Taciturn doesn’t begin to describe DCI John Luther, a man who doesn’t begin to describe anything. He plays things so close to his chest, only his trademark Joy Division-grey hairshirts know what he’s thinking. In the first of this two-part non-festive outing of Luther (Tuesday, 9pm, BBC1), we join him on dispassionate leave by a clifftop, living in a shotgun shack that makes David Tennant’s from Broadchurch 2 look like a palace. However, in accordance with cop show law, two plain-clothes officers are dispatched to the middle of nowhere to disturb the peace and bring him back to the big city because his maverick genius is required. This cliche was most recently pressed into service on BBC1’s From Darkness, when Anne-Marie Duff’s DC was lured out of retirement in the Western Isles. She jogged to escape her demons; John Luther walks to the shop in a cagoule to buy bread. DCI Darren Boyd beardily comments: “Crikey, pretty close to the edge.” Geddit?
Boyd and partner DCI Rose Leslie (the mighty Ygritte from Game Of Thrones) ask Luther a lot of questions, to which his answers are, in order, “No”, “No” and “Nope”. Before leaving, Boyd goes off the record: “Hey. You OK?” Luther’s answer? “Everything’s tickety boo. Totally disco.” When he grunts a whole sentence, it’s worth waiting for.
Twisted creator and sole writer Neil Cross scripts Luther like a graphic novel, with blunt aphorisms and crunchy bon mots in place of What People Actually Say. In this regard, it’s closer to The Walking Dead than Line Of Duty, and frequently as terrifying. Series three, which alluded to being the final outing, ended on Southwark Bridge with the perma-crumpled sleuther symbolically throwing his overcoat into the Thames. Something about casting off the outer layer of his tortured soul, I expect. At which, his all-in-one murderer-stalker-sidekick Alice Morgan (played with a touch too much relish by Ruth Wilson) asked: “So, now what?”
Meanwhile, Luther has been in development at Fox as a US remake that’s still on the whiteboards, while loose talk of a feature film keeps failing to harden into such. Instead, this. It’s never been clear whether Luther was a case-of-the-week procedural with scenes of home invasion that would cause John Carpenter to leave the lights on, or a more mythic character study about one man purging his demons while somehow holding down a responsible job. But, at its best, it’s both.
Luther’s not-so-secret weapon is Idris Elba, an actor who’s never bad in anything, even when the material is. Unlike fellow telly detectives Morse, Wallander, Rebus and Marple, Luther wasn’t honed in the pages of a series of novels, and it’s testament to Elba’s investment that he’s risen above a series of tics. I have to declare a sort of interest: my scriptwriting apprenticeship was on breezy Channel 5 soap Family Affairs in the late 90s, where dialogue I wrote came out of the future Stringer Bell’s mouth. He played Tim. Sample line: “I’m glad you don’t feel weird about it, you being twins and that. This’ll sound stupid, but it’s almost like I’d be sleeping with you.” I know.
As with previous Luthers, there’s a clue-leaving serial killer on the loose who seems to want to be caught. A pre-credits tease unfolds in heart-pumping horror movie style, expertly staged by regular director Sam Miller; it involves a wife doing some decorating in a nice Victorian terrace and waiting for her texting husband to bring home a ready meal. I guarantee that you will be shouting at the screen from behind the sofa. The story involves a fetish website devoted to “cannibal erotica” and what Dermot Crowley’s bookish superintendent refers to as “some Bedlamite” who sits at home in his pants. Just when Luther thought he was out…
At one stage, possibly in driving rain John Woo would have rejected as too stylised, hairy techie Michael Smiley asks: “You having a laugh?” Don’t answer that, Luther. It’s rhetorical.
