LUTHER: LOTS OF INDULGENCE BUT NINETY FOUR THESES SHORT OF A REFORMATION

Short palindromic review: 'Able I was ere I saw Elba'.

Longer review: The much-ballyhooed BBC cop series Luther debuted Tuesday. It was supposed to 'reinvent' (reform?) the British crime series, and I'd looked forward to it, because the idea of bringing Idris Elba back from the States (where his Stringer Bell was one of the Wire's more interesting characters) with his own vehicle was a good one. It's not unusual for British talent to be poached by American TV, but in the case of non-white British performers, the sad truth is that there has been a lack of quality roles for them in Britain. Those they get in America are not necessarily better, but they are higher profile (for example Alex Kingston and then Parminder Nagra on ER), and in the case of Archie Panjabi, who's the most interesting character in The Good Wife, the danger is being typecast in the crime genre.

Which was a danger for Elba too. His ability to play sensitive was the key to Bell's character, and on paper it must have appeared that the character of John Luther, just back on the force after a seven-month investigation for his role in the near-fatal injury to a child-killer, had a lot of the same ambiguity. The script was by novelist and Spooks' writer Neil Cross, and the supporting cast, especially the women, was strong, to set off against Elba's leading-man quality. In fact, the desire to scatter Elba among the ladies means Steven Mackintosh, as his erstwhile partner, is reduced to playing the sidekick as lonely wife at home!

Thus it was a surprise to find a programme that was not only a derivative compendium of cliche, and repetitive within that compendium, but so predictable that the slumming philosopher Lucy Huskinson remarked anything so obviously predestined ought to have been titled 'Calvin', not 'Luther'. I wondered if the title (and he is called John Luther, perhaps combining Luther and Calvin in one repressed detective?) was meant to evoke the fiery priest, or perhaps Martin Luther King, but if it was, such allusion was so subtle as to pass me by completely. Meanwhile, Luther's 'sensitivity' is challenged by repeated moments more suited to the Mitchell brothers in East Enders. I kept expecting him to scream 'you're drivin me men-tull' at his soon-to-be-ex wife. By the way, I also kept expecting someone to call Elba 'Loo-tha' but forget we aren't in Balmer anymore, Alice (see below)

Luther is like Law and Order: Criminal Intent designed for the look and internal conflict of Prime Suspect or The Vice or Spooks with dashes of Dexter thrown in. Somehow, it transforms Elba into a more raging David Harewood doing an imitation of Vincent D'Onofrio. Over and over again. How many times can a furniture-breaking guy unable to contain his temper flash his badge and yell 'I'm a police officer' as he's dragged away? He's obviously got a problem with the women, as we know from the very first moment we see his wife from whom he's been separated for those seven months. As played by Indira Varma, who looks as if Juliette Lewis has wandered in from the sub-continent, she's cold to his hot, and after about ten seconds you wish Stringer Bell was around to toss him the skinny on this one. But Luther has been denying his desire for all those months, trying to cope with his guilt over letting a serial killer plunge to his death after getting the info that saved his latest victim's life; that, my friends, may be the definition of Calvinist repression, as well as pre-destination.

Luckily, he's able to fall back on his boss, Saskia Reeves. It's odd how this programme, like Law & Order UK with Harriet Walter, under-utilises its best actress, but Reeves is obviously being set up to be Elba's rabbi, if not more. Interestingly, they've already teased that the child-killer might wake up from his coma and if he says Elba pushed him, Elba would be in trouble. Why anyone, let alone a senior police officer, would automatically believe a child-killer over the cop who caught him is a question which we thought was answered by Dirty Harry, but saying this plot line has been hinted at is like saying Hitler hinted at territorial ambition. The killer's comatose body has also already been checked out by the lead villainess of the series, Alice Morgan, a child prodigy in physics who's murdered her parents and dog and hidden the murder weapon inside the dog, disposing of the evidence when said pet is cremated.

