This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 19th December 2015.
Luther:
Tuesday, BBC One
Love
You To Death: A Year of Domestic Violence: Wednesday,
BBC Two
Paul
Whitelaw
There
was a moment in the latest episode of Luther so perfect in its
knowing heavy-handedness, I suspect that writer Neil Cross has been
waiting to use it ever since he created this uniquely ludicrous
series.
As
we reconvened with TV's most dysfunctional maverick cop, he was
living in a remote cottage on a much-needed leave of absence. The
location of his hideaway? On the edge of a precipitous cliff. That's
right, he's literally living on the edge. In case you didn't pick up
on this hilariously blatant visual metaphor, Cross even had a
character point it out. That one moment encapsulated the
tongue-in-cheek absurdity of this bombastic thriller.
After
being told that Alice, his psychotic paramour, wasn't dead after all,
Luther (Idris Elba) returned to London to find out the truth. This
involved a series of, even by his standards, insanely reckless
set-pieces. Only Luther would breeze into a pub full of armed
criminals and, while staring down the barrel of a gun, defuse the
situation with insouciant amusement rather than chair-tossing
aggression. King of the barely calculated risk, he makes Jack Bauer
look like an over-cautious pen-pusher.
Later
he barged into a building rigged with explosives and emerged, via an
air duct, without a scratch. Luther, played by Elba with a
fascinatingly unfathomable, charismatic eccentricity/wooden sincerity
(possibly both), is basically an indestructible superhero living in a
heightened universe of grotesque, violent fantasy. The
back-in-business scene of him putting on his familiar grey overcoat
was the “Hell yeah!” equivalent of Tony Stark climbing into his
Iron Man costume.
Typically,
his latest nemesis is no mere murderer. No, he's a grandiloquent
serial killer with a penchant for cannibal erotica. I wouldn't expect
anything less.
Some
have argued that Luther wallows irresponsibly in OTT violence,
but surely that's the point? We're not supposed to take it seriously.
Cross is fully aware of all the cop show tropes and clichés, hence
why he has such fun with them. It's why Luther is far more
entertaining than most UK detective dramas. It is, like the man
himself, a brazenly confident, self-amused barnstormer.
Sadly,
thanks to Elba's rising international profile, it's only back for two
episodes this time. I hope he always finds time in his schedule to
return to this preposterous role.
Mindless
escapism is all very well, but we should never ignore the reality of
unflinching documentaries such as Love You To Death: A Year of
Domestic Violence. A sad, humane, compassionate film, it shed
light on the shocking issue of fatal violence against women.
In
2013 alone, 86 women were murdered either by their partner or
ex-partner. The programme honoured them all by listing their names
and the circumstances of their deaths. Its point was clear: these
were human beings, not mere newspaper headlines.
Some
of the women received more attention via emotional testimonies from
their friends and families. These accounts were necessarily blunt and
upsetting. Shying away from the violent details of such crimes would
rob them of their awful truth.
A
heavy sense of tragic inevitability permeated each of these stories.
It was a sobering litany of oppressive, violent, mentally ill men
terrorising women behind closed doors. Meanwhile, their loved ones
were left behind to grieve and pick up the pieces.
Without
doubt one of the most important pieces of television I've seen in
some time.
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