TV Review: RIVER and THE RETURNED

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 17 October 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

River: Tuesday, BBC One

The Returned: Friday, More4

Paul Whitelaw

Just when you thought the hoary old cliché of the troubled detective with an extensive vinyl collection had been pummelled beyond repair, along comes River to show that there's life in the old dog yet.

The effectiveness of this new cop drama from Abi Morgan (The Hour) is enormously surprising, as from the moment I first heard about it I assumed the worst. After all, the very concept of a maverick cop named John River sounds ridiculous. 

It reminded me instinctively of Simon Day as John Actor in The Fast Show's Monkfish sketches (“John Actor is a tough, uncompromising inspector/doctor/vet...”).

However, putting aside the vast unlikelihood of the great Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard playing a character named John River, this is undoubtedly the most confident attempt yet at transplanting the existential angst of Nordic noir to British climes. Face facts, From Darkness.

The opening ten minutes alone offered some of the most arresting drama I've seen on TV all year. Scored to Tina Charles' disco classic I Love To Love, the sequence immediately established a warm, understated chemistry between the endearingly discomfited River and his more exuberant partner DS Stevenson (the always believable Nicola Walker, who also shines at the moment in ITV's above-par crime drama Unforgotten).

Their affectionate banter was punctured suddenly when River spotted a petty drug dealer. Chasing him on foot, our wheezy, ageing hero unwittingly drove the suspect to his death. The scene that followed seemed standard at first: River's weary chief (the wonderful Lesley Manville of Mike Leigh renown) arrived to chastise him for causing the young man's demise.

As Stevenson offered him support, the camera span around slowly to reveal a gaping wound on the back of her head. She'd been killed in action, and now exists only in grieving River's mind. It's a measure of how well this twist was handled that its invocation of another great comedy sketch – Chuffy, the imaginary sidekick from Armstrong & Miller – didn't make me laugh. It was so unforeseen, I admired its audacity.

It transpired that River is haunted by other ghosts, namely a murdered teenage girl whom he'd failed to rescue, and – there's no way of describing this without it sounding ridiculous – a 19^th century serial killer (Eddie Marsan, another gifted Leigh veteran). They're voices in his head, a manifestation of his troubled psyche. Ghosts who assist him in solving problems. 

If his noggin wasn't already crowded enough, the episode ended with a bedtime visit from the innocent man he "murdered" at the top of the episode. It's quite a party in there.

Judged incorrectly, this swirling cavalcade of psychological eccentricity could easily descend into farce. But so far at least, River gets the tone just right. It's rather subversive and unusual in an intelligent, dry-witted way. Skarsgard inhabits the role of River with sad-eyed charm and intensity. For once, the old cop-with-a-difference cliché seems justified.

Bathed in shades of medicinal green and nocturnal red, it's also directed with a sharp eye for striking composition. Delightfully, this highly promising show confounded all my expectations.

One of my favourite dramas of recent years, The Returned made good on its title last week for a second series of French supernatural mystery. Despite its ambiguous finale, I actually felt quite satisfied with series one as a self-contained piece. Is another series necessary?

Steeped in glacial intrigue, the opening episode suggested that there's more to be gleaned from this everyday saga of a remote French town populated by photogenic zombies.

Granted, thanks to a two year transmission gap between series, it took me about half an hour to fully remember who the hell everyone was. But once the fog had cleared, I was cautiously hooked all over again.

God only knows if it'll ever make complete sense, but that's not really the point. It's a disquietingly atmospheric mood piece, an exercise in odd, beautiful Twin Peaks-esque style. I'm glad it's back, to linger in the memory like one of River's manifests.  

TV Review: MAMMON and INSPECTOR DE LUCA

This article was originally published in The Courier on 29th March 2014.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Mammon: Friday, More4

Inspector De Luca: Saturday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Home to cult hits such as The Killing and The Bridge, BBC Four is the crime-sodden kingdom of gloomy Nordic noir. So it's little wonder that their rivals have recently tried to grab some of that subtitled treasure for themselves. After all, these quality imports are relatively cheap to acquire, but very popular among discerning viewers. It's the sort of equation that TV executives drool over.

Channel 4 gambled wisely when they aired French supernatural drama The Returned, which turned out to be one of the TV highlights of 2013. Flushed with that success, they now give us Mammon, an intriguing Norwegian thriller about journalistic integrity versus corporate corruption.

Our hero is investigative journalist Peter Veras, who uncovers evidence of fraud involving Norway's elite. Unperturbed by the fact that one of the alleged fraudsters is his own brother – they hardly seemed close – he ploughed on with the story in spite of a police report claiming that no crimes had been committed.

But why did his brother resign? And if Peter really is such a hot-shot, why didn't he pick up on the screamingly obvious clues that brother dearest was about to commit suicide? He practically had “DEAD SOON” tattooed on his face. As the episode progressed, I began to suspect that, far from being a leading light of Norway's Fourth Estate, Peter Veras is in fact a blundering idiot.

He hadn't even verified the source of his story. No wonder he was so shaken when it turned out to be his own brother, who was presumably trying to bring down the system from within. That's possibly why he left behind a series of Treasure Hunt-style clues for Peter to chase, which resulted in him donning scuba diving gear and searching for something or other in a roadside lake.

The episode climaxed while he was out on this goose chase, when another millionaire embezzler crashed his car into the lake before shooting himself in the head. It was an unexpected turn of events, I'll grant you that, but it still felt like a ridiculously laboured attempt to create an explosive cliffhanger. That sort of nonsense is acceptable in a comic book thriller like 24, but Mammon appears to think of itself as more meaningful than that. Why else would it begin with a sombre quote from the Book of Revelation?

Its more wayward tendencies aside, this slow-burning and occasionally quite suspenseful drama does show some promise. With its weighty themes of guilt and morality – it's no coincidence that Peter's father is a priest – it may well add up to something quite substantial. I just hope Peter stops behaving like the Norwegian equivalent of a depressed Frank Spencer.

There was more high-powered corruption in BBC Four's latest foreign import, Inspector De Luca, only this time it involved the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

Set in 1930s Italy on the eve of World War II, it squanders a potentially interesting period setting with a lugubrious pace and anaemic plotting. It's like watching an armchair age in slow motion. De Luca himself is your standard lonely detective: driven yet subdued, a haunted man apart. I'd quite happily never see this archetype again.

It's enough to make you long for a cop drama about a jovial detective who lives in a bouncy castle. Obviously I wouldn't like that either, but at least it would be different.