It is not a series in the generally accepted meaning. It is a collection of fully self-contained and rather long episodes. Each episode is a case, and few elements are overlapping from one episode to the others, apart from the personal relationships between and among the members of the team. The various members also have personal careers, which means one can move out, and another can move up. And they have some family life, at least some members of the team do have wives and children, living as families or divorced and separate, which is not always easy for both divorcees. The other members of the team are more discreet but most of the time the relationships that are brought up are temporary, transient, with no duration or perennity.
It is thus easy to take the episodes one after the others, in any order even, which makes the end of the "series" easy. It just stopped after a certain episode which is a final episode, but nothing really happens that would explain the disbanding of the team, the death of one or two members. It is just the end of the collection. Sorry folks, no more episodes.
The treatment of each case is interesting. It is not always the same, but the variations are rather slight at times and only depend on the various communities or groups or bands of people concerned by the crime at stake. The only permanent question is the professional relationship of the "boss," detective superintendent Walker, with the rest of the team, especially with Detective Inspector North first, and then DCI Connor. Note these last two are women and one leaves officially on some kind of promotion, and the other comes up and replaces her. Walker is a power freak and has an obsessive-compulsive personality. He wants to control everyone, and he makes all the decisions, and without being a male-chauvinist pig, he sure is not very favorable with women. With North, he even tried to live with her after his separation from his wife, but it never could work since he was a power-freak in his personal relationship with her too.
But no matter how different the situations and the crimes are, there are some clichés, even some elements that are repetitive and thus become humdrum and commonplace, hence trite. Let me specify a couple.
The main central problem in each episode is the relationship between some children and their parents, including for the members of the team, and Walker first of all. The general idea is that a boy will turn bad because his filial relationship, when a teenager, is not close enough to his father because the father is doing other things and does not find the time necessary to be close to his son. This is trite indeed. Maybe the point should be made slightly more complicated. A teenage boy needs both love, authority, and a personal model from his father. The son may transfer his needs onto another man outside the family. It can be good or bad according to the man selected for being the target of this transference. The father may dislike it - or him - or the mother may dislike it - or him - and the son might not like this resistance. Such elements are rarely explored in depth or detail. Walker's son is a typical example. He needs the love of his father who does not know how to express it, and he does not want the love of his mother as some kind of compensation, because that's childish, and she is an even worse control freak than the father, literally castrating the boy. He gets into drugs, bad connections in the street, etc. But it always remains schematic.
The same situation can be found - with variations - among the criminals right through to the last episode in which the father turns criminal to take the lead of his two sons who want to be criminals because they think it is the only way to impress their father, etc. And this "etc." is the absolute sign that it is a common humdrum psychological singsong that has no depth at all.
It is not vastly different with girls who turn bad, become they become prostitutes or beaten women and beaten mothers, and raped women, even when it happens domestically, because their relationship with their mother was bad, most of the time because the mother was herself dissolute or marginally criminal or criminally marginal. And in most cases the father is not present or really present because he is gone, he is in the military, he is in a cannibalistic profession, etc. But that is once again a cliché, a simplistic pattern.
The last element is the originality of this collection of criminal stories. There is always a part of a trial at the end, or at times at the beginning, and this justice always has a jury, except if the accused pleads guilty. And the intervention of the trial is very skimpy, and the jury is always delivering the verdict by saying "Yes" or "No" to clear-cut questions. Some of the defendants are found guilty though we know they are not. Some others are found not guilty though we know they are, and some others still see a twisted element at the end that turns the situation around: a last-minute witness that gives the testimony that proves the defendant guilty without any doubt, or maybe at times the reverse.
One element is rather easy. Very often the police work, old or recent, is shown to be twisted. Rotten police officers who like money, lazy coppers who want a culprit as fast as possible and satisfy themselves with insufficient evidence, or even plant evidence. The pressure of public opinion, tabloids and television is enormous especially when they reveal the identity and likeness of the police officers, thus endangering them and their families. But that again is rather easy. Corruption is often more complicated, and no one becomes corrupt in one day under a blue moon in the sky.
But altogether it is good though this series does not have the standard subtitles for people who are hard of hearing. That is an important shortcoming, and since the action takes place mostly in London, which is extremely cosmopolitan, there are so many accents that at times you just wonder if you are not in some foreign languages, and in fact, at times it does happen, and still without subtitles. Too bad folks, everyone has to be plurilingual.
