So we're currently awash with crime dramas over here in iPlayer land. What with the BBC making a big deal out of THE SHADOW LINE and now with CASE HISTORIES, the return of the superlative LUTHER and memories of ZEN and WAKING THE DEAD still fresh, it makes me wonder what captivates audiances about crime thrillers? With so many of them around, what makes a good one?
I read in an article recently that crime novels outsell virtually every other genre of novels put together and if I were to look on my mother's shelf up in Scotland, I'd find that she has her fair share of them, not to mention the countless thousands that get checked out at the library. Makes my future as a sci-fi writer look even more dubious, to be honest.
So, Crime. It's all around us, it's in our everyday lives, it's something we hear about in the news all the time, so why do we romantacise it? Why do we put it up on a pedestal in order to view it with sexy actors and snazzy camera angles? Perhaps because it excites us, danger and being close to the edge and all that, but I don't think that people in those actual situations would agree with that point of view. Perhaps because it's very basic to human nature, the urge to see Justice?
Of course, the one thing that comes hand in hand with criminals are the police. And let's face it, if there's one institution that the UK tends to have a massive problem with, it's the police. How often do we see the police as self-serving, callous or sometimes just downright corrupt on the television? How often are they simply no better than the criminals that they intend to track down? Why do we even look to them for protection? Hmmm... I feel I may have to qualify my thoughts on this.
THE SHADOW LINE.
Right then, this was one hell of a series. I mean, it's not often you see this kind of thing. It's slow, serious, heavy, hard-hitting and well acted. It's got a cast that makes you do a double take and it's so auter-driven that it makes you wonder why anyone else bothered to turn up to work on it. For every positive point about this series, I can probably find a negative one, so to me the series kind of blanked itself out as soon as it was done.
Don't get me wrong, this is a visually sumptuous and very indulgent series, it languishes detaild attention on the smallest of facets, it boasts an impressive opening cast (what with Christopher Eccleston still looking for work after Doctor Who and Chiwitel Ejiofor gracing the screen with his immense presence) and then only adds to that with the persons of Eve Best, Stephen Rea and Rafe Spall (an extremely entertaining nutcase).
But at the same time it's ponderous, preachy, confusing and not particularly riveting. By the end of the series and the reveal of the central plot, I'd all but completely lost interest due to the roubd-about methods of getting there. What was it about in the end? Laundering drug money into funding police pensions? Was that about it? Because if you ask me, something that mundane doesn't really deserve the reverance this series seemed to ladle onto it.
The almost endless series of murder and double-dealing was difficult to keep track of, especially when most of it didn't really seem to have much of a purpose, or was for it's own sake. Tobias Menzies' journalist character was to be commended for acurately portraying what the general public probably think of journalists these days (ie, ruthless scum), but he was killed off just when he was about to get interesting. As was the same with Robert Pugh.
So all in all, I could probably ramble on about this series for a good page or so, but it would just round-about whinging, much like the series itself. So much potential, so much gorgeous camera work and excllent acting, but so little substance to back it up with, and you can have all the pretty lights and people doing good jobs as you want, but if there's nothing underneath, then there's not much point. The ending was perplexingly annoying, as well.
Ah well. Next time, CASE HISTORIES.
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