Jimmy gets out of prison after serving a term for Greivous Bodily Harm on the man that assaulted his wife and a manslaughter committed whilst inside. He wants to get his life back on track, catch up with the daughter who will barely remember him and the ex-wife who hasn't forgiven him for divorcing her without reason. This new life is put in jeopardy, however, when he is assailed by visions every time that he touches someone. Convinced that he is either sick or going mad, he seeks help, but then learns of the murder of a local girl, a murder he has seen in his visions. When he goes to the police, however, they arrest him on the grounds that only the killer could know so much detail.
EMPATHY was billed as a one-off drama, but is so clearly a pilot for a series that the BBC is fooling no-one. True, the idea of a psychic helping the police solve crimes is well inside the borders of cliché land (having been central most recently in ITV's AFTERLIFE