Hijack: Don't Miss It!

Hey, if you're a fan of Idris Elba, check out Hijack, a seven-episode mini-series just concluded on Apple TV+.   Even if you're not a fan, if you have a pulse and an intellect, you're bound to like it.

I've been a big fan since Elba played Stringer Bell on The Wire on HBO -- I mean, second in command of a drug cartel in Baltimore, who went to night school and read the original Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations?  You can beat that.  There've been lots of shows about drug cartels, but none even remotely like that.

Hijack is about a hijacked plane. Right.  They've been lots of shows about hijacked planes, but nothing quite like Hijack.   Elba plays Sam Nelson.  He's on the hijacked plane.  Good thing for the plane and the passengers.  He's not a marshall.  He's some kind of corporate deal maker.  I'm still not clear what that is.  But the up side of that is that it makes just what Sam will do almost always unpredictable.  He's a good guy for sure, but with an inscrutable agenda, other than saving the plane.

Neil Maskell plays Stuart Atterton, clearly a bad guy, but also with an inscrutable agenda.  The inscrutability of these major characters comes in and out focus, and keeps the viewers almost as much on the edge of their seats as the passengers on the plane.  Ok, the two sides of the screen -- viewers at home and passengers on the plane -- are two different universes, but you get what I mean.  Maskell, by the way, played another inscrutable, charismatic villain -- Arby in Utopia.  

And while we're on the subject acting talent in this mini-series, we get Eve Miles (Keeping Faith) and Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) as minor but memorable characters in the London central control room.  Hey, I've told you nearly nothing about the plot, hence no spoiler warning.  But I will say there are big surprises in every episode, right up until to the very end.

And Hijack gives us one of Elba's very best performances, right up there with The Wire and Luther.  

Kudos to series creators George Kay and Jim Field Smith.

Luther: The Fallen Sun: The Risen Hero

I just saw Luther: The Fallen Sun -- the continuation of Idris Elba's Luther TV series, in a 2+ hour movie on Netflix, and thought it was excellent, in all sorts of ways, for all kinds of reasons.  In fact, minute for minute, I thought it was better than any of the many series we've seen of Luther since it came on the screen in 2010.

[I'll warn you here of spoilers, though you won't find too many here, other than what you see in the blurbs and the trailers.]

So, Luther's in prison, not because he was framed, but because of the corners he illegally cut -- what he "had to do" -- to get the criminals in the past.  His adversary is a brilliant sicko, Robey (played by Andy Serkis), who is adept on the Internet and in torturing and leaving his victims hanging, literally.  One of his victims is a young man, and Luther was on the case but unable to get Robey before Luther was incarcerated.  Fortunately for Luther, the storyline, and the ultimate resolution of this movie, DCI Raine, who is currently investigating Robey without much success, suffers her daughter being kidnapped by Robey.  This is fortunate for the story, because it obliges Raine, who starts out being adamant about not enlisting Luther, and keeping him in prison, to instead welcome him in the frantic hunt.

As most of you no doubt know, Idris Elba was at at one point being considered to play James Bond, but recently actors his age were ruled out of that running.  First of all, Elba looks young enough to me.  More important, he's an outstanding one-of-a-kind actor who played and defined the indelibly memorable Stringer Bell in The Wire and continues to do the same in Luther.  He would have done the same for Bond.   I mention this because the Luther is this story has Bondian aspects, especially in snow and ice-water action near the end of the movie.   The Luther in the TV series rarely if ever made it out of London, if I remember correctly.  The Luther in this movie is now both literally as well as figuratively a man of the world.

But apropos both Bond and previous Luthers, I did miss any love interest (such as Indira Varma's Zoe Luther) or even the partially erotic spark (with Ruth Wilson's Alice Morgan) in this Luther movie.  Maybe that's because two hours is a little too short for such relationships to really start, let alone play out, when there such a demonic psycho to be caught.  But that absence is yet another good reason to make another Luther movie.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit ... Luther 5.4: Lethal Love

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 5.4: Lethal Love

Luther concluded its fifth season - with episode 5.4 - in the U. S. on Sunday night with a permanently game-changing series of developments.

I said in my review of 5.3 that it was unlikely that Alice would be killed, but the only thing I was certain about was Luther surviving.  I was right about that, but never expected that Alice would take her own life, and, even more so, after killing Detective Sgt. Catherine Halliday.

But in retrospect it all makes sense.   Halliday was Luther's partner, and though there was nothing romantic between them, Luther's partnering with a woman was more than Alice could abide.  She loved Luther with a vengeance, in all meanings of the word.