Luther, using all the tricks of D'Onofrio's trade, including standing at odd angles to upstage his fellow actors, has intuited all this, which of course makes him the perfect foil for Alice. Alice is played by Ruth Wilson, whose beguiling Jane Eyre has turned her into a one-trick pony act of fish-hook eyebrows and hooked-fish lips, a pouting intellectual sexuality that is so hard for Luther to resist we get three separate but equal moments where they freeze as if Luther is about to either kiss or hook those lips. Even Alice gets bored with it, saying, in the best line of the show, 'kiss me or kill me John'. There is also some highly double-entendre dialogue about 'dark matter' and 'black holes', which may be part of the reason thespians of colour aren't flocking for more roles in British TV. Wilson is having such fun with the role that it is almost compelling to watch and see how far over the top she can take it, or whether the seething pent-up rage and frustration of the strong but sensitive John Luther will explode into a black hole of dark matter and need to be rescued by his estranged wife or his talented boss. Watch this space...

LAW AND ORDER UK REDUX

Since I wrote about the debut of Law & Order UK (here) I've seen four more episodes, and I've noticed something interesting. Unlike the first show, the three shows which followed were all based on classic L&O stories that I remembered well (the first was also an adaptation, just not of an episode I recalled), and each of them fell far short of the original. That made me realise I had judged the first show far more on the basis of what it might be, as opposed to what it was, or more crucially wasn't. So when I saw the fifth entry to the series last night, I was relieved it wasn't a story I recalled vividly, and more than a little surprised that I didn't think it worked all that well.

In general, Law & Order UK is underplayed. L&O at its best has the ability to delineate its new characters quickly and well, the way Robert Parker or Ed McBain do in their books. But the British version finds the parts very much slow-building; actors not so much projecting themselves as allowing the words to do it for them, and the words are not doing it well. Bradley Walsh seems to be playing off Jamie Bamber, all internal control and releasing nuggets of wisdom,rather than making the younger officer play off him. In 'Buried' last night's episode, when the cop who blew the investigation (and beat a gay suspect) 25 years earlier says 'we finally got him', I can't see Jerry Orbach handling the reply 'we?' as a throwaway line, the way Walsh did. Orbach would've milked it with his sourest scowl. In fact, the programme lacks anyone who can scowl properly (although I know Harriet Walter can). Instead, the emoting has a 'let's make the best of it, it'll be all right on the night' attitude, like a soap opera you wait for the inevitable cup of tea. If I were casting, I might reconsider, make Bill Patterson the lead prosecutor and Walter, insanely under-used at present, the DPP.

In the British version, the shows are often played as who-dunnits, but the key clues are similiarly underplayed. In 'Buried', when a young woman says she hasn't seen her parents' house in Lewes, alarm bells were going off everywhere except in the show's cops' heads. It's odd that the writers, in re-doing some of the very best shows, are so cavalier with the key lines. In the previous week's 'Unsafe', a remake of the absolute classic 'American Dream', the key line in the original was when Zeljko Ivanek, relishing his role, crows 'it's not like I haven't done this before', which springs a trap in Michael Moriarty's mind; a similar line in the British version does nothing for Ben Daniels; the revelation strikes him only after he sees records that remind him of what was said.

Daniels is one of the show's major problems. Not that he isn't a good actor, a sort of small-screen version of Jeremy Irons, it's that most of his conflict is internalised; hell, in 'Unsafe' he was reduced to tears of helplessness. The bigger difficulty is that there isn't enough interplay between the CPS and the real villains, the defense attorneys, to provide the chance to emote. They've cast them well, Patrick Malahide in the first show, Colin Salmon in the fifth, but they aren't given chances to go mano-a-mano in a judge's chambers; they don't object; the can't make plea deals the way the American lawyers can. There are no arraignment hearings, set-pieces in each L&O which give a bit-part to a judge who gets to crack wise. Another of the very best L&Os was 'Working Mom', the story of the suburban housewife who kills to protect the secret that she's moonlighting as a high-class call girl. Her lawyer was played by Elaine Strich, running circles round the repressed Moriarty. Leslie Manville was an inspired choice for the role in the remake, but she wasn't given any circles to run.

