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.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

I’ve found another sitcom workplace where I think I’d really fit in.  This time, it’s within the NYPD.  Let’s be clear: I’d be no good at solving crimes.  I would also be unwilling to undertake any duties that put me at risk in any way whatsoever.  Similarly, I couldn’t work in New York as it’s either too hot or too cold (and UK citizens currently can’t go there).  But, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has now joined the ranks of charming comedy shows where I tune in to feel like one of the gang.  I’ve imagined myself really fitting in with the personalities of Parks & Recreation.  I’ve considered where my place would be among the Scranton bods of The Office US (as well as knowing full well which one’s me in The Office…).  Now I can spend time wondering how my own sense of humour would enrich the pleasant chuckling that the activities of this very special police squad create.

Naturally, I am intentionally late to this party.  Having seen countless ads on e4 for the UK broadcast of this programme, I put it in the same category as Hollyoaks: TV shows whose existence I can ignore.  This decision was compounded by my televisual aversion to the emergency services.  However, I was frequently asked if I had seen Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with most people prompted by my own excessive office-based consumption of yoghurt – a trait I share with Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews).  Well, with lockdown coming up to its one-year anniversary, we’ve all got through more TV than we ever thought possible.  I’m not sure what happens when you complete Netflix, but let’s start a rumour that you get a telegram from the Queen (The Crown’s Olivia Colman of course).  So, to offset some of the heavier drama boxsets I was wading through (The Fall, The Staircase etc), Brooklyn Nine-Nine seemed like a welcome addition to my rotations.

At first, I’ll admit to seeing nothing special.  It was about crime, but not in a serious way.  Nobody died, jeopardy was only there to serve as plot device against which comedy could play out, the characters were loud and excessive in their behaviour.  Before I got to know them inside out, the humour struck me as obvious and I began to come to terms with the fact this might well be a true background show: something that plays in the background while I cook under the extractor fan, unable really to hear or see it.  Sure, a couple of episodes would get a bit of focus during my weekly bath, but Brooklyn’s fictional 99^th precinct hadn’t yet earned a special place in my heart.  I did however unearth my favourite character early on: Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti).  There’s something about a woman who won’t let anything or anyone stop her doing exactly as she pleases that just makes for wonderful entertainment.  Her rudeness to all her colleagues is a constant source of inspiration.

Over time, though, I learned that all our main players have such strong characterisation that the humour’s beauty clearly comes from knowing them well.  Disturbingly, perhaps, there was also a bit of me in all of them.  My lifelong geek side means I see Amy Santiago as a kindred spirit.  My emotionless intellectual snobbery turns Captain Raymond Holt into a hero.  Charles Boyle is all of my insecurities wrapped up in one tiny little man.  I won’t go through them all, but they’re so much more than background artists designed to offer perspective on our central figure: Jake Peralta, played by Andy Samberg.  He is the only one I am not, but he still makes me laugh with his childishness: a great face for silliness.  As series progress, the vibe becomes less about Peralta’s tension with fish-out-of-water new boss Holt, and more about the unit’s ability to support each other through good and bad times.

If that doesn’t sound hilarious, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is also taking on a number of social issues in a matter-of-fact way.  Racism, homophobia and sexism all come under the microscope.  We tread a narrow tightrope between signalling worthiness and, in fact, reflecting the world around us.  A stereotype or stock character is a very rare occurrence throughout the show’s universe.  And it is this, coupled with the cast’s irresistibility, that saw Brooklyn Nine-Nine succeed in commanding my attention.  Somehow, it’s elevated itself well above a background show.  Each instalment of its six series on Netflix (and a seventh out there that aired this year) deserves your full attention.

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.

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.

Line Of Duty

Fresh off the realisation I could in fact enjoy a British police drama, after devouring Happy Valley on Netflix many years after its BBC debut, my insatiable desire for content saw me follow the crowd into Line Of Duty.  My phone set to one side, I squished myself into the sofa in my current flat’s TV room, tuned out the sounds of the girls upstairs constantly lumping around as if taking part in some sort of overweight aerobics session, telling myself that I am only constantly staying in and watching this much telly while I save my final pounds for the upcoming transaction of my first flat, ignoring the fact that I’ve actually overstretched myself and won’t have any money left for furniture when I do get in there, and allowed the first episode to wash over me.  I was ready for drama, tension, twists and turns.  I was there willing myself to be hooked.  But I didn’t click.  Within ten minutes, I was listless.  My fingers twitched for my smartphone screen.  Maybe someone had sent me a funny Whatsapp.  No, I had to concentrate.  Perhaps I was doing it wrong.  The next night, I tried another episode, bound by some sort of duty to carry on.  Possibly even acting in the line of duty LOL.  (I’ve put the LOL in so we all know this isn’t funny).

“Guys, I don’t think I’m into Line Of Duty,” I told some friends in the back of a car on the way to Bristol.  I might as well have said I had voted for Brexit, such was the pouring out of scorn each passenger saw fit to direct at me.  They chastened me, insisting I persist with further episodes or risk missing out on televisual gold.  But, here, in a sort of listicle, are the things that stopped me loving the show immediately:

The actors’ faces

I don’t mean their physical features, I mean their expressions.  And by expressions, I mean nothing.  I get the impression that everyone had been directed to play their parts without disturbing their impenetrable glares.  Lennie James does snarl around quite wonderfully in the first series (otherwise seen dispatching walkers in The Walking Dead) but Vicky McClure (DI Kate Fleming) just seems to stare and stare, while Gina McKee (who, to me, is always Irene from The Forsyte Saga) appears frozen (later on: literally…).  Maybe this is what life is like when you have low emotional intelligence: faces are just unchanging groupings of eyes, noses and teeth.  However, let’s say the facial emoting is simply subtler than the melodrama you might normally see, and, cleverly, it allows the actors to hide clues and conceal cues that would otherwise help you work it out all too quickly: who are the baddies and who are the goodies?

