The Night Of

You might be wondering what I’m doing talking this week about something from 2016, but over the previous 197 posts I think we’ve established well enough there is no method to my madness.  The Night Of was one of the first boxsets recommended to me at the very beginning of this project, and it’s been lodged in my brain ever since.  It even got downloaded (by me, on purpose) to my Sky box at the start of the year when I finally decided that I must get down to following up on its recommendation.  But there it stayed, cruelly ignored while I worked through Fargo and a variety of other Netflix trappings (Call My Agent!, Last Chance U: Basketball).  But then, with Oscars season upon us, its star, Riz Ahmed, was everywhere.  I needed to see what all the fuss was about and conveniently had a slot in my viewing schedule.

I’m ruing the day I didn’t dive in as soon as this show was recommended to me.  Episode one immediately got its claws into me and I tingled with smugness at the thought of finding something to watch that was not going to disappoint.  There was intrigue from the first minute, all against a backdrop of the much-missed city of New York (what with foreign travel being an impossible offence while the sniffles keeps on going round the world).  Knowing something terrible is going to happen: there’s nothing more compelling than that.  From the moment Nasir (played by Ahmed with wide-eyed conviction) gets invited to a Manhattan party from his Pakistani enclave of Queens, the show’s very title makes it clear this isn’t just a pleasant evening in the city.

I’m not going to get into too many details, as these would all be spoilers, and I know for a fact you’ll be following my pleas to see for yourself this exquisite boxset.  Needless to say, there’s a certain amount of being led astray, of trying things for the first time and of cutting loose from a conservative upbringing while potentially ill-equipped to deal with its consequences that makes this fateful night all the more significant.  The tension then takes hold, with us as the viewer violently willing Nas to slip out of the precinct while awaiting processing for his initial misdemeanour.  Cleverly, we are left in doubt regarding his innocence as far as the evidence shows, but we are desperate for him to be cleared of all charges at almost any cost.

Along the way, every character that enters the universe of The Night Of comes with such depth and richness that we almost don’t notice Nas’s long absences while they work their way into our lives.  John Turturro’s John Stone oozes New Yorker, hardened and brash, and with no shits left to give about what anyone thinks of him or any of his skin conditions (at least, so his outer shell would have us believe).  I did wonder at the size of his out-of-home advertising budget as his Subway posters are everywhere, especially if he only charges $250 a case.  Nas’s parents do a huge amount with very little, dignity burning behind their eyes, while Detective Dennis Box earns our sympathy as he retires and Helen Weiss, the district attorney, even as she works against us, carries a certain charm.  The Wire’s Michael K. Williams haunts as Freddy, showing us everything that’s wrong with the American justice system.

That said, it was the cat that I got most excited about.  It just goes to show that great writing and great character development are lost on me when there’s a purring feline rolling about on the floor.  I felt I could have cured John Stone’s allergies simply by wishing them away.  So, from New York night life, the episodes progress to a taut court case.  At points, all seems lost.  At others, the characters’ behaviour aggravates both you as the viewer and their own sorry situations.  But we’re kept guessing till the end, fed some red herrings to keep us going and distracted by artful production design and cinematography from the fact this is (apparently) a rehash of a 2008 British show.  I don’t care where it came from, this gem was a great find, and maybe the story is more universal than as specifically New York as I had thought, but it’s elevated by so much else that it’s definitely one for the boxset list.

Top Of The Lake

 

There I was, the other day, struck by the thought that I hadn’t had Elisabeth Moss’s face in front of me on a big screen in a long time.  Mad Men was ages ago, and we are a while off another season of Handmaid’s Tale, though the memory of the excellence of series three is still a tingling sensation.  With recent government curbs on demonstration and their response to violence against women, we are another step closer to Gilead anyway, so we’ll all be blessing the fruit in no time.  Under his eye, indeed.  This brought me to click on Top Of The Lake on Netflix, a Moss-fronted drama that aired on the BBC back in 2013.  It looked rainy and gritty, promising some crimes perpetrated against a backdrop of luscious scenery and I felt safe in the knowledge I would have a strong performance from such a gifted actor in the lead role.

The first series is set in New Zealand, which is something I had somehow missed.  This isn’t Yorkshire (I was imagining Happy Valley vibes) but Lake Wakatipu at the bottom of South Island.  You can imagine my surprise, then, when Moss whips out a Kiwi accent.  It sounds decent to me, but from my perspective on the other side of the world, I realise I have no credibility to judge.  Moss plays Robin Griffin, returning to her home community from Sydney (which nicely covers an irregular vowel sounds anyway).  She’s in the police, sort of coming and going in a role to do with sexual assaults.  It’s hard to be sure if she’s on a working trip or not.  Her mum is unwell, but she almost ignores her to re-tread the paths of her own traumatic youth there, making it clear that she left for a very firm reason.  In a bit of a busman’s holiday, a local girl goes missing, and there are many suspicions of foul play, so Moss is in her element as the strong female and only capable police officer, dealing with an avalanche of male incompetence and insouciance as she tries to right the wrongs in her own community.

