The Devil Makes Us Sin

Aaaaaa Luther is back aaaaaaa!

(I know, that screenshot is from Season 2, but I like it.)

I love this show so much, and it's a bit hard to explain why. It's much darker and more violent than most of what I watch. A one-sentence summary of the show makes it sound like the most cliched thing ever: "A cop sometimes needs to break the rules in order to bring criminals to justice." And yet, the incredible performances, tight pacing, and surreal crimes makes it a mesmerizing work of art.

I've noted this before, but the show benefits immensely from its adhesion to British show norms. An American cop show with the same concept would quickly devolve into a procedural that presses the reset button at the end of each episode, or else a soap opera. With only four or six episodes a season, though, Luther can't NOT shake things up, radically changing its cast list, mood, and character arcs each season. It ends up being much more like a really entertaining series of films than a television drama.

That movie analogy has been even more pronounced as the show continued. The last two seasons (of three total!) have each essentially been two two-hour-long movies, each divided in half into two hour-long episodes. I've also increasingly noticed some very fine direction and practical effects that elevates the show above the occasionally-cheesy production values that plague other BBC productions. This isn't QUITE up to the levels of Sherlock, but it's in the same zone of visual quality.

As a side note - one of my little fascinations with Luther is its portrayal of British attitudes towards crime, crime-fighting, and civil duties, and how different they are from those in America (both in reality and as portrayed in our own cop shows/movies). I'd remarked before in S2 how odd it felt to watch scenes where a bad guy was running through a heavily crowded area, while being chased by police, and see that absolutely nobody would make an effort to stop the bad guy. It felt like the civilians had a clear understanding of their role in life, which was to keep their heads down and ignore anything that does not directly involve them. In contrast, any American show would have at least a couple of impromptu heroes jump in to try and help out. (Depending on the show, they might get shot for their troubles.) I've wondered if this might be directly traceable back to the difference between the British concept of "Duty to Retreat" versus the American focus on concepts like "stand your ground." In fact, a recurring concept in Luther is that of the vigilante, and the London police have no tolerance for them. Batman need not apply. The final two episodes of this season tackle that concept head-on, particularly in Episode Three, and we get some charismatic words in favor of a more muscular, American-style active citizenry. Anyways. We're obviously not meant to support this, but I'm very curious if American and British viewers have different reactions when confronted with the idea of an armed vigilante interrupting crimes with extreme violence, and if the British find it less tolerable than we would.

One of my few hesitations (I won't say complaints) about S3 is its use of social media as a plot device. It isn't actually bad, but does feel a little too trendy. I get the feeling this is something that will date these episodes in a few years, while the earlier episodes are more timeless. Still, for what it is, it's done rather well. It's hardly original to worry about the blood appetites of an anonymized public, and the show ties in concepts that seem borrowed from American Idol, Running Man, and The Hunger Games, casting a pretty bleak view on our current culture. I would expect no less from this show.

SEASON 3 MINI SPOILERS

I'll get the bad news out of the way first: there's entirely too little Alice. There's a subtle and very welcome nod to her early in the first episode, which makes me miss her a great deal. Luther is still a great show without her, but she provided such an incredible, unique energy that hasn't been replicated since she left for America. (I remember reading a while ago about a proposed spin-off featuring Alice, which I absolutely would have loved, but am pretty sure won't happen. I'm also probably never going to see my desired incarnation of the show where Luther and Alice join forces as super-criminals, traveling the world, stealing priceless artifacts, and befuddling police everywhere.)

Season Three finally crosses that vague line separating thrillers from horror. It's skirted close to that line for the show's entire run, notably in episodes like Season 1 Episode 3, but it now embraces full-on bogeyman mode. Of course, it all stays scientific and realistic, and I can't decide if that makes it more or less frightening.

This season has stepped back a bit from S2's interesting angle of featuring villains who appeared absolutely ordinary, the sort of people you'd never look at twice if you passed them on the street. The second villain is pretty tapped into the public, but sees himself as more of a martyr or a demagogue, and not "the spirit of London" in the way that a character from S2 seemed. Anyways. The big S3 villains are all very different from one another, and also different from the characters we've seen previously on the show.