And Luther loved Alice.  In their final discussion, Luther acknowledges that this is what love was - the "this" being the agony of his loving someone like Alice, a sociopathic killer, and she loving someone like him, a police detective.

And, although Luther wasn't physically killed, that love got him shot up pretty badly, and maybe killed his career as police.  Well, maybe not that, maybe not that fast, but Luther's being led off in handcuffs, with Martin wanting Luther's overcoat over those handcuffs to protect him from media embarrassment, was quite a scene.  The emblematic overcoat over handcuffs, symbolizing how far Luther had gone to protect Alice.

It was a powerful and decisive season, and, as ever with Luther, I'm looking forward to more.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit

Alice's killing of George's son bore bitter fruit in Luther 5.3, as George goes after Alice and Luther to exact his revenge.  Of course, that's just what Alice intended - to draw George out into an all-out war against Luther, on the bet, probably safe, that Luther would prevail in the end and rid Alice and everyone else of George.

Did she worry about collateral damage?  Probably not.   Poor Benny went that way.  Alice herself is now at the other end of a gun.  But I can't see her succumbing after all this good effort to bring her back.

Meanwhile, the Lake story has come to an end of sorts, at least for Vivienne.  Her attempts to restrain her psycho husband fail.  After imploring him not to endanger her with his nefarious deeds, Jeremy drugs her, undresses her, tucks her in bed, in the hopes that she won't find out about his latest victim, at this point a kidnap.  But of course she does, and before the evening is over she's arrested by Luther, on the verge of dismembering the poor young woman to cover up her husband's evil work.

He manages to escape, so here's where we are on the edge of the season finale next week:  Jeremy's at large, desperate to escape and do who knows what.   George's hit men have Alice and Mark in their possession, with a tough road for Luther to free them, unscathed, and unhurt himself.   Actually, unscathed is no doubt impossible at this point.  The best we can hope for is unkilled.

And even though I can't see Alice dying - which would be a double death for Ruth Wilson in tempestuous characters in love affairs these past few years - I'd say the only survival we can be sure of Luther's.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive"

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive"

That's what begins Luther and Alice's renewed relationship when she shows up at his doorstep at the end of 5.1 and the start of 5.2.  She tells Luther she wants "a chocolate digestive" before she passes out, and Luther carries her inside his apartment - she's already inside his head - to tend to her wound.

That wound is physical, but the real wound of significance with Alice is the gaping wound her soul, which manifests itself in all kinds of ways, including killing people and loving Luther.  And the strange thing about this, the compelling glue of Luther, is that Luther, or at least a significant part of him, reciprocates in this powerful inchoate attraction.  Therein resides the true glue of this series, and especially this season, as of the end of the second episode.

The two are not quite unofficial partner detectives as yet, but they're verging on it.   Will Luther accede to George's demand for Alice as the price to stop George's beating of Benny Silver?  Luther says yes, but you know he'll never give up Alice - certainly not to George.   Which will leave Alice free to continue doing what she does, including slaying in ways that exceed what we see in Killing Eve, a lot of which is indebted to Luther for the master female assassin that is Alice.

But what makes this season of Luther so good is Alice's logical depravities, and her relationship with Luther, get a run for their money with Vivien and her psycho surgeon husband.   It was Freud who said the surgeon is a sublimated sadist, whose libido is stoked by the lifesaving good that is done in surgery.   The scene with Jeremy doing surgery is an instant classic of Freud writ too large.  His kidnapping of the next victim, though a real not imagined crime, is actually less shocking than Jeremy in the operating room.

Still an open question at the end of this second episode is what exactly is Jeremy's wife, psychologist Vivienne, up to?  We've yet to see a meshing of the Alice/George and Jeremy/Vivienne stories, which will be fun to see.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form

Luther was back for its fifth season on BBC America last night.  First and foremost, it stars Idris Elba in the title role, one of my all-time favorite actors since I first saw him in The Wire as Stringer Bell, second-in-command in a drug empire, so erudite he was studying economics in night school and quoting Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.

The Luther character is a detective genius who has been through the mill in his personal and professional life, which often are the same and almost always intertwined.  As the trailer for this season aptly shows, Luther's wife and young partner were both murdered in previous seasons.   In the first episode of season 5, Luther continues to take a physical pounding, from the likes of a crime boss we saw in fine crafty and brutal form last season, but the apex case is a sadistic serial killer who's getting more frequent and gruesome in his killings.

