LUTHER, 2.4: do you want to play a game?

The finale of Luther was an odd beast, as the two-part storyline took a backseat for a considerable amount of time, in order to focus on Jenny;s (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) subplot that's been rumbling along from the start. The situation with Jenny remained frustratingly vague in key areas (can someone tell me what leverage Babs had over Luther exactly?), but this episode delivered a fitting and exciting conclusion, with Luther (Idris Elba) having to dispose of Babs' grandson Toby (whom Jenny had killed in self-defense), while simultaneously finding a way to frame Babs' ex-cop henchman Frank (Alan Williams) for his murder.

Last week's situation with the psychopathic twins escalated, once Luther realized the Milberry siblings are involved in a real-world role-playing contest with each other—earning points for who, where, and how they kill. The finale lacked episode 3's gloriously distressing set pieces, unfortunately, although the climax was suitably tense, compelling and potently ridiculous—with Luther trying to disarm "walking bomb" Nicholas Milberry (Steven Robertson) on an evacuated street, where he played Nicholas at his own game by sloshing gasoline over himself and gambling his life on the roll of a die. In hindsight, so much of Luther's plan rested one good luck (how did he know Nicholas would want to play this high-stakes game in the back of a nearby lorry?), but this show has never really withstood scrutiny. We just have to accept that Luther has the uncanny ability to make clever judgments like that, and predict criminal behaviour with unerring accuracy.

The only major complaint about Luther series 2 is the fact it was a negligible four hours long, telling only two different stories (well, three if you count Jenny's overarching subplot). This brevity was apparently due to Elba's availability (he was shooting Thor and Ghost Rider 2), but nevertheless the series felt occasionally awkward because there wasn't enough time to do certain ideas or characters justice. It wouldn't surprise me if this was designed to be a six-part series, but corners had to be cut to squeeze it into two-thirds of that preferred time-span.

Of particular note, Mark's curious return as Luther's friend was ultimately pointless (where did he go after episode 2?), and it was a shame there was no good reason for serial killer Alice's return (given only three scenes over two episodes). The two hours per story format worked very well (as it did for series 1's conclusion), but we could definitely have done with another few hours on the Jenny/Babs issue—which felt underwritten and confusing in places, then criminally wasted Pam Ferris as a matriarchal villain. That was such brilliantly left-field casting, reminding me of Margo Martindale's presence in season 2 of Justified, but Ferris just didn't have enough time to craft a rounded, despicable villain. (Although having a goon hammer a nail through Luther's hand into a table was a memorable introduction for her.) I can only hope Babs returns if there's another series, and is treated better.

The finale ended with "surrogate father" Luther licking ice creams with Jenny, teasing us with final line "so now what?" for the second series in a row. That's indeed the question on everyone's lips. I'm sure writer/creator Neil Cross and the BBC hope there's a future for this show (which found a healthy, appreciative audience that escaped it last summer), but so much relies on Elba's ability to fit Luther into his schedule. Speaking recently, Elba said:

"... we'll have to see what the appetite is like for it at the end of this series. If it's a good, healthy appetite then we'll figure out how we're going to do some more. I wouldn't mind seeing a larger version of Luther, maybe a film perhaps. Or take over television for a week, boxset-style Luther. You know, event television."

So that sounds promising. It's also possible the show might become an irregular series of feature-length specials, a la Prime Suspect and Messiah. Whatever happens, I just hope this isn't the last we've seen of the outrageous, gruesome, darkly comical, persistently gripping Luther. He's so good at solving grisly crimes he rarely needs to take his hands out of his pockets.

What did you make of Luther's finale, this second series as a whole, and the future of the show in light of Elba's commitments?

Asides

• The Millberry's brothers' "book code" was based on the Gideon's Bible, you say? It was strange to see Luther treat that revelation as a clever twist, when pop-culture's taught us that most psychos use The Bible for such means. It struck me as odd that Luther presented the Bible reveal as an ace piece of detective work, when it's actually a crime thriller cliché!

written by Neil Cross / directed by Sam Miller / 5 July 2011 / BBC One

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TV Ratings: FALLING SKIES (FX), season 1 premiere; LUTHER (BBC1), series 2 finale

TNT's post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama Falling Skies received its UK premiere last night on FX at 9pm. It managed a very promising 423,000, with an audience share of 1.3% over its hour. This is way down on FX's ratings for The Walking Dead's launch last year (736k), but Skies received nowhere near the same level of promotion and marketing.