The lack of geography

I’ve talked before about liking a strong theme.  Happy Valley, for example, had the theme of being set in and around Halifax, which really rooted it in a human space.  Line Of Duty just seems to be in a big, grey city.  There’s talk of Central and East Midlands Constabularies, but I’m certain I’ve never heard an actual city named (and I’m not going to check this, either, as confidence is something the only ally of the wrong).  This is compounded by the various accents with which our heroes shout things at each other: Northern Irish, Estuary English, Northern.  In addition, any mapping systems used to track suspects look like they’ve been mocked up on ClipArt rather than taken from any real street plan, especially in the earlier series.

DS Steve Arnott

Not being funny, yeah, as I don’t want my input on the internet to be saying nasty things about people, but, this character: insert scratchy-chin emoji.  As a mediocre amateur dramatist myself, I am gonna say it: I’m not sure Martin Compston is a good actor.  Maybe I just wanted him to be more of a character actor, not the leading man.  His dominance of the first episodes felt like a red herring – I expected him to be offed pretty quickly.  Yet it slowly dawned on me: he was central to everything.  His hair aggravated me at first, as his face was framed by a ridge that no other human barnet has.  Then I struggled with his voice, as he sounded like his lines were too much effort, as if he were a guide vocal to the real performance.  Over time, his character became something of the studmuffin among lady witnesses, when the last thing he needed was a sleazy side.  In the current fifth series, he’s been styled at last, sporting designer stubble and showing commitment to little waistcoats by never taking his off.  He’s done nothing to redeem himself, but he’s grown in my affections as a hero.  I no longer secretly chuckle when he’s assaulted by criminals.

Over time, the above points all become part of Line Of Duty mythology.  There’s a style and framework in which the drama unfolds, and we’ve just got to respect that.  Each six-episode series opens with a dramatic police operation, normally going wrong.  We then deal with the aftermath, coming to things through the eyes of AC12, the police force’s internal anti-corruption unit.  If you’ve ever wondered who polices the police, then it’s these police that police the police in the police force.  I don’t know how they pick what to look into.  The opening operation could have gone swimmingly, and they start sniffing around anyway.  It’s for this reason that most other police hate them, giving each of the AC12ers a ballsy resilience that’s great to get on board with.  Either way, two layers of tension interface.  Firstly, there’s the investigation itself.  Then, there’s the eternal question (at least until the big reveal in the season finale) regarding whether the heroic bobby under scrutiny is a bent copper or not.  We’re kept guessing, but enough is revealed episode by episode that you gain a growing sense of closure, rather than being driven insane by never getting anywhere.  It’s fine storytelling, so let’s focus on three things that make it excellent:

The high admin of the police interrogations

AC12 need to do lots of interviews to find out facts.  They still seem to record these on cassette, which reminds me of taping the Top 40 off the radio back in the nineties, but this actually adds a nice element to the tension, as each session seems to begin with a few seconds of a blaring sound that signals the start of the cassette.  In each series, this blare gets longer, until they seem to sit there for about forty minutes just starting at each other (with blank expressions, obviously) over the airhorn.  But, that’s not even the best part.  For each interrogation, all the evidence must be ordered and arranged into a handy printout for each participant, and this must tally up with the presentation on screen.  I can barely sort out slides for the most basic of office meetings, but these AC12 folk are dab hands at making sure everything matches and is neatly packaged.  They might be great at detecting, but they are also fantastic at admin.  But, perhaps, this love of admin is to be expected from people with such unswerving devotion to the wearing of lanyards.

“He must be afforded the courtesy of being questioned by an officer at least one rank superior.”

This line is said in every series.  During the recorded interview, no junior riffraff can tackle their big bosses about malpractice.  The police, given its military tendencies, is obsessed with rank.  Failing to finish a sentence with the correct sir or ma’am can lead to upbraiding that is frankly lacking from my open plan-sitting, skinny jean-wearing office culture in the media industry.  This line often results in the same question being asked by someone of the right seniority, making its pointlessness clear to all.  But, once you’re a seasoned Line Of Duty fan, you relish all the curious turns of phrase that pepper police protocol.  We’ve started doing this among ourselves, now, saying things for the benefit of the DIR, directing people’s attention to piece of evidence RH5 and serving each other Regulation 15s.  Such fun.

Superintendent Ted Hastings

With nostrils as big as his hair is lustrous, Hastings runs AC12.  Instead of end-of-year reviews, he shouts at people in his office.  And it’s all done in the fieriest Northern Irish accent, berating Fleming and Arnott like they’re naughty siblings.  He’s as authoritative in his white-shirted officewear as he is in his bulletproof vest, equally able in both get-ups to dispense witty quips that belittle his suspects.  I really want him to tell me off, but then be secretly proud of me at the same time.

All in all, then, I’m now a fan of Line Of Duty.  The fifth series is currently playing out on the BBC, in case you missed any of the billboards that are plastered all over town.  And, most importantly, it’s gained me access to office chat, as everyone seems to have decided spontaneously to catch up on old series on Netflix.  Jed Mercurio, who’s writing the whole thing, can now add boxset genius to his list of qualities, alongside man with name that sounds incredibly cool.  For the benefit of the tape, I am now finishing the blogpost here, rather than going on to say things about too many guns for a British drama, the high mortality rate of police officers in the show or my inability to work out the ranks (Detective Chief Inspector is my favourite as it’s such a mouthful).  I do not have to say anything, actually, but it may harm my defence if I do not mention when blogging something which I later rely on in conversation.