In fact, the whole episode lacked the bite of the original; I realise we Americans are supposed to be devoid of irony, but isn't 'Working Mom' a better title than 'Vice', just as 'American Dream' had far more connotations than 'Unsafe'. A key part of 'Buried' was the hypnotism of the only witness; in the original the title was 'In Memory Of', again far more telling. Dr Elisabeth Olivet, as played by Carolyn McCormack, had a bigger part in the drama; the British version used the hypnotist as a technician, like it was an episode of Holby City. Again, the emphasis seems to be on the mechanics of the plot, rather than the conflicts or expressions of character.

Olivet was a key figure in the US version of the second show in the series, called 'Born Bad' but here retitled, again as if with a rolling pin, 'Unloved'. It is the episode where the defense is a genetic proclivity to violence, and ends with the child believing himself a freak, and asking for prison. The British version became an exercise in class consciousness, you expected someone from Wife Swap to appear at any moment. And whether it's a natural instinct, the American child actor was able to convey a blank indifference while his English counterpart could do only yobbish aggro.

In the criminal televison series, there are two separate, yet equally important versions. The Americans, who don't mind looking or acting hard-boiled, and the British, who seem intent on keeping everything up on stage; it is the difference, on a small screen, between cinema and theatre, and that's why, when you look at them side by side, the British version, better than most of its domestic counterparts, seems lessened.

LAW AND ORDER UK: Two separate but equally important shows...

It only occurred to me when Law & Order UK hit its first courtroom scenes that the script, far from being extraordinarily close in content to the original US series, was actually an adaptation of an episode from one of the early years. A little research then revealed that producer/scripter Chris Chibnall had actually chosen 13 of the American shows to adapt, after watching some 150. (Wonder if the L&O version of the Sunny von Bulow killing will be one of them?--and if you're wondering what THAT'S all about, see here)

This trans-Atlantic scripting created quite a bind for the British reviewers, one of whom actually opined that the fast pace and slick dialogue was 'not what UK TV is about, I'm afraid.' It must be awful to live one's life in fear, but anyway. Since the actors and the adapter were British, there was the urge to praise, but since this was an American format, the urge to get the boot in was just as strong. A few people mentioned with smugness that it's the first time the format-following has gone in this direction (thinking of everything from All in the Family to The Office) which overlooks the sad truth that where the Yanks buy formats and tinker with them, the Brits simply steal the idea and butcher it, to wit The Bill (Hill Street Blues), Casualty (ER), or This Life ('this ISN'T the British Friends', Amy Perkins told every interviewer, as if that made it so!). And in fact, a much earlier instance of the Brits buying in a format came when the GE College Bowl format was purchased by the BBC and turned into University Challenge (and you can find my take on yesterday's final, and the Gail Kimble controversy, here, where I ask if University Challenge is fixed). But back to Law and Order UK.

The finished product is actually a blend of L&O and the kind of pacing which Kudos, the British production company, first showed in Spooks (you can read about its most recent series here), and it works pretty well. But the punch of L&O comes from the legal dilemmas, not the pacy cop show; and those dilemmas are often related to police procedure: the ultimate question of whether the law can be enforced and whether, if it is, it constitutes justice. The interesting thing is that ITV, in its advertising, has made the usual mistake of equating the two halves of the show with its title, but the title is actually backwards, since it's the police who maintain order, while the lawyers play with the law. Order and Law doesn't really flow, though.

