In the second instalment of Luther’s new series, featuring Idris Elba as DCI John Luther, serial killer Cameron Pell has taken a police officer hostage – but what is the deranged former art’s student’s real plan?
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.
Christopher Eccleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in Hugo Blick’s seven-part conspiracy thriller The Shadow Line, coming to BBC Two in May, which delves into the heart of human morality.
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.
‘It’s all very soul destroying, isn’t it – actual police work?’ remarks DCI John Luther to his protégé DS Justin Ripley at the beginning of Episode 1 of this new series.
Over the course of its first four episodes, The Shadow Line has matured from an overwrought, rather confused melodrama plagued with florid verbosity into one of the BBC’s best thrillers in a very long time. In the fifth instalment, it gets even better.
Actress Kierston Wareing (Fish Tank, Martina Cole’s The Take) plays Detective Sergeant Lia Honey in Hugo Blick’s seven-part conspiracy thriller The Shadow Line.
BBC Two’s increasingly fascinating police drama reaches and passes its halfway stage in this episode, yet neither DI Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor) nor Joseph Bede (Christopher Eccleston) appear much closer to accomplishing their respective goals than they were in the hours after the death of gangster Harvey Wratten.
Like the drugs at the heart of the late Harvey Wratton’s empire, The Shadow Line has become addictive in a slow, almost sneaky manner. After an unhurried, take-it-or-leave it start, it has insidiously built up to the point where now, three episodes in, it has become impossible to break free of its grip.
The principal problem with The Shadow Line is its identity crisis. At times, it’s a fascinating noir-ish thriller; at others, it feels like an unwieldy Shakespearian melodrama that has somehow lost its way en route to the RSC and found itself on the telly instead.