Before long, every character is a suspect, and this is because everyone is awful.  Unlikeable characters loom as large throughout as the spectacular scenery, but we are drawn in as Moss dashes in the drizzle from riddle to riddle.  There’s even a strange women’s commune set up beside the lake in shipping containers, riling some of the local populace but mostly sitting about drinking tea.  The climax gripped me with not only its gruesomeness, but its plausibility among a group of lakeside settlements who treat the most vulnerable in their society as expendable commodities.

Come 2017, the standalone conclusion is overturned as a second season appears.  The action has moved to Sydney, so our only point of continuity is Robin Griffin herself.  Still carrying the (additional) trauma of her previous lake-based experience, she now has new vulnerable girls to protect.  There are the South East Asian young women working in the licensed sex industry, branching out into further ways of selling their bodies.  There’s also the now-teenage daughter that Robin had given up for adoption.  She’s mixed up in these brothels, it turns out, rebelling against her adoptive parents (including a Nicole Kidman with little to do but have distracting hair) by pursuing a relationship with a vile German man who specialises in looking after stray cats better than he treats his sex workers.

Being strange throughout, Game Of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie is our cop partner, clashing with Robin in various ways, while we sort of wobble through a sequence of events to our climax.  The unlikability of everyone far exceeds series one’s motley crew of characters, and this made it a bit of a slog to get through.  Everything was gross, but not quite grotesque enough to be a reason to be compelled.  I stuck with it for the sake of dear Elisabeth, covering for patchier performances.  On many an evening, clicking next episode felt like more of a duty than a treat, especially in a world of so much else to watch (bonjour, Lupin).

While this might not sound like the strongest recommendation, Top Of The Lake is still important viewing.  As a slagger-off of TV despite never having produced any, I should confess I am deep in the Introduction To Screenwriting term of a part-time Creative Writing MA I am doing.  I think we can all agree the quality of my prose needs professional help.  I also have a new-found respect for anyone who writes anything on telly.  A fellow course-member (on Teams of course – I have never met these people) pointed out to us that Top Of The Lake is a great example of a female story structure.  I think this is part of feminist literary theory, but our hero’s treatment within the show follows a different arc to what we see in the hegemonic male stories of our culture.  This is all a bit academic so let’s focus on the easy bits.  This is a strong female character, leading storylines that make us question how women are viewed and treated by our societies.  It’s not pretty, but it’s more relevant than ever.

The Fall

Yes, I’ve fallen.  Into The Fall.  There was a sudden urge in me for something gritty and British.  Something grittish.  On Netflix’s autoplay function, the clip of this show answered my specifications perfectly: dashboard-shot footage of an approach to a crime scene, greyness everywhere, probably some drizzle, Gillian Anderson looking a bit grumpy.  Right, I thought, this is going to be the perfect blend of Line Of Duty and Happy Valley – everyone says it’s supposed to be very good.

The grip came very early on and I was soon anxious to get through as much of the three series as quickly as I could.  But what were we dealing with?  First of all, there was a location that was pretty new for me.  The Fall plays out in Northern Ireland and, more specifically, Belfast.  Now, I appreciate that even me saying that this programme fulfilled my need for something British can be interpreted as political – the whole place has been hotly contested as either Irish or part of the UK since way before my conception in the mid-eighties.  The Troubles were rarely out of the news in my childhood, and we even revisited them at A-Level when someone thought we should look at the cold cold poetry of Seamus Heaney, but there’s been a peace process for ages now.  Some would say for too long, so it’s a good job people voted for Brexit and we can all hurry back in time at the earliest opportunity.  It’s not like the year has already been a bit of a state.  Nevertheless, as the murders played out, I found myself deciding I really ought to visit Belfast at some point.

Aye, murder.  Here we are again, fuelling another British obsession: the details of how young women are murdered.  They’re not prostitutes this time, but successful career brunettes, targeted carefully by our killer, haunted and taunted until dispatched by slow strangulation.  This part of the story, dominating the first series, is taut with tension, from police not believing claims of home invasion, to the sleight of hand used to home in on the next victim.  The Northern Irish police force are refusing to acknowledge that a string of murders could be linked, flying in our Gillian as London-based Stella Gibson to investigate how previous operations have failed to yield results.

Anderson is enjoying something of a renaissance as a very British actor, even though she’s proper American.  Her X Files days still plague my nightmares (not her, but that ghost going down the stairs in the opening credits), but she’s given us pure joy in Sex Education and is currently on Thatcher duties in the latest lavish season of The Crown (the Diana years).  The Netflix blurb described her character as an ice queen, but there’s more to Gibson than perfect hair and some nice flowy blouses.  She stands up to the men around her.  She owns her sexuality.  She’s focused on her career.  We know she’s sensitive because, you know, she has a dream journal and that, but she’s a captivating hero and we urge her to succeed.  She even sleeps at work and, by season three, this seems to be taking its toll, as her voice establishes a distracting rasp.

Uncomfortably, she finds herself drawn to the killer as much as he to her.  The obsession tests the bounds not just of her professionalism, but also affects his murderous ambitions.  I don’t want to spoil who our main suspect is, so I’ll just now start to talk about Jamie Dornan as part of a completely unrelated matter.  He remains inscrutable throughout.  While his torso is for spurious reasons shown in varying states of undress at any excuse, working out why he is the way he is remains a mystery, its illumination only really beginning as we build to the final series’ climax.  As Paul Spector, he’s a loving dad (to his daughter at least) but a neglectful husband.  He alternates between leading on and spurning poor wee Katie Benedetto.  He stands up to yet is cowed by the likes of James Tyler.  It’s fitting that we never know whether we can believe him, even when he gives a firm yes in police interviews (never a yeah).

