‘The Shadow Line’ DVD review
BBC Two’s recent The Shadow Line is a serial sodden with blood: seven hours of claret-splattered, frequently flamboyant, occasionally preposterous and completely compulsive television.
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BBC Two’s recent The Shadow Line is a serial sodden with blood: seven hours of claret-splattered, frequently flamboyant, occasionally preposterous and completely compulsive television.
Some programmes thrive on constantly treading the line between funny and serious without ever truly identifying which they are – Shameless did it for years before toppling over the edge – while others are content to nail their comedic or dramatic flags to the mast from the outset.
For the third time in four years, the Robot Chicken team have produced a special extended episode dedicated to Star Wars.
Based on three novels by Kate Atkinson, this recent BBC One series features the adventures of former soldier, onetime policeman and permanently good-natured private investigator Jackson Brodie, played by Harry Potter villain Jason Isaacs.
There are only a few reasons why television remakes are commissioned, but the ways in which they can fail are as plentiful as there are fans to castigate a production company for daring to make such horrendous sows’ ears out of the silk purse originals.
‘This is the NHS,’ a podgy pathologist points out to Detective Sergeants Brooks and Devlin at the beginning of the episode, ‘not CSI.’ – and there’s no mistaking the warmer, more down-to-earth British cousin of the long-running, long-faced American franchise for anything more transatlantic.
Stolen opens with the legend, ‘Once upon a time…’ printed on the screen. Like the fairytales that two German brothers collected and published in the nineteenth century, this is about as Grimm a story as it gets.
Even in a modern entertainment world where America, France and even Denmark are routinely exporting excellent psychological police thrillers as if there’s a NATO surplus, Neil Cross has proved with this show that British television hasn’t forgotten how to make them either.
It’s difficult to imagine how a Doctor Who story inspired by Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and J.G. Ballard’s High Rise could possibly work in the over-lit, under-financed confines of the BBC during the 1980s. It should come as no surprise, then, that it doesn’t.
In the final instalment of Series 2, DCI John Luther has to balance resolving the desperate dilemma that his concern for Caroline and Jenny Jones has led him into with stopping the destructive violence of two twins whose competitive spirit is only matched by their capacity for chaos.