And if you keep that in mind, you'll soon see there is plenty of domestic material to make original screenplays from, but in fairness Chibnall chose his first show well, because the question of tenant-removal for urban upgrade should be a hot topic here in the wake of the new Eurostar and the upcoming Olympics. And the personal drama, in our present economic circumstances, seemed even more relevant. There was an over-reliance on using regional accents to set characters, but the dialogue never seemed forcing itself to maintain pace.

It probably works better if you don't know the original show, because if you do, you can see the original role models for the characters, remembering that one of the beauties of the US series is the way it has been able to keep going with cast turnover. The hardest job is Bradley Walsh's, trying to be Lenny Briscoe when Jerry Orbach is the toughest act to follow. George Dzundza's Max Greevy was the original older partner, and is probably closer to what Walsh ought to be; Orbach's brand of New York humour has been translated pretty well to Walsh's London, but I wonder if the character's backstory will be as convincing. Jamie Bamber is in the beefcake role as Chris Noth's Mike Logan, and can only hope a part in something like Mistresses (NOT the British Sex And The City, by the way!) lies at the end of this rainbow. He could aspire to Benjamin Bratt, who wound up sharing a motel room with Julia Roberts, but can we conceive of the British equivalent of that? The excellent Harriet Walter underplayed the role S Epatha Mackerson took over from Dann Florek, as if remembering that any woman playing a DI in charge has to channel her inner Helen Mirren.

But it's pretty obvious that the influence of Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy informs Ben Daniels' playing of James Steel with thin-burning moral indignation. Bill Patterson is excellent in the Stephen Hill role, getting a chance to play gruff, and hopefully he will continue with Hill's interpretation of the DA's political tightrope, as walked by the CPS, rather than veer off into Fred 'Mr President' Thompson or Dianne 'Where's Woody?' Wiest territory. Interestingly, in the current L&O stateside, McCoy is now the DA, though I haven't seen any of his episodes. Patterson and Hill are a good comparison as actors, and the role is perfect for Patterson. What we miss, in the British system, is the chance for bit parts for tired and world-weary judges who get to crack wise at the arraignments. In Britain, tired judges merely fall asleep.

The thankless role belongs to Freema Agyeman, who doesn't appear of have any of the many female assistant DAs who played second-fiddle to McCoy and Michael Moriarty's Ben Stone over the years (though in fairness the original, Richard Brooks, was male). Jill Hennessy was probably the best, though Carrie Lowell and Elizabeth Rohm both played off Waterston's stentorian character well. No one will ever look less like a DA than Angie Harmon, though, not even Agyeman, who, as Alesha Phillips (no relation to Trevor, probably) functions primarily to rush into the office with information she's gleaned from a file she should have read before the trial started, but decided to wait for better dramatic effect. Given that she made her name playing second-fiddle to Dr Who, this should be easy.

What we can also hope is that the show builds up a small roster of defense attorneys, which was one of the real strengths of L&O, everyone from Philip Bosco to Ron Silver to Elaine Stritch to Tovah Feldshuh to Lorraine Toussaint's Shambala Green (whose hairdo Agyeman is trying to reprise in the photo left) played against Moriarty and Waterston, and were fine doing it. Patrick Malahide (great name--it would do for the character he played better than for him!) was a perfect foil for Steel: they might have even gone to the same school, but Steel has certainly not followed the career path to success. I wonder too if they'll find an equivalent for Carolyn McCormack's Dr Olivet; I'd bring her over to London explaining she'd come to work at the Tavistock Clinic and wound up working with the CPS.

Kudos and Dick Wolf probably have, though it was worrying that the show lost viewers during its hour, especially if it was losing them to an investigation of Zoe Wanamaker's family tree, fascinating though I'm sure that is. I assume they are working on the idea of using the quality of the show's writing to build a solid base, before becoming more immediate and relevant if there is a second series. One of the joys of the American series is that they could draw on the stable of talented actors not based in LA, the ones doing commercials, theatre, and TV in the city. London, of course, should provide plenty of similar talent. Right not, I'd hope they get there.