But, once the chase of Gibson’s cat to his mouse is more or less over, things slow down and settle a bit, such that the lack of momentum drove me to distraction.  In this lull, I started and finished The Staircase before forcing myself to return to the story.  I’m glad I did but, looking back at the sum of its parts, there are elements to its sprawlingly ambitious web of narratives that I wish we’d returned to or gained more closure on.  Corruption in the police force from series one fades away.  Supporting officers in the investigation get a bit of interesting characterisation before relegation to the background.  Our focus grows tighter and more claustrophobic culminating quite literally in Spector-on-Gibson action.

Join me, then, in taking a fall into The Fall.  If your second lockdown isn’t harrowing enough, this will surely contain enough gruesome themes to keep you in the house.  Just make sure you pop out if you find your bra laid out on the bed.

The Staircase

Deep in a second lockdown, the last thing you need while trying to account for lost income and no gyms (thanks, Bozza) is a tense and paranoia-inducing documentary about murder, guilt, loss and the flaws in any justice system.  I know this now.  But I didn’t when I decided the time had finally come for me to consume Netflix’s well-known thirteen-part series: The Staircase.  Previously, it had proven easy enough to ignore in the algorithm, particularly with such distractions as the second series of The End Of The F***ing World, a Wales-based attempt at I’m A Celebrity (works quite well, actually) and, thank goodness, despite its dilution by social distancing, Strictly Come Dancing.  Don’t even ask me about season four of The Crown – that will just have to wait (plus it’s not like my enjoyment is at risk from spoilers).  But no, podcast after podcast had conspired to reference The Staircase in heated discussion, bringing out my worst fear: boxset omission.  Here I am carefully curating all my viewing so I can chime in with any conversation, and yet I had missed what sounded like a bit of a classic.  Not that I can interrupt people while podcasting.  I’ve tried that before and they can’t actually hear you so there’s no point.

Potentially a poor man’s Making A Murderer, The Staircase looks like it’s going to offer you the same sort of did-he-didn’t-he, blow-by-blow account of an American crime as examined through the American justice system.  Indeed, both shows err on the side of the subject’s pleas of innocence, highlighting how courthouses are vulnerable to corruption, bias and unfairness, but while the Steven Amery case focuses on a low-income family whose only wealth is in the form of dilapidated cars, the clan at the centre of our story, by the look of their North Carolina mansion, seem to be drenched in riches.

But, they do have an awkwardly poky staircase, and it’s this part of the interior that forms the point of dispute driving the whole series’ narrative.  At the bottom of it, the body of Kathleen Peterson is found in 2001, covered in blood.  Is her tragic death an accidental fall, or the result of murder by her husband, Michael Peterson?  Either way, it’s his frantic calls to 911 that open our story.  It’s a chilling beginning and one seemingly designed to arouse suspicion immediately.  As the trial proceeds and we learn more about the Petersons’ happy family home, containing well turned-out children from previous marriages as well as some adopted daughters, we can only look on as the state brings a case against Michael and appears willing to play every trick to clinch a conviction.  We’re going back twenty years, so attitudes towards sexuality highlight an excess of narrow-mindedness.  Juror response research even yields free admissions that experts with Chinese accents aren’t easy to trust.  The odds stack up against Michael who, out on bail, potters about his large home drinking cans of Diet Coke while his legal team strategise.  He brings to mind an early-season Caitlyn Jenner in Keeping Up With The Kardashians, bemused by the goings on of the young people in the home but ultimately happy in some jogging bottoms.

It’s hard to discuss much more about the case without spoiling the plot.  I was hoping for references to an owl theory that had played out centrally in the podcast discussions that had driven me to the programme, but, unless I blacked out at very specific moments, I totally missed this.  Instead, over the course of many years, we watch a middle-aged man grow very old and suffer, eliciting natural sympathy no matter the verdict.  This is contrasted with the burning hatred that Kathleen’s surviving sisters have for him, which grows only stronger with time, giving some indication of the impetus behind his prosecution.  There’s uneasy viewing throughout, from graphic depictions of Kathleen after her fall to deeply skin-crawling testimonies in the courtroom.

As we progress, you develop a sense of melancholy from all the waste.  All the time, money, energy and emotion that goes into something like this, only for it never truly to be over, highlights the human damage and hopelessness such a case leaves in its wake.  Nothing can bring Kathleen back and nothing can make clear what really happened.  Our perspective is only ever really that of the accused, so sympathies naturally develop there, but nobody really wins.

The episodes each pivot around a singular development in the case, but we could potentially have zipped through some of them a bit more quickly to tighten up the documentary’s intensity.  The shaky footage from the early 2000s is hardly going to stress out your HD telly, but this is more of an unputdownable story than a visual feast by any stretch of the imagination.  In addition, the camerawork improves as the episodes shift focus nearer to the present day, particularly in the three final editions added by Netflix.  You’ll come away feeling uneasy, knowing what a blow poke is and questioning who gets to decide guilt and innocence, but at least you’ll be about thirteen hours closer to the end of a lockdown.

