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.

Years And Years

Sometimes watching TV can be torture.  Granted, it often comes with the accompanying sentiment that you could be doing something better with your time: connecting with family members, perhaps, or making a difference in your community by volunteering to help those in need.  Once you’ve quashed those feelings by persuading yourself that you’ve worked hard enough all week and you’re perfectly entitled to exist inertly on the sofa while images are beamed into your head for the purpose of entertainment though, it’s the content on that hypnotising and paralysing screen that can cause untold pain.  Whether it’s the bodies on Love Island that you will never have, or the bright young things who are already better than you on University Challenge, the sought-after escapism can sometimes give way to unavoidable introspection, leading to an analysis of your reality that makes you feel worse than you did when you popped the telly on.  Enter, then, Years And Years.

An evening peak drama of course has the artistic license to fabricate a world where things happen that are more interesting than daily life.  Downton Abbey mixed ye olde moral compass with the foibles of servant management.  Line Of Duty poses the question: what if all those coppers are bent?  Either way, they offer distance from our humdrum existences, making the characters’ often terrible experience seem exciting and diverting.  Conversely, Years And Years can only fill its audience with dread.  Its narrative device?  It’s set a little bit in the future.  Not quite the virtual reality-dominated future of Black Mirror where attaching little metallic discs to your temple is all you need to enter wholly into an alternative reality.  No, we’re talking a few months’ away.  Things that might happen next year, and the year after, and then, as a result, a few years after that as well.

Why would this be so terrifying?  Two things: not actually knowing what will happen and fearing that the worst-case scenario will win out over the best.  And it’s so near that it’s not a single future that’s been imagined and will affect subsequent generations.  It’s what we ourselves might have to go through as our lives progress.  2019 headlines veer from climate crisis to Brexit farce via alt-right resurgence, neoliberal inequality and the rejection of truth in favour of malleable feeling.  Our future is not looking bright, it’s looking orange (if there’s more Trump and that).  Weathering this onslaught of one thing after the other, our everyman Lyons family boldly goes where a pessimistic media has long predicted we will all end up.

But the Lyons aren’t like most families.  This is because they talk on the phone in group chats all the time.  My own family mostly communicates by a Whatsapp group I set up a few years back.  In it, my sister and parents coordinate my niece’s schedule of educational and extra-curricular activities, my niece herself hijacks the group to use all the emojis at once or to leave voicenotes of her wailing comically, and my mum plumbs new depths of autocorrect mayhem that I am now expert at deciphering.  Conversely, the Lyons, who are split into the five constituent units of four adult siblings and their grandmother, chat through their latest news, pass comment on the world around them and pursue passive-aggressive banter.  In the first example of future technological advancement, they do all this through the voice-activated Signor service, a kind of Alexa-type gadget that actually seems to serve a purpose.

Now, if you thought I was going to make a comment on the family’s diversity, you can get off now.  The Lyons’ ticking of every box in this area might be a socially conscious casting director’s wet dream, but each Lyon is so much more than an exercise in representation, even though their very visibility on screen is significant to communities that don’t always see themselves reflected in their own entertainment.  If, along the way, even some viewers move beyond seeing people as categories and instead view them as individuals, then it can’t hurt for Years And Years to avail itself of the full spectrum of human potential.  So, who are these Lyons onto whom the near future is projected?

Our grand-matriarch comes in the form of Anne Reid (a favourite from dinnerladies), providing a lens on the encroaching of the future into family life that has both the confusion and the liberal attitude of old age.  Rory Kinnear is Stephen Lyons, the settled wealthier son, husband and dad of two, contrasting with his sister, Edith, who has been off around the world on moral missions (played by Jessica Hynes, whose amazing performance as Cheryl in The Royle Family I am currently reliving to great joy).  Feisty younger sister Rosie, meanwhile, succumbs to a more reflexive response to the events that engulf the family, while Danny Lyons, played by Russell Tovey (who should be in more, if not all, things) has a more idealistic approach to the ensuing calamity.

And calamity is what does ensue.  Each episode is interspersed with a number of montages that take us through the course of time, showcasing the family birthdays that mark each passing year as we journey into 2020 and the decade beyond.  Sound-tracked by a choir singing, this change of pace propels us into disaster each time – so much so, in fact, that you begin to dread its every appearance.  I now have a phobia of choirs singing, as they herald bad things.  Inhumane legislation creeps in, international tensions escalate, environments are plundered and, throughout, the British media and public make multiple catastrophic decisions.  Punctuating each of these current affairs round-ups is Emma Thompson (as if the cast weren’t already strong enough), having the time of her life as Vivienne Rook, some sort of Lady Farage (yet, here’s a lie) whose emergent and morally ambiguous political party gradually grows from a fringe movement to a mainstream force for wrong (ring any bells?).

Not only is there the human drama of the Lyons, then, with arguments, infidelity and deep-rooted resentment, but this is compounded by the consequences of the future’s news.  And the nature of compounding, is that it happens over and over (like in The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver).  Each montage screws them more than the one before, and in every area of their lives: employment, freedom, healthcare, housing, human rights etc.  Very occasionally, the relation of this back to the storyline is a touch wedged: some clunking lines swing in overhead to set out the wider political context.  Parts of the technological advancement also tip things unnecessarily from thought-provoking drama to science fiction fantasy, but there’s no reason a TV show can’t be both.  Whatever this is, it’s wildly entertaining, if you can stand the torture.  We’re not yet through all six episodes, but you always know something bad is going to happen, just like with the future in real life.  I’m pinned into my sofa at each viewing on BBC iPlayer and almost crumble under the tension of every time-accelerating montage – here we go again… to oblivion.  It really is potluck who will make it through each episode.  Just like it’s potluck who’ll make it through our real future.

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.