Compared to earlier seasons, there's a much stronger institutional adversary against Luther from within the force this time around. Schenk kind of played this role in S1, and Erin Gray in S2, but both were, frankly, a bit ineffectual... enough to raise tension, but not enough to seriously threaten Luther. This time around, Stark is a huge danger, mostly because, unlike past opponents, he isn't content to merely confront Luther on a professional standing. Stark is ready to wage total war, meaning he's willing to fight as dirty as Luther and strike out at vulnerable targets when he can't reach the man himself. Watching him was infuriating, exactly as the show creators must have intended.

MEGA SPOILERS

This whole season was pretty good, but by far my favorite episode was #4, for the obvious reason that it marks the return of Alice after being gone for pretty much the second half of the entire series. I felt like cheering when I saw Ruth Wilson's name pop up on the opening credits. I was a bit nervous before she appeared: could she possibly match my ridiculously high expectations? Would a show that thrives on so much change feel compelled to irrevocably damage her relationship with Luther? After getting used to the new look of her shorter hair, I was once again beguiled by this awesomely unhinged woman. She gets the best lines of the episode, which are some of the best of the series. "Some little girls grow up wanting ponies. I always wanted to be a widow" was one of my favorites. She's possibly even more capable than during her season-one heyday, single-handedly saving Mary with incredibly cool aplomb.

Oh, yeah, Mary! I was pretty impressed with how well the show handled her. Zoe is such a huge figure in Luther's psyche, and I wasn't really expecting him to ever get a new love interest. Their initial meeting is a bit contrived, obviously, but I thought they did a good job at creating a believable scenario that would show how these two could fall for each other. I got pretty invested in their relationship, even while continuing to mentally ship Luther and Alice. Anyways. I liked Mary throughout the whole season, but thought she was particularly great in the finale: she's obviously under unbelievable stress, having never been in a situation like this before in her life, and yet she's able to struggle through her terror and do what needs to be done. Her final little sacrifice is one of the most admirable things I've seen on the show.

Little mysteries: what was on the sheet of paper that Benny handed Luther? I don't think we find out, but I think it can't be anything other than "Meep meep!"

I was really glad to see that Erin survived. I had assumed that she died, based on Marwood's previously demonstrated willingness to murder police officers. (It was hard with Ripley, but seems to be getting easier, which is a terrifying thought.) But, given how the shot happened off-screen, I should have anticipated it would be non-fatal. I'm left wondering if he shot her in the leg (mimicking his earlier disabling of Luther), or if he tried for a fatal shot and missed the vitals. Probably the former, given his survivalist training. And... well, given Marwood's motivation for embarking on this crusade, I imagine that he's less likely to kill women than men. Well. I'm curious if anything happens with Erin in the future (if there is a future to this show), but I can see her following a trajectory like Schenk, passing through an adversarial role to eventually become a loyal supporter of Luther.

Oh, but Ripley... poor Ripley! What a shame. I don't want to say "waste," since it worked very well, both from a dramatic sense (it was fully earned and gave an incredible propulsion to the finale), as well as an in-story sense (by sacrificing his life, Ripley single-handedly branded Marwood as a cop killer, instantly robbing him of his public support and putting an end to his campaign). That was still really hard to watch, though. Ripley has been such a constant in the show, and had such a great arc each season. He will be missed.

All in all, I was pretty happy with this season, and particularly with how it ended. Season One had a particularly powerful cliffhanger, and I would have hated it if the show had ended there. S2 and S3 have each ended at good spots, where there's still room to tell more stories in the future, but also would be a decent spot to end the show. I say that in spite of the huge ambiguities left at the end of the finale. Most particularly, will Luther choose to go with Alice, with Mary, or neither? Will he finally leave the force, as he's talked about wanting for the last two seasons? If so, where will he go? If not, how will his career progress in a post-Stark, post-Ripley world?

END SPOILERS

I do hope we get to see more Luther, in one form or another. Idris Elba is deservedly becoming more famous and popular, and I expect this will make it increasingly difficult for him to do additional series of the show. But, based on the little I've heard, it sounds like both he and series creator Neil Cross are very interested in doing a movie, which could possibly be a sort of prequel/origin story taking place before Season One. That would be pretty cool, even if it means no Alice character. And there still are periodic rumors of a spinoff, which could be very good indeed depending on who was involved. We'll see! This show has continued to be edgy, unpredictable, and darkly entertaining, and with luck we'll see that continue in the future.