Elite (Élite)

Rarely do I start on a new boxset and then proceed to watch only that boxset until I have devoured every episode in existence.  Normally it’s a case of adding another show into the mix, alternating its position in my evening viewing schedule (it’s now the law to stay in) among some of my favourite themes for programming: post-apocalyptic shows featuring zombies (The Walking Dead, Kingdom), adult animation (South Park), offensive comedy (Nighty Night – now on iPlayer here) or things about sport that aren’t the same as actually watching sport (Last Chance U).  But from the very first minute of Elite, I couldn’t stop until I had devoured the whole lot.  Granted, it ticked one of my other favoured categories: things set in schools (Sex Education).  But it also seems to be striking out a new theme which is wreaking havoc with my paranoia about what my neighbours can see through my windows: shows with a whole lot of f*cking (a bit like Game Of Thrones roulette where naked body parts could be splayed all over the screen at a moment’s notice).  More on this later.

But first, what is Elite about?  Well, for starters it’s nothing to do with the liberal elite, ruining everyone’s lives by trying to create a society that’s fairer and better for everyone.  It’s about the privileged teenage children of wealthy Spaniards who enjoy the fanciest education that money can buy.  This all takes place at Las Encinas (which Google Translate reveals to mean holm oaks – no idea), a swanky, fee-paying school with its own bridge.  After three seasons, I’m fairly sure it’s in Madrid, but we can assume this is a generic Spanish town or city.  Characters do pop off to Asturias, which seems too far a jaunt from the capital.  Pupils avail themselves of its ample opportunities: swimming in its pool, arguing in its corridor, being disruptive in its one classroom, ogling its ugly trophy, calling its teachers by their first names, being very sexually active and occasionally murdering one another.

This would all be boring if we didn’t add some tension, so our first series opens with three scholarship kids entering Las Encinas for the first time, their new, improved educations funded as an act of charity after their old poor school fell down, on them.  They’re about to find out its not so easy rubbing shoulders academically with the rich and privileged.  But don’t worry, everyone is beautiful.

Each season’s arc builds to a climactic terrible crime but foreshadows this throughout with police procedural flash forwards in a way that, while narratively a little clunky, makes you unable to resist your desire to know immediately how it all ends.  Subsequent series also build on and compound their predecessors’ misdemeanours, lending the whole thing a perverse credibility that couldn’t be achieved if brand new adventures had to be dreamt up.  And there we have it: soap-operatic trashiness, elevated by tension you’ll be powerless to resist.  Each evening, when you log off working from home, you’ll be excited to return to Las Encinas.

And what a world it is.  Diversity is everything for these young people, with a head-on tackling of European society’s response to Islam.  Siblings Omar and Nadia struggle to balance their academic and romantic pursuits with their Palestinian parents’ expectations, which mostly involve worrying about who will staff their grocery shop.  Seeing as there almost never seems to be a customer in sight and most of the employee labour goes into rearranging the lemons one by one, they could probably chill out a bit.  Sexuality is also enthusiastically box-ticked from a diversity perspective, with fans of boy-on-boy loving richly rewarded, as well as frequent shout outs to the polyamory community.  Add in the straights, and you’ll see what I mean about a whole lot of f*cking, in all its available flavours.

For language fans, there’s every imaginable swear word, often in the same sentence.  No sooner has someone begun an exchange with “hola” than they are following up that statement with “joder puta madre coño” in such rapid succession that the subtitlists get overwhelmed and just put the F word the whole time.  But this reflects the extent to which this really is adult stuff.  Aged sixteen and seventeen, no known laws seem to prevent the Elite crew from getting up to all sorts: drug-dealing, clubbing, easy access to alcohol.  The Inbetweeners this ain’t.  Elite builds its own sexy mythology around axioms you will willingly accept: Glee Warbler school uniforms look sexy, it doesn’t matter that Samu is shorter than all his girlfriends, Las Encinas’ coursework is farcical at best.  The only idiosyncrasy that bothers me is that nobody seems to kiss with tongues, which makes the graphic love-making scenes fall somewhere flat when all the naked characters are only pecking each other on the lips.  That’s right: I’ll buy everything else Elite serves, but the illusion is shattered for me when they don’t kiss properly.  Now I can see why my neighbours might think I’m a pervert.

Having raced through Elite, I’m now bereft to return to a reality where I am no longer part of the gang, especially if this is a world where summer Love Island is cancelled.  While animosity between the characters dominates earlier episodes, our alumnos go through so much that new relationships form as they develop and change their prejudices, accommodating the new individuals injected into proceedings each season.  You’ll warm to them, even as they murder each other.  So, if you’ve got some lockdown nights to while away, and you’re confident your TV screen isn’t overlooked by minors or curtain twitchers, lose yourself in the world of Elite and join me in the impatient wait for a fourth season.  Joder.