Simultaneously on BBC One, gritty crime thriller Luther came to a conclusion with its fourth episode, managing to entice a year overnight high of 5.74m (24.8% of the audience). It comfortably beat its terrestrial competition, which included ITV1's Sextuplets: The Little Lambs (3.04m) and Channel 4's new series of Undercover Boss (2.59m).

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LUTHER, 2.3: the diceman cometh

The final two-part story began on a riveting note, with an attack on a petrol station's forecourt by a fair-haired weirdo (Steven Robertson), brandishing a bat and acid-filled water pistol, as the frightened customers watched from inside the adjoining shop. It was easily the show's most tense and gripping sequence yet, putting viewers immediately on the edge of their seats as the creepy stranger smashed windows and sprayed graffiti on a car roof, before clubbing one man to death on the ground. Indeed, this episode's highlights are the moments of violence and intimidation, when this week's villain reappears to chill the blood: shamelessly shoplifting from a small shop, jumping all over parked cars, or (in another bravura sequence) posing as a motorcycle courier to access an office building and indiscriminately bludgeon employees with a hammer.

It's a shame the actual storyline was even thinner than usual for Luther, as the investigation into catching this violent menace was almost comically sketchy. Luther concludes the man's using role-playing dice to determine his actions as a guess based on his hunched posture on CCTV footage, and the police essentially caught their man by waiting for the day's most bizarre crime-in-progress and blindly hoping the perpetrator's the man they're after. I don't expect intricate, watertight plotting on Luther, but the way the story unfolded was rather imprecise, even for this show.

As usual, a lot of slack was taken up with a subplot involving Jenny (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), as Luther was forced to steal confidential police data and deliver it to Toby (David Dawson) to keep her safe, which aroused the suspicions of DS Gray (Nikki Amuka-Bird) after she saw Luther sneaking around the offices during a fire alarm she reasons he triggered to empty the building of prying eyes. I'm still not wholly convinced by this storyline, as the show's done a poor job explaining it (perhaps because it's had to cut corners because there are only four episodes?), but the situation with Gray beginning to suspect Luther of something criminal is an interesting one. Unlike in series 1, when Luther was framed for a criminal act (killing his wife), this time he's genuinely at fault—even if his actions are understandable because he's trying to protect someone he cares about.

Episode 3 was chock-full of intense moments that played to Luther's strength as a larger-than-life cop thriller, and that alone nudged this episode's rating up by a half-star. It also offered a great setup for the finale, with Jenny having killed the amoral Toby in self-defense when he attempted to rape her (will Luther dispose of his body?), and the twist that the madman has an identical twin and partner-in-crime was exactly the kind of oddness this show delivers so efficiently. It walks a fine line between brilliance and preposterousness, but for the most part Luther gets the balance right. It's just a shame series 2's a mere four hours long, with only enough time to tell two stories, as some of the subplots could have done with more time to develop.

Asides

• This was the first episode of series 2 that didn't feature Paul McGann or Ruth Wilson. In the former's case, it appears to prove the character of Mark North wasn't actually deserving of a return this year. Even his role as Jenny's "babysitter" didn't last long! In the latter's case, I'm surprised Alice hasn't been anywhere near as involved in the show as before. Hopefully she'll return for the finale to help Luther with the mess he's found himself in, but if Luther returns for a third series writer Neil Cross will have to come up with a good reason to keep her around. Alice is a terrific character, but at the moment it feels like she was brought back because she was popular and fun to write for, and not because there was a story worth telling.
• Pam Ferris had better return next week, too—because casting Miss Trunchbull as an underground porn baroness demands more than one short appearance over four episodes.
• Did you notice the nudge in the ribs about comics (or "graphic novels", according to Jenny)? A sly reminder that Luther is effectively a live-action comic-book, which some people don't seem to grasp.

written by Neil Cross / directed by Sam Miller / 28 June 2011 / BBC One

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LUTHER, 2.2: beware the bogeyman

Well, that was a harrowing hour, taking episode 1's setup to the next level after the kidnapping and torture of DS Ripley (Warren Brown) by masked weirdo Cameron Pell (Lee Ingleby) in a sewer, as Luther's (Idris Elba) team desperately tried to locate their colleague while starving Pell of the oxygen he craves: attention.