Luther's opponent here is not just the serial killer, but a shrink, Vivien Lake (played by Hermione Norris, who was so good as Ros on MI5).  Lake is understandably protecting the serial killer, Jeremy, from the police. He's not Lake's patient but her husband, and likely her partner in sexual kinkiness, which may or may not extend to the killings.   At very least, Lake sacrifices one of her troubled patients, James, setting him up to take the fall for the recent spate of murders that presumably her husband committed.   James commits suicide before the police can nab him, but the case isn't closed.  Luther's new partner, Catherine Halliday, shows her mettle and realizes something is not adding up with James as the killer.

So Luther's faced with the fine kettle of depraved fish we've come to expect on this series.  But the knock on his door in the last scene was better than icing the on cake.  It was from Alice, back from the dead, played by the inimitable Ruth Wilson, back from our side of the Atlantic in The Affair.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

A thoroughly satisfying conclusion of these four nights of Luther with episode 3.4, and the hope that we'll be seeing Idris Elba again in the title role along with all the supporting characters who survived.

Satisfying because it was to good see Stark get what he deserved from the shotgun of Tom.  Satisfying because Luther made some good and right choices, only some of which were in his control.

For example, in the scene on the roof, where Tom with shotgun in hand asks Luther to choose who will die - Alice the evil genius or Mary the pixie - Luther after saying repeatedly he can't choose, says Alice should die.   Now I think Luther would be much happier and better with Alice in the long run than Mary, and he knows that, too, but because he's a such a fundamentally decent human being, he can't sentence Mary to death.

And, because the universe is ultimately on Luther's side, despite the terrible counter-examples it constantly dishes out to him, both Alice and Mary survive - Alice because Mary bravely pushes the shotgun away from Alice for moment, and Alice because she uses that moment to put a nail in Tom's neck, a nail she cleverly took from a wall a little earlier.

And this now leaves Luther with another choice to make: with Mary and Alice both alive and kicking, whom will he go with?   Alice reliably sets it up beautifully, letting the police think Mary is Alice, escaping, and getting a note to Luther to meet her on the bridge.

Luther first goes to see Mary in the police van - she'll be released soon, when the police realize she's not Alice - and Mary in effect tells Luther to go to Alice.  Not only does Luther know Alice is right for him, but Mary does, too.

And this is about as much of a happy ending as well ever see at the end of a season of Luther.   But it's more than happy enough for me,  because it's the way television should more often be, with the hero making the dangerous, unsafe choice.  I'm looking forward to a next season someday, before too long.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy




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Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy

A stunningly powerful Luther 3.3 that connected on all sorts of levels, like a kick in the solar plexus.

The new villain is Tom, a classic vigilante killer who gets the drop on Luther, but lets him go, because he doesn't want to kill him.  After all, as Tom tells Luther, they're on the same side, both hunting bad guys.  But Luther can't accept that, because he's just a cop, he says, not judge and jury.

Now actually, as we know from the past two seasons, and even this one, that's not completely true. When sufficiently enraged, Luther's always ready to mete out severe corporal punishment.  In that sense, Luther is a British Jack Bauer, though his quarry are less apocalyptic, and Luther hasn't (yet) killed his boss for the greater good.

But Luther is an idealist, which leads to his sometimes going overboard in trying to bring the wrongdoers to justice, and also causes him to sometimes have too much faith in good people responding to their better angels.  His attempt, tonight, to get a woman who was raped as a girl by Tom's hostage  - to get Tom to free the rapist rather than kill him - was bound to fail.  Put on television to plead with Tom from afar for the rapist's life, she instead implores Tom to kill her rapist.  Who can blame her?

And, so, when Luther and Ripley - who have now thoroughly reconciled - come to the scene to stop Tom from hanging the rapist, you just know it's not going to turn out well.  But it turns out far worse than that.

Luther literally saves the rapist from hanging by holding him so the rope that Tom has left the rapist hanging from doesn't take its toll.  He does this in an act of extraordinary courage, battling off the crowd who are punching him and kicking him in an attempt to dislodge him from the rapist.

Ripley, on Luther's instruction, is off in pursuit of Tom.  British police aren't usually armed, so Tom gets the drop on Ripley, as he previously had on Luther.  Tom pleads with Ripley to walk away. Ripley says he can't.  And Tom responds by shooting Ripley dead.   He's not as lucky as Luther, though luck is the last thing you could say Luther had in this story tonight.