Mindhunter

Everyone was telling me to watch Mindhunter.  So I watched it and now we’re going to hear all about what I thought of it.  Only it wasn’t as simple as that.  The people in the office that were going on about it were easily ignored.  I’m well known for not really being a listener, so this was within character.  It was, in fact, a chance encounter with the Netflix trailer for season two that really sold me into the show.  I’ve talked before about how navigating the overwhelming choice on Netflix can be daunting, leading to a paralysed state where no real commitment can be made, and you end up spending your whole evening browsing.  Before you know it, you’ve got to get in the bed and set the alarm so you don’t forget to go back to your office for typing emails into a computer the next morning.

But if you hover a show for too long on Netflix, the trailer autoplays.  The alarming eruption of voices has often led me to suspect I am undergoing a home invasion, but I am now used to this and have finally agreed with London Metropolitan Police that we will leave each other alone.  In the case of the Mindhunter trailer, suspenseful music immediately filled my sparsely decorated new build living room.  The screen of my massive telly conveyed a past decade of American life.  All of this was soaked through with a quickly gripping sense of mystery: the story was clearly of a serial killer in late seventies, early eighties Atlanta targeting African-American children while the institutionally racist law enforcement, er, institutions ignored calls for them to investigate.  I’m not normally one for grisly crime investigations, but the added tension of strained race relations promised more intense drama (see post on Dear White People) so this, coupled with some clearly very high production values, saw me dive in.

But what started as a dive turned into a slow, uncomfortable, duty-bound crawl as Mindhunter shifted awkwardly under my expectations of what it would actually be.  Let’s get this out of the way first: the Atlanta murders are only really about 40% of the second series, and to get to that I had to get through the first series, where they are 0% of the content.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying I can now only enjoy things that are to do with the Atlanta child murders, but I want to acknowledge that Netflix’s trailer mis-sold the show.  Nevertheless, I put my thumb-distracting smartphone in a different room and committed to the first few episodes.  But I couldn’t work out where things were going.  We had some FBI people forming an unlikely partnership, going around training local police, but then kind of starting to interview serial killers (before the term had been coined) in prisons and then sort of, you know, getting into running a whole study to understand more about the behaviour of violent criminals.  Mindhunter gets into a great stride, but it takes its time getting there.  This was competing in my TV-viewing time with masterpieces like Seven Worlds, One Planet and I’m A Celebrity (also obviously a masterpiece), so I found it harder and harder to prioritise such heavy-going fare.

After a bit of a gap, though, I found myself on lengthy plane and train journeys during my America trip and, with nothing else to do, was able to focus on subsequent episodes downloaded to my phone, finally hooking myself in to get totally mindhunted.  And that’s the first thing about Mindhunter: its terrible name.  The cast don’t actually go out hunting for minds.  A more apt title would be Crimesolver or Violentoffenderinterviewer, but both of those sound much naffer than Mindhunter.  But where there was a lack of effort in thinking up a title, there is an excess of doing a good job when it comes to most other elements of the production.  The period setting is executed masterfully – parts of it are slightly akin to a latter-day suburban Mad Men, and, like that show, the attitudes of the time are held true, rather than filtering history’s bigotry through a more palatable lens to make modern audiences feel good (I’m looking at you, Downton Abbey).  People smoke constantly, there is little to no airport security, and seatbelts look distinctly optional – ah, the good old days.

Let’s meet, then, the chap who I think is the actual Mindhunter: Holden Ford.  He’s played by Jonathan Groff and he speaks with the same pitch of voice at all times, which makes his lines hypnotic, but brings to life Ford’s untapped genius as he begins to realise the scope of what his work can achieve: if they learn to profile killers, they can solve murders before further victims fall.  The grumpy cop to his wide-eyed cop is Bill Tench and what unites them is they both have really bad shirts.  Our pair are joined by Dr Wendy Carr who seems to perform the role of some sort of line manager stroke unenthusiastic office-bound cheerleader, sending her chaps out to record interviews she can listen to.  All three are drawing on their experiences at a certain school of acting in their performances: the “I just smelled a fart” approach.  Indeed, each actor’s talent shines through as they create their characters, but the distasteful and serious nature of their conversations and relationships make it look like someone has just keffed in their airspace the whole time.  This extends to almost all the supporting cast, with the exception of the serial killers they meet in various jails.  There are some real household names that I won’t spoil, but you can tell each performer is having a smashing time in the role.

As we progress into series two, a lot starts to go on.  Story strands spread outwards like planets in an ever-expanding universe.  While everything that unfolds about the Atlanta child murders is compelling, we’re also getting deep into Tench’s own problems with his adopted son and very curly-haired wife (with in-marriage dialogue that perfectly captures how things can get so much worse when you only say the wrong thing to each other).  In addition, Carr’s relationship goes under the microscope in order to allow us a better understanding of her mode of operation (which is refreshingly unusual).  Mindhunter treats its viewers intelligently, allowing real focus on each area rather than jumping about like a dance video.  The whole pace can tend to luxuriate in its own quality, as if demanding we drink in the awesome settings, the American nostalgia and the faces of cast members who look like they’re trying to work out who just did that terrible fart.

Season two has left me wanting more and a new TV-viewing approach has evolved to keep up with historical references.  It’s called the Google-along and it’s something you might already have found yourself doing with The Crown.  Each time something comes up that you’ve never heard of, call upon your search engine of choice to cover the gaps in your historical context.  But don’t forget to look at the TV screen too, otherwise you’ll miss this unusual show as it defies your categorisations and expectations.  Focus on the mindhunting.