A scene where Pell rang the police department and Luther chose to ignore him, against usual procedure for negotiation, was a particularly effective and tense moment. Luther's the kind of character whose insight into the scum of the earth vacillates between plausible (the handling of said phone call) and ludicrous (his deduction that Pell's purchase of bomb-making material is to cause an implosion), but somehow Idris Elba makes it all work. John Luther's a larger-than-life character, which is exactly what a show like Luther needs as its beating heart. It's probably why ITV's Whitechapel struggles at times, because it's arguably dafter but involves characters who are too everyday.

Everything involving Cameron Pell worked very well in this episode, buoyed by Ingleby's alert performance as the deranged wannabe-legend who hides behind his Punch mask in order to carry out his crimes, and is obsessed with loss and emptiness. It was a stretch for Pell's m.o to go from brutally murdering women to kidnapping a school bus of children and arranging to have them asphyxiated with van exhaust fumes, but there you go. Luther's not going to win any prizes from crime psychologists about its verisimilitude, but the way it goes about its business is relentlessly gripping. Strictly as entertainment with pulp comic-book influences, it's tough to beat.

Less successful was how the episode tried to weave a disconnected subplot through the story, with Luther dealing with the repercussion of "freeing" teenager Jenny Jones (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) from life as a sex worker and porn star. This arrived in the form of Jenny's redoubtable "boss" Baba (Pam Ferris) and her creepy son Toby (David Dawson), who tried to persuade Luther to give Jenny back by nailing his hand to a table. Given the pressure and race-against-time nature of the Pell case with Ripley's life on the line, it just felt strange that Luther would occasionally drop out of the storyline and attach himself to another one—using Mark (Paul McGann) to help him ensure Jenny's escape from her seedy past. It's understandable to include some respite from the main story, but I'm not sure this was the best way to go about it. That said, The Darling Buds Of May's Pam Ferris as a matriarchal underground porn baroness? Genius.

There continues to be wonderful production value to this show, too. London has never looked better in a drama; the show combining its architectural beauty with centuries of grubbiness, often soaked in the amber yellow of street lights. This episode's use of crumbling buildings and the abandoned docklands, with their shell-like warehouses, was particularly evocative and fit the idea that Pell's obsessed with decay and bareness.

I also like how Luther overcomes a common problem facing all BBC drama, in sustaining a story for an hour without it feeling voluminous. In most BBC shows there's 15-minutes of flab to every episode, but Luther has enough irons in the fire to keep each episode full. Here, the last 10-minutes were almost entirely taken up with another appearance from serial-killer Alice (Ruth Wilson), likening herself to Looney Tunes' Road Runner ("meep meep"), who's escaped from hospital and arrived to try and tempt Luther into eloping with her overseas. I'm intrigued to see where Alice's story is headed, as she feels like a character who belonged more in series 1, but proved so popular that she was brought back.

Overall, episode 2 was a good resolution of the Cameron Pell storyline, let down by subplots that felt a little misplaced and deserving of a full hour to themselves. I understand why they were there, and each contained some memorable moments, but because we only have four hours this year I think I'd prefer less distraction.

Asides

• The song played over the end credits is this track by Joan As Police Woman called "Flash".
• 5.23m people watched this episode, down 370,00 from last week's premiere. A drop's always expected, but that's small enough to not really matter.
• How does Jenny do her make-up in the morning? It looks like she smears a boxing glove in eye shadow and just punches herself for awhile.
• I like the feeling Luther's a father figure to many people (his team, Jenny, in some ways Alice), and this episode's villain Pell was ultimately defeated the same way a parent would calm a toddler having a tantrum. Ignore them.

written by Neil Cross / directed by Sam Miller / 21 June 2011 / BBC One

Next time...

