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.
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