‘Good Cop’: Episode 1 review

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With the force under more scrutiny than ever before, a new police drama – particularly one focussing on frontline beat bobbies rather than the procedural or scientific elements of detection – is either incredibly timely, uncomfortably coincidental or both.

Factor in a central premise of a cop finding himself torn between the law and a more primitive kind of justice, and you’ve got the kind of potential for controversy that Channel 4 couldn’t muster with a show about dwarves marrying gypsies with the ceremonies being presided over by Peter Sutcliffe, Jeremy Hunt and the cast of Hollyoaks.

However, possible social media storm aside, the foremost questions about Good Cop are whether it works as a piece of television, and if it justifies its place amid the sea of crime series and one-off cop films that – as Alan Partridge and Tony Hares once famously discussed – continue to flood our screens. The answers? Yes and just about.

Warren Brown (Luther, Inside Men) plays John Paul Rocksavage, an honest policeman with a positive outlook that he manages to maintain in spite of the avalanche of crap his job forces him to deal with. Yet all is not entirely well behind Sav’s decent demeanour.

A gang of brutish, perverted, piss-artist doormen led by Noel Finch (Stephen Graham playing a more home-grown kind of bastard after his recent portrayal of Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire) beat his colleague Andy Stockwell (Tom Hopper) to death in a frenzied attack that Sav can do nothing to prevent – and worse, the assault stemmed from an earlier confrontation between Sav and Finch. In other words, it was Sav’s fault.

Already upset after seeing his six-year-old daughter (who doesn’t even recognise him) and living with his terminally ill father – ‘The trouble with you being a copper is you see too much shite,’ Robert Rocksavage (Michael Angelis) wisely remarks – not to mention having to deal with a harrowing incident involving a dead baby, Sav goes quietly and calmly wrong. He gets a gun and returns to the scene of Andy’s beating, where he finds Finch.

The detestable thug mouths off about Sav lacking the balls to kill him … and then uses his final thoughts on this planet to realise he was utterly mistaken. Sav shoots him and goes home to clean out his firearm in readiness for dealing with the other members of Finch’s crew.

Good Cop is enjoyably predictable – even without the fashionable flash-forward opening, it’s easy to predict everything up until the death of Finch – and curiously lifelike in its unbelievability. Although there are coincidences and events that are almost as preposterous as Sav’s pop-star-ish name, the dialogue rings true and the extensive handheld camerawork give a documentary feel to proceedings that is more Coppers than The Bill. Sav’s familiar ordinariness is what makes him likeable, which is why it’s so shocking when he abruptly exacts such a cold revenge upon the odious Finch.

It also makes one wonder precisely what skeletons he might have in his closet that have led him to act this way – or, more disturbingly, if the capability to go to such extremes isn’t within us all. It’s asking moral questions of its audience like this that makes Good Cop worthy of a place amid the crowded market of crime dramas.

Aired at 9pm on Thursday 30th August 2012 on BBC One.

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