Luther

“Luther; is he really as dirty as they say?”  Well, this was the question I had been asking myself when I finally succumbed to clicking atop Idris Elba’s brooding face on my Netflix menu.  Now an experienced viewer of gritty British crime dramas (Happy Valley, Line Of Duty), I was prepped to plumb further depths in my exploring of the nation’s obsession with murders and police officers.  Christmas 2018 had been peppered with constant conversational mentions of buses becoming worrying territory after a harrowing scene in the fifth series that the BBC broadcast as part of their festive schedule.  As someone whose average daily consumption of London buses is between three and five (I end up on the 137 most days, but most covet the rare appearance of a spiffy little P5), this warranted further investigation.  Also: Idris Elba.  I like his coats.

All I knew was that he plays a copper, but most likely one who doesn’t care much for due process, particularly after I gleaned a reference to anger issues in the blurb.  John Luther specifically works in the department of the police that looks at murders.  I’m not sure what other sort of law enforcement I thought he would be doing.  You don’t get your own series prosecuting for benefit fraud, I suppose.  Based in and around East London (which means I’m often distracted during exterior set-up shots trying to see if I can recognise various Prets I’ve grabbed overpriced gluten-free snacks in on the way to meetings in that part of town) the Victorian brickwork and city history create an environment abundant in stylistic aesthetics and stabbings most horrid.  Whereas I expected each series of a handful of episodes to revolve around a singular detailed case, the first season episodically works through a number of different killers.  With the exception of the first perp we come across (the fiery Alice Morgan who, if only to demonstrate sizzling sexual tension, turns up throughout future instalments) most of the killers Luther goes after are of the serial variety, often with specialist perversions.

Enter, then, a revolving cast of supporting actors whose odds to survive even ten minutes into the drama are not high.  If they’re not an established character, you’re really just counting down the moments until the come a cropper on the end of an axe (though this arguably also happens with established characters).  It brings to mind the Saturday evenings of growing up, when the family would gather round the box for Casualty.  In between progressing long-running storylines of the hospital staff, character actors would appear for set-up scenes.  We all knew someone was going to end up in accident and emergency, so there was a grisly thrill in eying each wobbly ladder or erratic motoring decision before we could tut at the crunching of bone and bursting forth of blood that necessitated a visit from Holby’s finest.  Similarly, with our Luther, we lay in wait as viewers, eager for the closure of each bit-part’s untimely dispatching at the hands of some sort of fantastical psychopath.  Often, Luther himself is trying to anticipate a maniac’s next move, glancing at some bits of paper pinned to a board in order to leap unfathomably to incredible conclusions that allow him to deduce the upcoming location of the culprit’s next hit.  Racing across town in his awful Volvo, Luther must have lost count of the number of times he’s been too late to save the victim.  If I’m late to a meeting at work, we just start five minutes later.  If Luther arrives delayed, folk get murdered.

I’m sure that makes for some awkward chats in his end-of-year reviews.  Later series see him under the leadership of DSU Martin Schenk (a more sort of subterranean Ted Hasting with much less lustrous hair).  Given the track record of Luther’s subordinates to end up dead themselves, we can only imagine what sort of constructive criticism is offered for his line management skills.  Getting assigned to his team can’t just therefore signify a death knell for any young detective sergeant’s career; it also drastically reduces their life expectancy.  Oh well, there’s still plenty of decent shop chat.  One police idiom for being convinced a suspect has committed a crime is expressed with the verb to fancy someone for something.  “Did you fancy him for it?” Luther will ask a seasoned colleague when the database throws up candidates for various bodily mutilations.  I think it’s meant to sound blokey, but all I can think about is the playground usage of to fancy: my head is filled with an embarrassed DCI giggling as they ask a hardened criminal if they’d like to dance at a school disco.

But Luther is such a lad that he can say and do what he wants and still he’d be our hero.  Plagued by family problems, career problems, and wedged-in problems where new hangers-on suddenly emerge to whom he seems to owe excessive favours, the jeopardy of whether Luther will solve the case before the rest of London is brutally slain is multiplied by pressure from mafia bosses and other such inconveniences.  For me, these pale in interest to the actual killings, but that’s more likely just me struggling with complex storylines.  Either way, these plot devices lead to one of my favourite scenes where Luther beats off two would-be assassins.  His weapon of choice?  A bin.  Truly legendary.

Altogether, though, Luther is a classy contribution to the insatiable canon of British crime drama, with more grit than a Highways Agency lorry on a frosty morning.  He’s made me consider investing in my own set of baggy grey work shirts, but Luther’s greatest sartorial achievement if twinning tweed overcoats with blazers, turning up the collars on both, chasing after a criminal and then not having to take everything off at the end of it due to be too sweaty.  I did mention he’s an extraordinary man, as he doesn’t seem to get as hot as I would.  Watch Luther at home alone with the lights if you’re feeling brave, then go out and ride the deserted top decks of night buses through underpopulated suburbs and see how your nerves hold out.  Luther focuses your mind back on the endless human potential for evil, filtered through the lens of work being a pain in the arse.  Whether there’s a murderer under your bed or a serial killer in your cupboard, you’ve still got to drag yourself into the office in the morning, just as Luther needs to keep solving crimes in order to afford his lavish collection of the same shirts and coats.  We can conclude, then, that he’s not as dirty as they say, as he clearly has a clean outfit for each day of the week.

