(Important note: Welcome to my coverage of the six-episode BBC series Luther. I’ll be writing about the show week-to-week, under the usual TV Club assumption that readers will have seen the episodes. However, since this piece will run before the pilot airs, I’m treating it more like a review and going lighter on spoilers. Expect more details in future weeks.)
Though I’m sure he’s proud of the series, Idris Elba has clearly been trying to get a little distance between himself and The Wire, which isn’t easy when you’ve played one of the most memorable characters on The Greatest TV Show Ever™. In interviews, he’s been generous about discussing any other project but that one, and his roles post-Stringer Bell have sought to establish a little range, from his stint as a no-nonsense executive in TV’s The Office to his leading role in the schizo Tyler Perry joint Daddy’s Little Girls. The BBC series Luther gives him his meatiest part since The Wire, and a character as unhinged and self-destructive as Stringer Bell was controlled and ruthlessly businesslike.
Judging by the first hour—and since I’m writing about them episode-by-episode, I’m watching them one at a time—Luther looks to be a fine vehicle for Elba (and a better one for Ruth Wilson as his nemesis, but I’ll get to that later), but it’s a vehicle with a lot of worn tread on it. Prime Suspect aside, I’m less schooled in British procedurals than others, but I’ve seen enough procedurals in general to balk at the clichés and by-the-numbers plotting that are holding this show back so far. Elba’s cop-on-the-edge hero isn’t the freshest conceit, nor is the cat-and-mouse game he plays with a likely murderer, nor is the idea that his troubled psyche makes him more perceptive about the criminal mind than the average detective. So far, Luther does reasonably well with stock material—the show is, without question, smarter and more compelling than many of its kind—but Michael Mann this isn’t.
The opening has Elba’s John Luther in pursuit of serial killer Henry Madsen at the sort of generic factory common in thrillers of all stripes. (Bart Simpson could buy it for one dollar at auction.) The perp falls through a rickety bridge, and while he’s hanging over the abyss by his fingernails, Luther pumps him for information about a little girl he’s abducted. He gets the girl’s location—and she’s alive—but Luther chooses to let Madsen fall to his death. (Or what we assume is his death; incredibly, he survives and merely drops into a coma.) Seven months later, Luther is back from the long probation that followed the incident, and he gets a doozy of a case: Two elderly people and a dog have been murdered, and there’s no sign of a robbery or sexual assault.