersonator.

  • S01E04 Casting the Runes

    • March 9, 1986
    • Channel 4

    Kettle and Spam continue their persecution of Father Teasdale by adding charges of lycanthropy, Rathbone rails against Spitting Image, and Tytla looks into charges (from an anonymous source calling himself ""Sore Throat"") that the police are involved in covering up the Kubelsky murder.

  • S01E05 The Slaughter of the Innocent

    • March 16, 1986
    • Channel 4

    Rathbone negotiates a compromise to keep Father Teasdale's church open, Kettle stumbles on a multiple birth, and Tytla is caught while searching for Sore Throat's papers.

  • S01E06 The Respectable Prostitute

    • March 23, 1986
    • Channel 4

    Stringer springs back into action as he gets to the bottom of the Khrushchev impersonator's death and uncovers a political sex scandal.

Season 2

  • S02E01 Religion of the People

    • March 6, 1988
    • Channel 4

    Twiggy finds a replacement for the missing Harold Stringer, Greg Kettle acquires a government list of all known AIDS carriers and Spam signs up God as an advice columnist through Sergeant-Major Ken Lutterworth.

  • S02E02 The Joker to the Thief

    • March 13, 1988
    • Channel 4

    Spam sets up Lipton for a serious assault when he imprisons an overweight woman and wires her jaw shut while he and Kettle pursue a sex scandal at an innocent pre-school. Maggie Troon follows up a lead about a mass murder involving the family of a High Court judge.

  • S02E03 The Hydra's Head

    • March 20, 1988
    • Channel 4

    Lipton tries to vet every story as Spam begins publishing 24 hours a day, Kettle competes with the Daily Star to save a Nicarauguan horse from the glue factory, and Maggie Troon discovers another murder as she continues to investigate the judge and his family.

  • S02E04 The Twilight Zone

    • March 27, 1988
    • Channel 4
  • S02E05 Crown of Thorns

    • April 10, 1988
    • Channel 4

    Lipton begins to lose his grip on reality as the buxom beauties of page three go on strike, Twiggy opens ""Rat World"", Kettle infiltrates EastEnders, and Maggie Troon discovers odd evidence of an alien presence at the mass murder site.

  • S02E06 Unleash the Kracken

    • April 17, 1988
    • Channel 4

    Maggie continues to dig into the Hitchcock murders amid rumors of UFOs while Spam and Lipton try different ways of spiking a critical government report on newspaper standards and practices.

Additional Specials

  • SPECIAL 0x1 The Rat Sat on the Cat

    • March 10, 1989
    • Channel 4

    Twiggy threatens to demolish an 11th century church and replace it with the new tower block. Harry defends a Crucible story about cat food.