Enjoy the depth of corruption and crime in London but no real sightseeing of the City. Too bad. Not done for tourists.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.
It is thus easy to take the episodes one after the others, in any order even, which makes the end of the "series" easy. It just stopped after a certain episode which is a final episode, but nothing really happens that would explain the disbanding of the team, the death of one or two members. It is just the end of the collection. Sorry folks, no more episodes.
The treatment of each case is interesting. It is not always the same, but the variations are rather slight at times and only depend on the various communities or groups or bands of people concerned by the crime at stake. The only permanent question is the professional relationship of the "boss," detective superintendent Walker, with the rest of the team, especially with Detective Inspector North first, and then DCI Connor. Note these last two are women and one leaves officially on some kind of promotion, and the other comes up and replaces her. Walker is a power freak and has an obsessive-compulsive personality. He wants to control everyone, and he makes all the decisions, and without being a male-chauvinist pig, he sure is not very favorable with women. With North, he even tried to live with her after his separation from his wife, but it never could work since he was a power-freak in his personal relationship with her too.
But no matter how different the situations and the crimes are, there are some clichés, even some elements that are repetitive and thus become humdrum and commonplace, hence trite. Let me specify a couple.
The main central problem in each episode is the relationship between some children and their parents, including for the members of the team, and Walker first of all. The general idea is that a boy will turn bad because his filial relationship, when a teenager, is not close enough to his father because the father is doing other things and does not find the time necessary to be close to his son. This is trite indeed. Maybe the point should be made slightly more complicated. A teenage boy needs both love, authority, and a personal model from his father. The son may transfer his needs onto another man outside the family. It can be good or bad according to the man selected for being the target of this transference. The father may dislike it - or him - or the mother may dislike it - or him - and the son might not like this resistance. Such elements are rarely explored in depth or detail. Walker's son is a typical example. He needs the love of his father who does not know how to express it, and he does not want the love of his mother as some kind of compensation, because that's childish, and she is an even worse control freak than the father, literally castrating the boy. He gets into drugs, bad connections in the street, etc. But it always remains schematic.
The same situation can be found - with variations - among the criminals right through to the last episode in which the father turns criminal to take the lead of his two sons who want to be criminals because they think it is the only way to impress their father, etc. And this "etc." is the absolute sign that it is a common humdrum psychological singsong that has no depth at all.
It is not vastly different with girls who turn bad, become they become prostitutes or beaten women and beaten mothers, and raped women, even when it happens domestically, because their relationship with their mother was bad, most of the time because the mother was herself dissolute or marginally criminal or criminally marginal. And in most cases the father is not present or really present because he is gone, he is in the military, he is in a cannibalistic profession, etc. But that is once again a cliché, a simplistic pattern.
The last element is the originality of this collection of criminal stories. There is always a part of a trial at the end, or at times at the beginning, and this justice always has a jury, except if the accused pleads guilty. And the intervention of the trial is very skimpy, and the jury is always delivering the verdict by saying "Yes" or "No" to clear-cut questions. Some of the defendants are found guilty though we know they are not. Some others are found not guilty though we know they are, and some others still see a twisted element at the end that turns the situation around: a last-minute witness that gives the testimony that proves the defendant guilty without any doubt, or maybe at times the reverse.
One element is rather easy. Very often the police work, old or recent, is shown to be twisted. Rotten police officers who like money, lazy coppers who want a culprit as fast as possible and satisfy themselves with insufficient evidence, or even plant evidence. The pressure of public opinion, tabloids and television is enormous especially when they reveal the identity and likeness of the police officers, thus endangering them and their families. But that again is rather easy. Corruption is often more complicated, and no one becomes corrupt in one day under a blue moon in the sky.
But altogether it is good though this series does not have the standard subtitles for people who are hard of hearing. That is an important shortcoming, and since the action takes place mostly in London, which is extremely cosmopolitan, there are so many accents that at times you just wonder if you are not in some foreign languages, and in fact, at times it does happen, and still without subtitles. Too bad folks, everyone has to be plurilingual.
Enjoy the depth of corruption and crime in London but no real sightseeing of the City. Too bad. Not done for tourists.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.