Robson Green is Mr.Ubiquitous on BBC TV. This is his second series about chasing down serial killers. He's always intense, always smart, but far from perfect. So is his female partner (Nicola Walker). The lack of perfection is what makes the show have it's high drama, as well as it's exasperations. In practically every show someone dies because they screw up and don't follow proper police procedure, or common sense. Still the characters are well drawn, and the writing is intelligent, until we get to the usual Psycho babble about serial killers' motivation.
***spoiler***
This lack of perfection shows up clearly in 2 shows (which usually dove-tail with each other) in which he hesitates to kill a serial killer, who is holding a knife to his victim's throat, and watches - frozen - as he kills her and then allows himself to be disarmed by him, before the reinforcements arrive. As it turns out his junior partner had also earlier, and more egregiously, let the man escape, equally frozen.
So what happens at the end of the show? Same scene, different killer, and their female partner is the victim. So our hero shoots him, right? No, he stands there and listens to her blather on about how this killer won't kill her, because she sees into his heart. Do real Cops really ever forget their boundaries this badly? Not to worry, junior partner shoots the killer in the back, and then has to put up with the abuse of the female detective for saving her life!
In the next show we see junior partner formally absolved of the killing of the murderer. Come on police don't have to explain why they kill bad guys who are holding a knife to the throat of a cop, do they? Not even in the U.K. But the female partner never forgives him, never thanks him for saving her life, just let's him know by her silent anger that he's screwed up. Instead of being righteously angry at her, he takes it upon himself to prove he's worthy by acting like a loose cannon for the rest of the show. He catches a killer, beats him up, and then goes ballistic when he's released. Not to worry though, our brilliant cops are going to keep an eye on him and his next intended victim, who I might add has been told he's killed 4-5 people and ignores the evidence in order to pay attention to her woman's intuition that he's innocent, but they let him, and her, slip out of surveillance. It gets worse, but I won't spoil any of the fun. One thing about this show it sure brings out the "screaming at the TV" behavior in me!
Enjoy! Scream a lot!
***spoiler***
This lack of perfection shows up clearly in 2 shows (which usually dove-tail with each other) in which he hesitates to kill a serial killer, who is holding a knife to his victim's throat, and watches - frozen - as he kills her and then allows himself to be disarmed by him, before the reinforcements arrive. As it turns out his junior partner had also earlier, and more egregiously, let the man escape, equally frozen.
So what happens at the end of the show? Same scene, different killer, and their female partner is the victim. So our hero shoots him, right? No, he stands there and listens to her blather on about how this killer won't kill her, because she sees into his heart. Do real Cops really ever forget their boundaries this badly? Not to worry, junior partner shoots the killer in the back, and then has to put up with the abuse of the female detective for saving her life!
In the next show we see junior partner formally absolved of the killing of the murderer. Come on police don't have to explain why they kill bad guys who are holding a knife to the throat of a cop, do they? Not even in the U.K. But the female partner never forgives him, never thanks him for saving her life, just let's him know by her silent anger that he's screwed up. Instead of being righteously angry at her, he takes it upon himself to prove he's worthy by acting like a loose cannon for the rest of the show. He catches a killer, beats him up, and then goes ballistic when he's released. Not to worry though, our brilliant cops are going to keep an eye on him and his next intended victim, who I might add has been told he's killed 4-5 people and ignores the evidence in order to pay attention to her woman's intuition that he's innocent, but they let him, and her, slip out of surveillance. It gets worse, but I won't spoil any of the fun. One thing about this show it sure brings out the "screaming at the TV" behavior in me!
Enjoy! Scream a lot!