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.
One of the (many) great things about Luther is the bad guys. Despite their diabolical schemes and vicious acts of mass murder, they’re not bald-headed men in secret lairs. Instead, they’re frighteningly ordinary-looking young men.
‘No one dies these days!’ Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) yells to new acquaintance Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) as they leap out of a top-floor window of the CIA archives in Washington, just in time to avoid a huge explosion that rips the building to bits.
The second instalment of the new series sees what started as a fairly narrow story opening up around John Luther (Idris Elba) as he searches for salvation amid the wreckage of his private life and the darkness that his life as a policeman brings him into incessant contact with.
A complete and unexpurgated knowledge of the truth is what DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the viewers who have followed his exploits through every twist and bloodstained turn of this expansive, intricately-plotted thriller deserve; and happily, it’s precisely what they get.
After five nights of misleading flashbacks, misremembered evidence and mystifyingly un-barrister-like behaviour, the verdict is in on Anthony Horowitz’s suffocation-in-Suffolk psychodrama.
Last time, we were discussing the logic and challenge of producing a sitcom that has more sit than com. In this, the final episode of Psychoville’s second series, that trend continues.
After several weeks of soul-searching and self-doubt, DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finally establishes which side of the line he was on before being shot in the head – and who his real enemies are.
In direct contrast to its predecessor, ‘A Good Man Goes To War’ is a stunning, iconic celebration of everything that makes Doctor Who so good, let down by an ending so tepid it’s like finishing the best meal you’ve ever had with a glass of lukewarm orange squash.
The arrival of yet another British crime drama series isn’t necessarily reason to break out a bottle of champagne and smash it against the side of the telly. Happily, Case Histories is more than capable of fighting its corner.