Narcos: Mexico

There’s been a lot of debate around this and nobody can seem to agree.  Are we in or are we out?  Is Narcos: Mexico just another series of Narcos, or is it a different show entirely?  I didn’t even know if I was supposed to put a colon in the title between Narcos and Mexico.  However, I seem to be writing a separate one of these posts about it, so this is proof at last that’s not just a fourth series of one programme, but a fully-fledged boxset in its own right.  Sure, both exist in the same universe and both can stand alone, as you don’t need to have seen one to understand the other, but, if I’ve treated Fear The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead as independent entities, then we must be consistent here.

Truth be told I rolled straight into Narcos: Mexico after finishing Narcos – it was a logical progression and the Netflix algorithm was fairly insistent that because I watched Narcos I should watch Narcos: Mexico.  Confidently, I clicked to play was immediately devastated that the Colombian Spanish I had subconsciously learned from Narcos, however, didn’t allow much latent intelligibility with the Spanish on offer in Narcos Mexico (which, in case you can’t tell, is Mexican Spanish).  My linguistic geekiness was devastated and I was subsequently forced to pay much closer attention to the subtitles than I had been intending.  This issue was also compounded by one of the leading cast: Diego Luna.  Stepping into the Escobarian shoes of Wagner Moura as chief antagonist, Luna plays Félix Gallardo, the drugs kingpin whose rise and pursuit forms the main narrative arc of the drama. When I say play, I mean mumbles, as he violates his lines as if his mouth is full of muffin and he’s in a rush to get the words out before taking another massive bite.  Before knickers are got into twists, I should point out my longstanding fandom of Luna; coming across Y Tu Mamá También on DVD back in my student days, I vowed that his performance in this influential film would always see him endowed with my utmost respect.  I confess that Gael García Bernal has more fun in the film, and not just because he has a mullet, but the point I am making here is that everyone should see this film and that Luna is a god for being in it.

But yeah, his drugs czar lacks something.  Whereas Moura got to be all moody stares while seeming to revel in the bloodlust his career in narcotics required of him, Luna is dominated by furrowed, sweaty brows, exasperation at his staff and possessed of a mild imposter syndrome.  I’ll forgive this, though, as it’s a tough part to crack and a tougher act to follow (though the chronology actually precedes Narcos – confused emoji).  What we do have is a cracking set of US narcos hot on his trail, clearly undeterred by his poor diction (including an angrier Ken Cosgrove from Mad Men).  Our introduction to their world is delivered from the perspective of Kiki Camarena, played by the underrated Michael Peña.  Mostly wearing what appears to be one of the awful jackets from Sex Education, Camarena is quickly het up about the Guadalajara unit’s ineffectiveness in the face of the biggest marijuana farming enterprise ever seen.  But Camarena is ever resourceful and he don’t always play by the rules, brought to life thrillingly when he sneaks onto a bus transporting impoverished rural Mexicans to work at the cannabis plantation.  His disguise?  He messes his hair up, proving correct the assumption that poverty is often indicated by bad haircuts.

Providing the kind of hedonism that looks great on screen, we have Rafael Caro Quintero, Gallardo’s childhood friend and the mastermind behind the strain of weed that launches the whole operation.  A constant loose cannon of a threat to his pal’s business aims, he doubles the jeopardy at play in any illegal narcotics operation, not least with his very exciting dalliance with rich girl, Sofía.  These two revel in japes that make their eventual coming a cropper truly inevitable, providing excellent entertainment along the way.

Further complications come from Gallardo’s political entanglements, laying bare the rampant corruption that allows him to function in the first place.  With character traits as sinister as their suits are tacky, these men lurk constantly at his heels to exacerbate his stress at every turn.  Why anyone would choose such a career is beyond me.  You have loads of money, which is nice, but that only lasts until your violent murder, whereas a peaceful retirement must surely be a better, if impossible prospect.  Some of his perplexity was shared by me as a viewer though, as I unavoidably missed some of the subtitles explaining who specifically these chaps were, and ended up having to accept that men in bad suits dogging him at every turn were just par for the course.

I’ll conclude that Netflix is mostly right: if you liked Narcos, you’ll like Narcos: Mexico.  It is simply more of the same.  Heart-stopping drama is punctuated by the same standard tropes: stakeouts in period automobiles, tense cat-and-mouse near misses, cigarettes and moustaches.  The soundtrack is gunfire and Spanish swearwords.  The setting is sweaty dust and dusty sweat, though 1980s Guadalajara fails to excite the traveller in me as much as 1990s Colombia.  I couldn’t help wondering what the big idea was here: are we going to complete an encyclopaedic dramatization of every illegal substance oligarch South America has ever produced?  Either way, until Narcos: Uruguay is available for streaming, you can get your fix of that narco life with this show, but if true stories, class As, murders and Mexican sun are not crucial ingredients in your boxset viewing, then simply viewing Narcos (as in, Narcos: Original) is sufficient.