With her eyes like a flame

Enough culture - it's TV time!

I've finished watching the two (and, so far, only) seasons of Luther, an amazing British crime import. First of all, I am now even more impressed with Idris Elba than before - he's now entered that rare cadre of actors whose work makes me want to see everything they're in. Between this and his work in The Wire, I've gotten a good feel for his range, which is quite good - each individual character is fully-realized and committed, so you don't get a huge range within Stringer Bell or within Luther, but the union of the two reveals his impressive acting chops.

I've commented on this before, but on a purely superficial level, there are significant overlaps between Luther and House. Both feature incredible performances from talented British actors; both play characters who work in high-stakes, life-or-death institutions; both are rogue agents who make choices that frequently risk the life and health of innocents, but whose superiors have no choice but to accommodate them due to their immense skill; both are fairly episodic shows but have longer serial plots that cover and span seasons; both open with incredible songs from Massive Attack that I'll never get tired of hearing.

That said, House is clearly an American show (if a more cynical one than we usually see), and Luther is clearly a British show. That means the seasons are quite short - six one-hour episodes for the first season; the second season was presented as four one-hour episodes, but it's really two two-hour movies. It has a way darker sensibility, too. The show is relentlessly violent and bloody, not to mention bloody-minded. The characters are all English, and in a few cases I found myself having trouble tracking their accents (Luther and the more cultured characters speak quite clearly, but many of the other detectives and suspects have a strong London accent that makes them hard to understand when they speak quickly).

MEGA SPOILERS

The other great BBC detective show I've seen recently, Sherlock, has its own set of overlaps with this show, mainly in terms of plot. I'm not totally clear on the chronology of the two shows - when each started shooting, when it aired in the UK, when it aired here - but I'm guessing/hoping that they weren't aware of each other during their first seasons, because both of them rely on a twist about how nobody would ever suspect a London cabbie of being a murderer. They both use pretty much the same reasoning, too - it's someone who people would trust implicitly, even if they don't know them. In both shows, the actual cabbie turns out to be a thoroughly ordinary-looking person. In Sherlock, this elevates the chilling scariness of the whole sequence - he seems like a harmless man, even though he plays the role of evil incarnate. In Luther, he becomes an amazingly pathetic villain. He's a failure at life, and a failure as a killer, and his miserable little life is ended.

The first season seemed to draw from a highly varied and memorable list of villains: some were very high-class, like Alice and the guy who's a best-selling author and leader of a Satanic cult. Others, like the cabbie, were very low-class, memorable in their squalor. The second seasons' villains, though, were creepy because of just how ORDINARY they looked. I doubt anyone would look at those people twice if they passed them on the London streets. There's a huge gap between our image of these people and the atrocities they perform. To me, it felt like we weren't just watching some super-genius outsider criminal; we were watching the decay of English society itself, the birth of a culture whose very foundation could be twisted to evil.

Speaking of which... I found myself thinking a LOT about the differences between English and American culture presented in the show. At the start of the final episode in the second season, there's a long sequence where a policeman is chasing down a murderer who has struck in a public train terminal. The policeman keeps shouting, "Stop that man!", but even though they're running through a crowd, nobody stops, nobody wants to get involved. The citizenry seems cowed. I have a hard time imagining that happening in a major American city - we still have enough cowboy in our veins that SOMEONE would have intervened and helped out a policeman.

That was the most dramatic example in the series, but looking back over it, it seems to be in keeping with the show in general. There's a very clear demarcation between law and crime, and also a pronounced role for those who don't fit into either camp. I don't think we once see a citizen volunteering information that helps in an investigation. Obviously, I don't know enough about London culture to say whether that's realistic, or if it's a grim noir atmosphere contrived by this show for a strong effect.

One similarity I found was the protection of suspects' rights. I was a little surprised to see this; I don't watch a whole lot of British detective shows, but from the ones I have seen, I don't recall suspects being advised of their right to silence, etc. I know that this sort of thing isn't universal - in particular, in France police can arrest someone without a warrant, and have much more flexibility in how they conduct interrogations. The more I think about it, though, it makes sense that we'd have this similarity. The UK and America are both common law countries, after all, and the American judicial code is basically a direct descendent of the Magna Carta. Details will always vary, but the idea of the law itself as a supreme institution that's above everyone, even the most powerful individuals, binds our countries together, and informs the way we pursue justice.

