John Luther: If Stringer Bell Was McNulty

Those of you who know me know that I can be incredibly hard to please when it comes to film and television. I can count on one hand the number of shows on the air right now that I consider halfway decent, and only Parks and Recreation really draws the TV obsessed side of me out anymore. Shows like Community, 30 Rock and Modern Family were shows that seemed brilliant to me, but the more I watch any given show, the more I am able to anticipate what will happen, and the less interested I am. I still watch all of the above shows, but it's not the same. My working theory right now is that any TV series concept has a shelf-life of two season, or roughly 30-40 episodes. Pay cable has shorter seasons, so those shows don't start boring me until season three (the Sopranos), four (Oz) or five (The Wire).



It's been a very long time since I felt the way I do about Parks and Rec about a drama. I haven't had that "Holy shit I need to watch every single episode of this show RIGHT FUCKING NOW" feeling since I watched The Wire in about three weeks.

Indeed.

There's a very specific set of criteria that I need to LOVE a TV show. One of those criteria is that it be new to me in the very simple sense that I haven't seen THIS show yet. Loved the first three seasons of Breaking Bad. Loved the first three of Sons of Anarchy. Same with all the sitcoms above (except two season in most cases). So that brings me to the title of this post.

BBC came out with a show named Luther. I didn't hear anything about it until its star, Idris Elba, started getting Golden Globe and Emmy nominations for his role as the titular Detective Chief Inspector John Luther.  I found it on Xfinity VOD at my parents house when I got bored with the video games I'd brought with me to California. I watched it only because Elba played Stringer Bell in The Wire, very sure I was probably going to waste 59 minutes of my day watching overrated BBC-produced comedy that I don't get featuring some silly-ninny cop with no gun who would die after a week on the job in any American town.

I was wrong. Because this is DCI John Luther, and he will fuck you up. But not until he's already destroyed your house.

That's him reacting to his ex-wife, Zoe, telling him she'd met someone. That poor door didn't do a thing wrong (besides being made of particle board). Imagine if he was investigating you for murder?

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have not finished the first season yet, so this is simply an early reaction to the show.

Luther does a number of different styles of cop-story at once, paying homage to (or as the writer would probably said, "being influenced by") The Silence of the Lambs, The Wire, Criminal Minds and even the man from Scotland Yard himself, Sherlock Holmes. He even has his own Watson-type sidekick, a younger cop named Sgt. Justin Ripley. Ripley is every bit as effective as John is, but isn't quite the natural genius. He does serve as a bit of a moral compass with his more savant-ish partner.

Probably has never been cast as a genius.

Luther takes its cues on the first season's main plot from Silence of the Lambs. The pilot finds Luther closing in on a presumably horrific serial murderer named Henry Madsen. In the chase, Luther opts not to save Madsen when Madsen is hanging off the edge of a broken catwalk. It's all very dramatic. Luther is suspended, Madsen is in a coma. Flash forward some time and Luther's back! Back on the job, and what do you know, there's a sociopath to deal with. We are introduced, throughout the first episode, to Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), a deliciously evil little redhead genius lady who murders her parents. Since she's brilliant or whatever, Luther can't arrest her. For the rest of the season (it appears) she stalks Luther, trying to "help" him. He eventually begins enlisting her help solving his one-per-episode serial killer problems. Thus, Silence of the Lambs. Elba plays the blacker, maler and sexier Clarice, and Wilson is every bit as unappealing as Anthony Hopkins, which is a feat rarely accomplished by a redhead. Check out their first interaction below. It is indicative of Luther as a character as well as how creepy and gross Wilson makes her Alice Morgan.

The Sherlock Holmes element comes in with Luther's deductive skills. Long story short, the man's a straight-up genius. Without fail, he only needs about 15 minutes of TV-time to figure out who the killer is (usually by engaging in a Lecter-esque battle of wills via conversation). From there it's just a struggle to find evidence or trick the killer into giving him/herself up. Very Holmes/Jane from The Mentalist. Besides being black and gifted, Luther is a British Jimmy McNulty. He plays by his own rules (aka no rules, only justice), he has an ex-wife who he still wants to get back together with and he's constantly irritating his superiors and having his job threatened.

Most of what is to love about Luther is Luther himself, and Elba's portrayal of him, but the show also has a distinct look and tone. It's in full HD but it still retains that low camera quality that pre-HD BBC shows always seemed to have ("Dr. Who the Fuck is That? I Can't Tell Because This Camera Sucks" was the original title of that famous show that I don't watch). 

The unique look is most noticeable is who Luther presents London. John Luther's London is a grey, bleak and hazy place with almost no life, almost and urban desert, or an urban moonscape.When the characters are outside, it's almost always just the principles in the show. Luther, Ripley and whoever they're chasing. I'm going to assume it was an artistic choice and not a lack of money for extras because it seems very deliberate. In the establishing shots of the city and police HQ, nothing moves. The only thing I noticed moving in an exterior shot was a boat, which from a distance, is lifeless. Besides that, there was a lady and her baby who were there to drive the plot forward, and that's all I can think of. It creates a very spooky tone for the whole show, which works very well with the spookiness of all the cases examined.   

In summation: DCI John Luther is Jimmy McNulty, Sherlock Holmes, The Incredible Hulk, Gideon from Criminal Minds, Whodehouse's Jeeves, Christie's Poirot, and House all rolled up into one scruffy Stringer Bell. If that doesn't make you want to at least check it out, you're probably dead. 

ps

Since it's been like 5 days since I started this blog and I haven't written about movies, I'm going out tonight and tomorrow night to see two Oscar nominees per night. Then I will review them here enroute to handing out my own Oscars, which I'll probably call "The Maxies" or something equally retarded.