Happy Valley

Yet another season of How To Get Away With Murder has appeared on Netflix and I seem to be watching it out of a sense of duty more than anything else.  But it feels less fun than before.  I’m struggling to relate.  The characters rarely have a hair out of place, whereas someone accused me of having a perm the other day.  That, and the American gloss of each week’s new episode of Riverdale (which is equal parts cheese and artificial sweetener – a sickening combination), had left me craving something grittier.  And that’s because Brits love grit.  Our natural habitat is drizzle under grey overcast skies.  Our national pastime is wincing at Brexit.  Our approach to public transport is never to make eye contact.  Revisiting Fleabag for last week’s blog had reawakened my genetic predilection for the darker things in life.  Then I discovered Happy Valley.

Yeah, I know I’m late again.  Two seasons of this crime drama had gone out between 2014 and 2016, but my discovery of this gritty-as-gravel northern fare is timely while the internet buzzes with speculation about when 2019’s rumoured third series will air.  But, whether early adopter or bandwagon clamberer, the main thing is that my need for British grit was met in the Netflix menu by the sight of Sarah Lancashire in a fluorescent police jacket scowling into the bleak weather of some sort of Yorkshire scenery.  Where do I begin?  Let’s start with Sarah Lancashire.  It’s lame to mention an actor’s early work, but Lancashire did spend 338 episodes (and a feature-length special) of Coronation Street smoking cigarettes behind the bar of the Rovers Return and saying “Oh, Curly” on a regular basis as Raquel Watts née Wolstenhulme.  Then she branched out into the epic biopic Seeing Red (2000), where she went about adopting needy children – what a hero!

Therefore, thanks to gaps in my following of her career, my next encounter with her was the opening scene of Happy Valley, where she arrives at an unfolding crime (a drug-addled young man threatening to torch himself in a kiddies’ playground) and tries to talk down the perpetrator.  Here was the grit I had been after.  Heroin addiction in the family?  Check.  Problem relationships with her children?  Check.  An irreverent approach to the emotional upheaval involved in deciding you ought to set yourself on fire?  Check.  Wet pavements all around?  Check.  I mean, let’s hear it for wet pavements.  Happy Valley’s truest grit comes from the grim townscapes on which its characters run around chasing each other: paving slabs, concrete, tarmac.  All look naff dry.  All look even more dispiriting when glistening with that morning’s downpour.  It almost makes your eyes suffer.  I love it.

But nobody seems to suffer more than Catherine Cawood.  Before we even start series one, she has lost a daughter to suicide, is raising a practically orphaned grandson, been divorced, regressed in her career and painted her kitchen cupboards really garish colours.  As the action unfolds, the bruises accumulate, with some of the graphic violence proving hard to stomach.  But the torture is also emotional, which can lead to the feeling that Lancashire ends up crying in every scene.  However, this makes things seem too depressing.  She gets the best lines and delivers them so well that a plucky humour and no-nonsense approach permeates all scenes.  In short, it’s an incredible performance and I’m only sad that I’ve now already seen every episode currently available.

Around her, though, is gathered a cast of Halifax citizens who interconnect in all manner of disturbing ways in order to drive the plot forward.  Series one focuses on a very ill-conceived kidnapping and ransom storyline that seems to escalate from a denied salary increase to aggressive hostage-taking within a couple of conversations.  In the second season, we combine a serial murder investigation with an extramarital affair gone wrong and a very shifty teaching assistant trying to access Cawood’s grandson.  As I said, it’s a big crock of grit and it’s exactly what I was after.  For me, prominence in this Halifax cast must be given to Siobhan Finneran, who plays Catherine’s sister.  Given that her addiction problems are referenced in the opening lines of the first scene, it’s a tense inevitability that that wagon will be fallen off.  In fact, her array of impractical cardigans is a distracting yet well characterised reminder that she is somewhat of an impractical person.  If, like me, you spent your youth watching late-night films on Channel 4 that you were probably not old enough for, you’ll recognise Finneran from Rita, Sue And Bob Too.  Hopefully this film’s title gives you an indication of its bawdy subject matter, but I’m in no way ashamed to say I’ve seen it several times and even forked out for tickets to the play it’s based on.  I recommend this to all of you.  And, funnily enough, George Costigan, who plays Nevison Gallagher, played this film’s Bob to Finneran’s Rita, so I’m hoping Sue gets in on the action again for series three.

Yet again, I’m gently poking fun at Happy Valley, but it’s a boxset that everyone should see.  There’s very little wrong with it: bad characters can be identified by their constant drinking of beer cans, the same group of men spend almost all their time unloading bags of sand off a truck on one farm, the action escalates very quickly in the first series.  This is because there is so much right with it.  And the rightest thing of all is that this isn’t American gloss.  There are no shoot outs and high-speed car pursuits.  In fact, the climactic chase of the second series involves two relatively gym-averse middle-aged characters struggling not to slip on railway sleepers (wet with drizzle, obviously).  Yet this apparently plodding action is miles tenser than anything else.  Sure, nobody looks as cool as an NYPD cop in a bulky bright yellow police jacket with an extendable truncheon hanging off it, but Happy Valley gripped me like nothing else has in a long time.  Your life will be improved by the quality of Sarah Lanchashire’s performance and the relief that this isn’t your real life, as there’s no happiness in this valley.