crime
Adam Sweeting
Fans of Bob Odenkirk’s work in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul will be delighted to see him taking centre stage in Ilya Naishuller’s thriller, but perhaps bamboozled at the spectacle of Odenkirk taking the plunge into the blood-splattered territory previously the preserve of John Wick and Liam Neeson’s Bryan Taken Mills. Indeed, screenwriter Derek Kolstad created the Wick franchise. Nobody is a crisp 90 minutes of nearly-nonstop mayhem, with no time for the devious plotting or subtle character traits familiar from Odenkirk’s work as Saul Goodman.He plays Hutch Mansell, a suburban family man Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They all laughed when the streaming service Britbox declared that it wanted to become a sort of UK-orientated Netflix, because so far it’s been mostly a back catalogue operation which plunders the BBC and ITV archives. You really want to pay a subscription to watch Are You Being Served? and Rosemary and Thyme?However, Britbox has produced, or co-produced, series including The Pembrokeshire Murders and the forthcoming A Spy Among Friends, and The Beast Must Die is the first drama to be shot for Britbox UK. It’s been adapted from the 1938 novel by Nicholas Blake (the pseudonym of Cecil Day- Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Perhaps inspired by its ever-intriguing Walter Presents strand, Channel 4’s new thriller Before We Die is based on a Swedish original called Innan vi dör (“before we die” in Swedish). The action has been transplanted to Bristol, whose buildings, bridges and narrow streets have been rendered atmospheric with rich colour textures and stylish visual compositions. The opening credits, with ominously pulsating music and dramatic monochrome portraits of the cast-members, also suggests we’ve stepped away a little from the Brit-TV norm.Lesley Sharp stars as DI Hannah Laing, who’s reaching a stage in Read more ...
Tom Baily
Success for the Belgian-Dutch crime series Undercover has led Netflix to produce an origin story for the show’s drug lord character Ferry Bouman (Frank Lammers). While this may be a dream come true for a portion of the show’s diehard fans, this formulaic movie is stalling, predictable and riddled with every gangster cliché in the book.Before he made it big, Ferry Bouman was the right hand man to one of Amsterdam’s senior drug kings Ralph Brink. After their gang is brutally attacked and Ralph’s son is killed, Ferry is sent on a revenge mission. He finds himself in a mobile camping community Read more ...
Line of Duty, Series 6, Episode 6, BBC One review - the pace accelerates for AC-12's final countdown
Adam Sweeting
As the finishing line begins to materialise through the haze of fear, suspicion and zany acronyms, the pace of this sixth series of Line of Duty (BBC One) has hotted up appreciably. In earlier episodes, there sometimes seemed to be a lack of intensity, and even the fabled interview scenes didn’t always grip like they used to. Maybe filming under Covid conditions had something to do with it.But times are changing. Last week’s episode 5 unleashed the stunning revelation that Joanna Davidson shared a DNA match with evil (though deceased) criminal kingpin Tommy Hunter. This week, in an interview Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As Line of Duty aficionados debate the identity of H and wonder who DCI Joanne Davidson shares her DNA with, this new three-part series from BBC Two investigates the history of real-life corruption in the Metropolitan Police. Whereas the corrupt cops in Line of Duty seem to operate like a version of the Hydra terrorist organisation in the Marvel Comics universe, being ubiquitous and seemingly all-powerful, the real thing was shabbier and more squalid, but nonetheless widespread and brazenly, unrepentantly criminal.The story is vividly told through interviews and atmospherically grainy archive Read more ...
Florence Hallett
It’s no surprise that 30 years on, the individuals most closely connected to the world’s biggest art heist are showing their age. Anne Hawley was a young woman just months into her directorship of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston when thieves made off with 13 works of art, including a Chinese vase and drawings by Degas, a Vermeer and Rembrandt’s only seascape.Speaking to the press soon afterwards, Hawley (main picture) was visibly shellshocked, desperation and disbelief mingled painfully in her comment that “I have to operate under the assumption that we are going to get these Read more ...
graham.rickson
Silent Action makes for a snappier title than the original La polizia accusa: il Servizio Segreto uccide, though the frenzied action in Sergio Martino’s 1975 thriller is anything but silent. The film opens with the grisly murders of three Italian army officials, the third and bloodiest showing us the unconscious victim placed on a railway line and decapitated by an oncoming train. On the case is Luc Merenda’s improbably good-looking Inspector Solmi, all flowing locks and chiselled features. Solmi’s smooth features are deceptive; he’s a foul-mouthed maverick and good with his fists.Sit through Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We last saw John Simm on ITV in 2018’s Hong Kong-based murder mystery Strangers, a product from the Jack and Harry Williams script factory which wasted its exotic backdrops with a plot which mooched about in a dispirited fashion before dozing off entirely. This new two-hour detective drama, adapted from Peter James’s novel Dead Simple, starred Simm as Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. No doubt the hope is that Grace will blossom into a hardy perennial destined eventually for permanent rotation alongside Poirot, Morse, Foyle and the rest of ITV3’s roster of indestructible ‘tecs.It's by no Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There comes a time when every successful formula can do with an overhaul, and that particular bell may be tolling for Unforgotten (ITV). Regular viewers will be familiar with writer Chris Lang’s modus operandi – a corpse (usually grotesque and of indeterminate age) is discovered, and before you can say “autopsy” cold case experts Cassie Stuart (Nicola Walker) and Sunny Khan (Sajeev Bhaskar) are poking around in the innards. Then they track down a network of potential suspects who were connected with the deceased.This latest case adheres to the blueprint with unswerving exactitude, though it’s Read more ...
Saskia Baron
One of the sadnesses of covid is that films like Judas and the Black Messiah have been held over for release in the hope that cinemas will reopen. Immersive, intense features like this deserve to be seen in a darkened theatre with no distractions. But as the pandemic drags on in the UK, distributors are forced to debut big films on the small screen and it’s a real shame in this instance. Writer-director Shaka King tells the true story of two young men whose fates intertwined in the civil rights movement in Chicago in 1969. Daniel Kaluuya plays Fred Hampton, the charismatic Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
I’ll admit, I’ve never been a fan of murder mysteries. Patience is not one of my virtues; if I can’t work something out in 30 seconds, I’m liable to give up, and whodunnits tend to need a bit longer than that. Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Hung Parliament was, therefore, a lovely surprise: well-paced and earnest without taking itself too seriously, it’s a new interactive experience from Les Enfants Terribles, the company known for madcap, immersive work like their 2016 Olivier-nominated Alice’s Adventures Underground (which returned the following year). Don’t be fooled by Read more ...