LUTHER: NAILED TO THE WALL IN THE FINAL EPISODES

The BBC crime series Luther ended with a bang, a two-part episode which saw the head-scratching Sherlock betrayed, pursued by the police for the murder of his belived wife, and built up to everything being resolved in a four-way faceoff on the Eurostar platform at St Pancras. The two-parter was an improvement over the previous four episodes of the show, which suggests to me that it was the concept for the series that was wrong, and that Luther should have been presented in, say, two 90 minute or two-hour shows.

The advantages would have been to reduce the number of plot lines (all four of the first episodes had crimes which needed to be resolved within the show) and the number of explosive tantrums Idris Elba, as Luther, needed to throw (minimum: one per episode) to show that he was tough and sensitive with seething turmoil inside waiting to boil over. It might have let one or two plot lines run longer, while also given Luther's relationships with both his wife and the parent-killing Alice Morgan more play.

It would have also allowed a little build up for Steven McIntosh's Ian Reed (seen left arguing Reformation theology with Luther), so at least a seed of doubt could be cast as to whether he's not just a little bent. In fact, as Reed went more and more mental in the final episode, there was a sense that they couldn't wring the most out of his evil conniving because he hadn't been set up with that possibility in our eyes before. I was a little disappointed that Saskia Reeves didn't rise to the fore in the final episode, again, her unit's precarious position within the force hadn't really been made much of previously.

There were a couple of problems. Given the way Paul McGann's Mark North had been shown to despise and fear Luther, his conversion to Luther's side after Zoe's (Indira Varma) murder slightlyperfunctory. But that paled beside the scenes of Martin Schneck (Dermot Crowley) letting the light come on as he realises Luther has been set up. Close ups of his puzzled face mugging this way and then that had me laughing out loud. The other matter of some amusement was the way the police and theeir tracking systems always allowed them to arrive precisely when the plot demanded it; never too early or too late, the British equivalent of the parking space always open when the detective's car arrives in US shows.

Luther has obviously been set up to return, but I do hope they reconsider the format. One never knows exactly how alone Neil Cross was scripting the series, but there was far too much repetition, particularly of character traits and scenes between Luther, Zoe and Mark. A smaller, more self contained story arc, with just one cliff-hanger, might be the way to go in Luther II: The Reformation.

JUSTIFYING LUTHER?

There was a moment, when Idris Elba's Luther is examining the crime scene, and he says 'This ain't just a serial...this man's on a murder spree' that I burst out laughing. Perhaps that's what Luther needs, is a little laughter, because he sure is having trouble coping with all that anger, and as I suggested yesterday in my review of Justified, the difference in coping with anger is the nub of the difference between the shows.

Luther, of course, is being pursued by Dermot Crowley's DCI Schenck, the typical IAD creep. And when serial killer Henry Madden, whom Luther allowed to drop to his death but who was merely rendered comatose, awakens from his coma the first word is utters is 'Luther'. It's not that he's a theologian, either. But before Madden can give his version of his own, if not mankind's fall (and why everyone expects he will be believed, and Luther disbelieved, is never explained) he is killed by Ruth Wilson, disguising herself so completely with oen contact lens and a wig that the policeman on guard can't identify her and she's never picked up by any of the CCTV that is everywhere else in London on the show. So when she calls Luther to give him the good news, his anger erupts, and he starts smashing the cop shop up, in full view of Schenck and everyone else, screaming 'don't ever call me again'.

Now I was expecting he would shut the phone off, turn around, and say 'wrong number', but no such luck. And that is the primary problem: Luther has no outlet for his anger except one (or two or even three) tightly choreographed tantrums in each show. We see him bottling it up, unable to express it without great great effort, and then, it explodes. Wilson's Alice Morgan got right with the Tommy Cooper joke about the police arresting two boys for eating a car battery and fireworks. 'They charged one and let the other off.' Luther's the other one.

Meanwhile, this week's serial killer, played by Rob Jarvis, has a tantrum of his own when it turns out he's been indentifed. His wife, played by Nicola Walker (of Spooks fame)who's having an affair, says he gets turned on by sniffing handbags, and Luther figures out that the murder spree will now end with the wife's lover. They get there too late to save him, but do rescue the hooker he's ordered up for the evening. When Nicola sees the dead body in the shower, and the quivering hooker, it's not clear whether she puts two and two together, but she does manage to take out her frustration by using a hammer on the husband, while the police, who've let her wander through the crime scene, look on helplessly. Call it her own tantrum, and obviously you'd see why Walker would relish the role.

In fact, the only character not given to tantra (plural of tantrum?) is Paul McGann, as Luther's estranged wife's lover Mark, and the best part of the show was the teasing that he might want to act on the information (received from a jealous Ruth) that Zoe has slept with her husband again. But Mark is in touch with his anger, and Zoe loves him again for it. Maybe Raylan Givens ought to watch, if he can stop laughing at the handbag sniffing and the tantrums.