And there this dynamite of a television episode might have ended, with Tom running away, and Luther left grieving by Ripley's body.  But there's one more kick in the stomach left.  Mary the blonde, waiting for Luther in his flat, sees a man standing out in the street outside Luther's window.  It's Tom, come to exact some further retribution from Luther, for not accepting Tom's request not to make Tom his enemy.   And as a grace note to this peril, we hear a few bars of Robert Plant's "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" ... that hauntingly evocative song from Boss.   (This is apparently the season for series borrowing songs from other series, with Dexter playing "Make Your Own Kind of Music" of Lost fame.)  To the sicko murdering vigilante Tom, Luther has become Satan.

We'll learn how this plays out tomorrow night in the concluding episode of this short wallop of third season.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success




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Luther 3.2: Success

Luther 3.2 was even better than 3.1 - because Luther was against all odds successful, on at least three fronts. And yet somehow we know he hasn't faced the worst of what he will be facing.  In part because there are two episodes left, in part because it's in the DNA of Luther that he can never be at peace, never be really or totally successful.

He gave it a good try tonight.  The serial killer who's bald walked right past Luther.  He was wearing a wig, but was recognizable to the audience.  And something about him was recognizable to Luther, who pursues the killer - Paul Ellis - but can't quite get him this time.  That's for next time, later that evening, when Luther has figured it out, and uses the last of the three nurses to get Ellis - who already has two of the nurses subdued and ready to be killed.  Score a big one for Luther.

Next, Luther confronts Ripley with Erin and Stark - of the Judas squad - just as Ripley seems on the verge of giving Stark whatever evidence he needs to get Luther.   The interview is stopped cold, Luther takes the tape, and tells Stark that if he tries to take Luther down, Luther will take him down even further.  A few minutes later, Luther listens to the tape and discovers that Ripley said only good things about Luther.  Excellent fake-out on the audience - though I found it hard to believe that Ripley would go against Luther, and said so in my review yesterday.   Still, I was pretty convinced about Ripley's perfidy. Score another big win for Luther.

And, just for sweet dessert, Luther gets together with the blonde he ran into in the first episode. Success again!

So what's left to go wrong for Luther?  Go ask Alice - she's due to appear any time now.  And Stark and Erin are not likely to fold up and go away.  And the U.K. must be crawling with other killers.

And I heard somewhere that things start picking up in episode 3.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender




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Luther 3.1: Into the Blender

Idris Elba is back in his second best role on television as Luther - his best was Stringer Bell on The Wire, so you can see how highly I regard Luther.  Its first season was scalding, pull-no-punches, brilliant guts-in-your-face British detective work, with twists and turns that kept your heart in your mouth and your seat on the edge, and the second season was almost as good.

The third season - a short one, just four episodes on four nights this week - is off to a great start.  Luther is typically not only hunting psychos and vicious killers but is the target of what we here in the US would call an Internal Affairs investigation himself.  Not only that, but the cops investigating Luther have enlisted his loyal partner DS Ripley - not completely believable at first, but making a depressing, infuriating sense by the end of this first episode.

And not only that, but Luther's opponents are no dummies or cartoon-stupid police.  When Ripley realizes that Luther might be suspicious of Ripley being in a car with DSI Erin Gray, the high level inspector who is one of the two leading the investigation against Luther, Erin starts snogging (one of my favorite British expressions) with Ripley.  A smart move.

And, typically and excruciatingly, the investigation into Luther not only endangers him, but the people he's trying to save - that is, the victims of the stone cold killer Luther is investigating.  Luther manages to put a call into a couple who are about to be attacked, to warn them - but he's interrupted by Ripley's badgering and his phone is left hanging.  A few minutes later, we see the devastating results.

What makes Luther stand out, in addition to Idris Elba's deftly powerful performance, is the way almost no one bars any holds.   So the most memorable scene in tonight's episode probably goes to another suspect, another killer, but not a bad person, who, receiving a call from Luther asking him to come in the next day so the police can get his fingerprints, put his fingers into a blender.  One way of not worrying about any fingerprints you may have left at the scene.

Not for the faint of heart, but for anyone who likes a story unafraid to confront human nature in all of its depths.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield




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Broadchurch 1.3: The Spy

Broadchurch 1.3 continues with its almost everyone a suspect in Danny's murder - even after someone is apparently cleared after lying.

Danny's father is the prime suspect in 1.3, which starts with his lame alibi for the night Danny was murdered, Danny's blood on his boat, and Ellie's son telling Alec that Danny told him his father Mark had a temper and hit Danny a few times.  Mark is held but released, when the woman he was sleeping that night - not his wife - comes forward.  This was my feeling all along - that Mark was lying to police to cover up not the murder of his son but his cheating on his wife.

