Back in the days when ITV bestrode the world of British TV crime drama like a haughty headmistress, crushing impudent wannabes under the heel of Jane Tennant’s stilettos, the only detective who could ever really hold a candle to the acknowledged curmudgeonly king of the coppers (Inspector Morse, of course) was DCI Reg Wexford.
Through 23 adventures between 1988 and 2000, the sensitive, softly-spoken sleuth provided a calmer, less cantankerous counterpoint to Morse’s maverick moroseness, making The Ruth Rendell Mysteries one of independent television’s most abiding and agreeable series.
ITV also adapted seventeen of Rendell’s non-Wexford stories for broadcast, and although over a decade has elapsed since the last – The Fallen Curtain, transmitted in 1999 – they have belatedly returned to the redoubtable baroness’s work once more for Thirteen Steps Down, a new two-part thriller based on a Rendell novel from 2004.
Luke Treadaway (Attack the Block) stars as Mickey ‘Mix’ Cellini – a principal character about as far away from reliable old Reg as you can imagine. Mix is a part-time repairer of fitness machines and a full-time psycho, obsessed with model Nerissa Nash (Elarica Gallacher, who appeared as the waitress who famously said, ‘You can tell me all about that tosser Harry Potter’ to the famous boy wizard in The Half-Blood Prince) and, more disturbingly, post-war London serial killer John Christie. ‘He was special,’ sighs Mix to his not-entirely-sane-either landlady Gwendolen. ‘One of a kind.’
When not perusing his library of gruesome true crime literature, cutting pictures of his favourite catwalk glamour girl out of magazines whilst creepily cooing ‘I love you, Nerissa’, doing a bit of stalking or (tired cliché alert) attending to the sexual needs of bored, wealthy housewives, fifties throwback and wannabe member of Morrissey’s backing band Mix is steadily building his barkingness to a murderous crescendo.
While Nerissa visits ex-Bond girl and social media sceptic Maryam D’Abo for spiritual advice (‘I don’t respond to texts or Twitter or any of that nonsense’) and Gwendolen (played by Geraldine James, who stars as that far more respectable housekeeper, Mrs Hudson, in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies) obsesses to her coven of gossipy tea-drinkers about the lost love of her life, the latter’s loopy lodger is out searching for someone to fulfil his ferocious fantasies.
Enter luckless Danila (Victoria Bewick). A passing resemblance to a 1950s starlet and coincidental Christie-related address later, and the unfortunate gym receptionist is ascending the titular steps through a cavernous Notting Hill townhouse to Mix’s apartment. Once she’s ignored the blaring warning klaxons of her host putting some Cliff Richard on the record player and mixing her a cocktail without doing a weedy joke about his name, it’s clear she’s in big trouble. And she’s not the only one.
Thirteen Steps Down is a dark and humourless psychodrama populated by unlikeable characters. Mix is clearly very disturbed, but he’s hardly Hannibal Lecter in the charm stakes. How he manages to get girls when his patter consists of boasts about his nutter knowledge (‘I doubt anyone in the world knows more about Christie than me’) and snapshots of his abusive childhood is a mystery.
Grumpy old Gwendolyn and her pals might not be burgeoning sociopaths but their little tea parties resemble a pensionable age reunion of the bitchy teenage witches from The Craft. Only Danila and (unusually for a model in a TV thriller) Nerissa are even remotely relatable or normal.
Despite the pervading gloom, Thirteen Steps Down is certainly watchable, and compelling enough to keep viewers hanging on for the second episode. Yet the sight of Ruth Rendell’s name on the opening titles is enough to make one long for the era when Wexford kept the streets of King’s Markham clean and ITV were prouder of their drama output than they were of their reality shows.
Although this isn’t quite a return to those glory days, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Aired at at 9pm on Monday 13th August 2012 on ITV1.
> Buy the Ruth Rendell Mysteries DVD boxset on Amazon.
Are you looking forward to Thirteen Steps Down? Let us know below…