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TV Ratings: LUTHER, series 2 premiere (BBC1)

BBC1's gritty crime drama Luther returned for a four-part second series last night (reviewed here), attracting an impressive 5.6 million viewers (25.2% of the audience), which matched its premiere's numbers from last summer.

This is particularly good because Luther's first series lost viewers over its six-week run, so perhaps this is a sign audiences have changed their mind about the show? Or are people just willing to give it a second chance? It probably didn't hurt that there was no real competition in the 9pm hour, with Luther easily winning its timeslot against ITV1's Baby Hospital (2.62m), BBC2's The Country House Revealed (1.42m), Channel 4's The Fairy Jobmother (1.26m), and Channel 5's CSI (908k).

Considering the premiere's effective shock-ending, I expect next week's episode to retain the majority of those 5.6m viewers. Ratings tend to slip after much-publicized premiere, but it'll be interesting to see what happens. The number may stabilize, if those catching up on iPlayer this week are inspired to watch episode 2 live next Tuesday. It's not like there are adverts to escape, is it.

If Luther maintains this level of ratings success, I suspect the BBC will soon be asking Idris Elba to return for a third series—provided he can fit it into his busy schedule! The actor's currently in contention to star in Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim movie, amongst other things. It helps that, by all accounts, Elba seems to like mixing American work with British, so I hope he'll make himself available. I'd be happy with occasional feature-length specials, if all else fails.

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Review: LUTHER, 2.1: that's the way to do it!

Luther split audiences when it aired last summer, but I quickly warmed to this detective drama's heightened reality and desire to have ghoulish fun within a normally staid genre. In some ways it's even more joyously absurd than the modernized Sherlock, which debuted around the same time. Luther doesn't exist to be an accurate portrayal of modern-day policing, it exists to entertain its audience like a pulp airport novel. It has its ludicrous moments (that aren't always intentional), but they're kept oddly plausible thanks to Idris Elba's magnetic, brooding, swaggering performance as the eponymous lawman. If you treat Luther as you would a live-action graphic novel (the opening titles are animated almost as a nudge to the ribs*), then it's a great deal of outrageous fun in a genre that's often very po-faced and dreary.

It's been a year since the climactic events of series 1, where Luther's estranged wife Zoe was murdered by "dirty cop" Ian Reed, who was himself later killed by Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), a charming sociopath Luther developed a bizarre connection with after she got away with murdering her parents. Since then, Alice has been arrested and detained in a psychiatric hospital for evaluation; Luther's only recently returned to work to investigate cold cases, thanks to the support of his former inquisitor Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley); "rising star" DS Ripley's (Warren Brown) been demoted to a uniformed job for his part in the mess; and Luther's developed an unexpected bond with his late-wife's boyfriend Mark North (Paul McGann), whom he now plays chess with. The latter was a very surprising development, and feels like it was the only way to keep McGann involved in the series, but we'll see how it plays out. I'm predicting Mark and Alice will be the angel and demons perched on Luther's shoulders over the remaining episodes.

This opening two-part story was another of the show's brazen crime stories, involving a violent maniac called Cameron Pell (Life On Mars' Lee Ingleby) who wears a creepy Mr Punch mask as he brutally kills women. Luther was quickly offered a job on the new Serious & Serial Unit by Schenk, and was quick to deduce that the perpetrator has a fascination with folklore and mythology, intending to become exalted as a modern-day myth through his crimes. In a small subplot, Luther met Caroline Jones (Kierston Wareing), the wife of a criminal who was caught by Luther, who blames Luther for how her family was subsequently torn apart. In particular, her daughter Jenny (Aimee Ffion Edwards) is on the brink of being lost to the seedy world of gonzo pornography, and Luther's guilty enough to ensure that doesn't happen. Throw in DS Erin Gray (Survivors' Nikki Amuka-Bird), an ambitious woman who's part of Luther's new team but refuses to risk her career in the same way DS Ripley did, and you have enough ingredients for something that feels refreshed but hasn't strayed far from what was enjoyable about series 1.