But where does this leave us?  Not 100% sure of Mark's innocence, because, even though he has a good explanation for how Danny's blood got  on the boat, we see someone - presumably Mark - burning it at the end of the episode.  Is this where Mark slept with the blonde, not his wife, on the fateful evening, and that's why he burned the boat?  That would make sense, since Mark feels guilty about what he was doing on the night of the murder.   But we don't know for sure at this point that Mark burned the boat, or even if the burning boat was Mark's.

And what's going on with Ellie's son?  Was he telling the truth about Mark hitting Danny, and, if not, why not?  Here's a wild little theory:  Ellie's husband killed Danny, and Ellie's son is lying to protect him.  Or maybe not - it's just a wild theory I have with no evidence at this point.

The show continues to have great scenes and lines.  Like when Ellie tells Alec to back off,  and says she'll "piss in a cup and throw it at you" if you don't.  Those courteous Brits know how to hurl an insult when they're mad - just as you see to such good effect on another brilliant show, Luther, which is coming back week after next.

But in some ways my favorite scene is when Danny's mother Beth warns daughter Chloe not to talk in front of the mild-mannered cop who is staying with Danny's family ostensibly just to be of help.  He's a "spy," Beth tells Chloe, and Beth is right.   One of the few things we can sure of - one of the few pieces of incontestable truth - we get on this taut and excellent show.


See also Broadchurch: Powerful Viewing ... Broadchurch 1.2: Brooding Excellence



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Luther: Between The Wire and The Shield

I saw the six episodes of the BBC's Luther on DVD the last few nights - all of its first season - and I'm here to say the series is somewhere between The Wire and The Shield, the best two shows (along with Friday Night Lights) ever on television.   Which is not say Luther is as yet as good as those two shows - with just six episodes, how could it be - but it's playing in the same ball park, and its originality and power certainly puts Luther in that rarefied league.

Idris Elba, who lit up every scene he was in in The Wire, is John Luther in Luther.   Elba's Stringer Bell was a cool intellect, a drug dealing master who took evening classes in economics and had Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations on his bookshelf.   Elba's Luther is also an intellect, but a cop (Detective Chief Inspector) ever on the edge of giving into to his emotion, and in fact breaking the rules and the law when the impulse is too strong for him to resist.  So if Stringer is the criminal who partakes of the light of sweet reason, Luther is the police who skates and partakes of a dark side.   It's that breaking of the law that gives Luther a kinship of sorts with Vic Mackey of The Shield, though Vic is clearly in a harrowing law-breaking class of his own.  [Spoilers for Luther follow - don't read further if you don't want to know.]

Luther starts by letting a serial killer fall to his death rather than taking him in, with the nice complication that the killer doesn't die, and only goes into a coma from he could awaken and implicate Luther in his arrest procedures.   Luther crosses paths with Alice, a beautiful, brilliant sociopath who kills her parents, and does it so cleverly that Luther can't prove that she did.   But she's attracted to Luther and his intelligence, emotionally stalks him, and Luther - or a part of him - actually comes to like it.   Before the first season is over, Alice will save Luther's job and life, and establishes herself as one of more enjoyable sociopaths on television.

The denouement of the first season, spread over two hours, is a tour-de-force of major characters in collision with unexpected results.   DCI Ian, who works next to Luther, is involved in a diamond heist.  Luther is soon on to it, and this sets Ian and Luther into an escalating punch/counter-punch - much of it not planned - that culminates in Ian killing Luther's beloved, estranged wife Zoe (played by Rome's Indira Varma - her characters have no luck) and Ian pinning that on Luther.   Before the season is over, Ian will be goading both Luther and Zoe's boyfriend Mark to kill Ian - he tells them in detail how much Zoe appreciated every orgasm she "took" from him (you gotta love that British usage) - and Alice asking Mark to vote on whether she should put Ian out of his misery.   Alice wants to, Luther - who's grown from the first episode - does not, and Alice needs Mark to break the tie.

It's that kind of show, with every character memorable, including Luther's partner Justin, Luther's boss Rose, and DCI Shenck, who works for what we call IAD here, police investigating police, and is almost on to Luther.   If you're partial to police drama served up with almost equal portions of logic and passion in all directions, a Criminal Minds in which the lead investigator is close to taking up with one of the killers,  you'll be on to Luther.

Notes in the real world:  1. Memo to Cablevision in Westchester, NY:  Put BBC America on the air here already, so we can see Season 2 of Luther in real time.  2.  Congrats to Idris Elba for Golden Globe Nominations for Luther, well deserved. 3. Special treat for Law & Order: Special Victims fans:  Luther mentions Detective Munch in one of the episodes (don't ask me why).

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The Plot to Save Socrates




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