Topic hop: Alice was arguably the best part of the show, maybe even more so than Luther himself. She's absolutely captivating every second she's on screen; her combination of beauty and danger takes everyone's breath away, even someone as thoroughly capable as Luther. I was really hoping that they would join forces more directly in the second season. One of the advantages of the British shorter-form television season is that they can be more experimental; it's more like a mini-series than a series, so they can do dangerous things and take a program in an unexpected direction, and not need to worry so much about writing themselves into a corner. (You would think that an American show with 23 episodes would cover more plot ground than a British show with 6 episodes, but if the American show shakes things up halfway through the season, they need to fill another 11 episodes that all have to acknowledge that change, while the British show can just treat it naturally and then end things.) All that to say, I think they could have gotten away with Luther actually leaving the police force... probably not leaving London, but perhaps becoming a private detective (do they have those in England? Would he be the world's second consulting detective?), or even the shadowy underworld figure that the various criminals want him to become. As it was, I was very sad that Alice didn't make an appearance at all in the last two episodes, which were otherwise quite good.

I guess that Mark dropped out, too. Ah, Mark. I really liked the way they handled him in the first part of the second season. I was never quite sure of what to think of him in the first season - we're supposed to hate him, since he stole Luther's wife away from him, but he's such a thoroughly decent person and such a good match for Zoe... but he's also overly passive and a bit too calm... well, we see him again once his world has been broken, and my heart breaks for him. It makes no sense that he and Luther would be friends now, and yet it also makes perfect sense - they're united in their love, not for one another, but for someone who's forever gone.

END SPOILERS

Quick thoughts on a few other shows. I'm actually pretty happy with The Walking Dead so far. None of the episodes has been as good as Season One's premiere, but I feel like the average quality so far has been better than the average quality last season. Most of the annoying characters have been eaten off, and we're getting a good chunk of zombie mayhem each episode, along with some good ongoing development.

MINI SPOILERS

In particular, the major non-zombie plot so far has revolved around Carl's accident. I'm struck by how much of the zombie atmosphere and design has infected these scenes, even in the absence of any infection. Carl's deathly white skin pallor... his sudden shifts between seeming death and animation... his uncontrollable jerking movements in bed... all very creepy, and it thematically links his private ordeal to the global crisis, even when there's no direct tie between the two. There's also, of course, a big obsession with blood. That might be a bit more appropriate in a vampire drama than a zombie drama, but it still fits. Carl has an insatiable desire for fresh blood to remain among the living, while the many zombies we see have an insatiable desire for fresh blood to remain among the walking dead.

I have trouble remembering everyone's names, so I use nicknames for everyone. Rick is Good Cop, Shane is Bad Cop. Boy, Shane has been on a tear lately - that reveal at the end of the third episode was just chilling. Just when I think I can like him again, he has to destroy it all. Rick seems to be pure goodness, and it's easy to root for him, but man, his opening monologue at the start of this season was probably the most annoying thing the show has ever done. I like all the other male characters, but other than Lori, all the women are seriously aggravating me. Which is, of course, well in keeping with zombie fiction practice: we're supposed to have at least some idiotic characters who make bad decisions that cause us to slap our heads and yell at the screen. Well. Part of me is hoping that Andrea and Carol get eaten, and the women from the farmhouse take their place. I'm a bad person.

END SPOILERS

Dexter is... fine. I'm surprised at just how much I'm enjoying Mos Def's Brother Sam character, who seems like he should be insufferable (given the really tone-deaf treatment of religion in the first episode), but has taken off. We'll see if he sticks around for the season. Edward James Olmos seems to be wasted as half of the villain team. I'm liking the new cop character, and am curious if he'll become a less-caffeinated version of Doakes in a season. Last week's episode didn't have any LaGuerta at all, which means it's automatically one of my favorite episodes. So far the show seems to be handling Deb's promotion well, using it to expand her character in believable ways. We'll see where the show goes. There's definitely a lot of amazing potential in using Revelation as a kill gimmick, and so far the show hasn't shied away from maximizing it.