The actual storyline was pretty thin, mainly because Luther doesn’t always take the typical approach to detective dramas by keeping the week's criminal a secret. Mr Punch wasn't an inscrutable killer to be exposed, he was a known boogieman to capture. That means the show isn't so focused on detective work, but more on cat-and-mouse thrills: like Luther nearly catching Pell, only to have a can of mace spray emptied into his face; or Pell taunting the authorities by filming a random doorstep attack and streaming it on the internet.

Plus there's the Silence Of The Lambs gender-reversal of Luther and Alice's abnormal relationship. Ruth Wilson is absolutely fantastic fun as the pouting serial killer (resembling an evil schoolgirl, as drawn by Quentin Blake), and arguably even more unnerving now Alice is under lock and key. It's here that Luther showed its hand as a televised pulp crime novel, as it's so clearly removed from reality and instead edging towards an urban mythology. Luther (his name not dissimilar to Lucifer) is a good man with streak of vigilantism coursing through his veins (signified by his red tie?), and bewitched by the devilish Alice Morgan—so much so that he's helping her escape from the asylum by tossing a half-eaten apple into the facility's garden that contains a tool to aide a breakout. Apple, garden... ring any bells?

Overall, this opening hour (of a truncated four-part series, telling two stories) was exactly the kind of muscularly told and deliciously silly cop drama we've come to expect from Luther. If you value realism above all else in this genre, you may spend most episodes gnashing your teeth in frustration—particularly because the tone feels intended to convince you Luther's gritty and accurate. But it's clearly not. It's an adult comic strip with Idris Elba as the brooding nucleus keeping everything from spinning apart, and if you accept that ambition it's crazy fun. It's Hellblazer-meets-Millennium-meets-Prime Suspect.

written by Neil Cross / directed by Sam Miller / 14 June 2011 / BBC One

Next time...

* Not to mention the fact the BBC have released this tie-in comic.

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Trailer: LUTHER, series 2 (BBC1)

Hell is empty... and all the devils are here...

The BBC have released a full trailer for series 2 of LUTHER, which I've handily embedded above. It's a really effective and atmospheric tease of what's to come. I've actually seen the first episode already and can assure fans the show's back in fine style. As you can perhaps tell from the tone of the trailer, its weird imagery, humming soundtrack, and spine-tingling voice-over, Luther appears to have decided what it wants to be. If you share its heightened mindset, you're going to have some grisly fun very soon...

Luther returns to BBC1 on Tuesday 14 June for 2 two-part stories.

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Trailer: 'Luther' (BBC1)

The BBC have released a short promotion for Luther, which returns for its second series in the near-future. It's a rather tedious and obvious piece of marketing, showing Idris Elba demolishing his office in snapshots played backwards. The BBC seem to love promo's that involve reverse-photography and slow-motion, don't they? Sadly, there's no actual footage from the new series, which will also see the return of Ruth Wilson as serial-killer confidant Alice Morgan, so this is just an alert that Luther will soon be back for two 2-hour episodes.

Opinion here was very mixed about the first series. It took me a few episodes to buy into the show's curious tone and direction, but once I did I found it great fun and, for a few episodes, very exciting. I wasn't a lone voice, but many people disagreed with me. Luther felt like it was better received in the US, where it aired on BBC America -- perhaps because of exoticism? I tend to think quite a few British shows "click" with American critics because their DNA is so different to that of US shows, in ways the UK audience don't care about or notice.

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'Luther' returns in 2011

BBC1 Controller Jay Hunt confirmed at the Edinburgh International Television Festival that cop show Luther will return in 2011 with two two-hour specials. I assume the reduction in episodes from six to four hours (telling just two stories) is because Idris Elba's a busy actor with a tight schedule to work around. I know the series didn't connect with everyone, but I personally found it enjoyably daft and surprisingly gripping towards the end, so I'm glad we'll be seeing more.

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