‘12th’ gives four views of murder

The two-part series “Thursday the 12th” (tonight and Thursday at 9 p.m., Bravo) opens like one of those shameless teases for local TV news. You know the ones: The anchor blares, “A celebrity is in trouble with the law! Find out who, at 11,” then you wait up to learn that someone not so famous got a speeding ticket.

In the case of “Thursday the 12th,” the payoff is moderately more satisfying, though it requires sticking with this brooding, gimmicky British mystery for its full four hours.

Four members of a family, each of whom wants another one dead, construct the means to kill in this program written by Paula Milne (“Mad Love,” “I Dreamed of Africa”) and directed by Charles Beeson. The gimmick is that the events of one fateful day are told four times, each version from a different family member’s perspective. The audience knows from the opening scene that someone has been murdered, but the identities of neither the victim nor the killer are revealed until the end.

On “Thursday the 12th,” Marius Bannister (Ciaran Hinds from “Road to Perdition” and “Mary Reilly”) is about to be nominated for political office, but the day will end in death instead of celebration. His wife, Nina (Maria Doyle Kennedy from “The Commitments” and “Queer as Folk”) is haunted by a tragedy the family shares. She backs her husband’s political ambitions, but we soon learn that she has a secret agenda.

Nina’s sister, Candice Hopper (Elizabeth McGovern) -- who was engaged to Marius 20 years earlier, before he eloped with Nina -- also has bitter ghosts to lay to rest. Finally, rebellious teen Martin Bannister (Jim Sturgess), Marius and Nina’s adopted son, has hatched a plot of his own. Martin is the only family member close to his ailing grandfather, political pioneer Edgar Bannister (Peter Vaughan, “The Remains of the Day”).

“Thursday the 12th” provides enough twists and red herrings to satisfy mystery junkies, but its sullen tone and played-out “Rashomon” meets “Boomtown” structure make it a chore at times. Hokey gothic flashbacks don’t help.

Restless viewers may be asking not just whodunit and to whom, but who cares?