WRITER: Neil Cross DIRECTOR: Brian Kirk CAST: Idris Elba, Ruth Wilson, Steven Mackintosh, Indira Varma, Paul McGann, Saskia Reeves, Warren Brown, Anton Saundes & Matthew Marsh
Unquestionably,
Luther (
BBC1/HD, Tuesdays @9pm) has nothing new to offer its overworked genre as a detective series featuring a "maverick" who's "battling personal demons" and is considered a "wild card" by his colleagues. We've seen it before, and we've seen it done better. But for all that, there was a screwy conviction to some of its performances and enough peculiar creative decisions that made the hour slip by rather smoothly.
Idris Elba (
The Wire) has the eponymous role of DCI John Luther; golden boy of London's Serious Crimes Unit (SCU), whose razor-sharp skills and intense dedication have come at the price of his marriage and mental health. In the prologue, we watch Luther as he lets a child serial killer fall to his near-death from a gantry, despite assurances he'd let him live if he confessed to his crimes. After some time-off because of the trauma, Luther's back at work and partnered with DCI Reed (
Steven Mackintosh) to investigate the brutal home invasion deaths of a father, mother and their dog, where the only survivor was their prodigious daughter Alice (
Ruth Wilson).
For all its glossy visuals of a dirtied London and the imposing presence of Elba, the series revealed its ludicrousness early during an interview scene where Luther d deduced Alice had killed her parents because she didn't
yawn after he did (showing no empathy, see?) Within minutes Luther had spun a motive for why this gifted child prodigy would want to kill her authoritarian parents. Indeed, Alice practically admitted to it the deed in front of him, such was her confidence that her gift for forethought has resulted in the perfect crime with no incriminating evidence. A battle of wits inevitably ensued over the hour; sociopathic astrophysicist versus pertinacious detective. And you know what: I enjoyed it. I couldn't take any of it seriously after the "yawn" incident, but that arrived early enough so I could view the show with more relaxed, carefree attitude. I've had my fill of achingly realistic and depressing cop shows, so watching Elba arm-wrestle a script's clichés and trade quips with a lusciously devious Ruth Wilson (all quizzical eyebrows and rubbery pout) was great fun. It wasn't so light-hearted that moments couldn't be taken seriously, but wasn't so hard-faced that it felt difficult to find affection for. It's certainly a shame that Luther's character is a broad stereotype -- he even has a beautiful wife (
Indira Varma) he's separated from, who's now seeing another man (
Paul McGann) -- but it was in the character's faintly silly moments where the fun was to be had. Moments like Luther pounding a door to splinters in rage, or dialogue like "the gun was in the dog" after realizing Alice disposed of her murder weapon inside the freshly-cremated family pet. Overall,
Luther's a curious beast; it's basically something we've seen a thousand times before, yet somehow avoids being a dull retread through what's either a quirky sense of mischief, or accidental ineptness. Whatever it is, a crime drama starring a black, burly Sherlock Holmes-type, up against a female narcissistic Moriarty analog -- who got a sexual thrill when researching her nemesis on a laptop? I'm in.