Election Countdown...!

Well, it's two days until the General Election... but we're not going to talk about that, instead I'm going to talk about this. Yup tonight sees the start of new detective drama 'Luther' starring Idris Elba of 'The Wire' fame. Well, it's exciting, isn't it? Already heralded as the best detective drama since Wallander by all of the one previews that I've read of it, it has to be worth a look.

DCI John Luther is a brilliant but maverick detective

That's very much the point, isn't it? All TV detectives are brilliant but maverick/tortured/drug dependent/Obsessive Compulsive... or at least all the good ones are.

and that's pretty much all there is about that.

So, will it be any good? Well, probably, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it will probably be quite good. Will Luther be McNulty good character-wise? I'm going to guess no. No fault of Elba's that though. I imagine it will go for the gritty angle as opposed to say, what I like to call, the 'Christie angle' in which busybodies or Belgian sleuths stick their nose in in attractive locations. The 'Christie angle' has been popular with British murder mysteries with trite, implausible example after trite, implausible example. Rosemary and Thyme, for instance. "Oh someone's fallen down a well with garden shears plunged into their neck." "Oh, have they? Hand me that trowel and get bloody going with those Azaleas, it's none of our fecking business." (I imagine that's how most episodes go) or Midsomer Murders (Bergerac relocates to pleasant rural idyll populated by stereotypes which inexplicably has the highest homes bought:murder rate ratio in Europe).

Here's hoping that it isn't one of those and is more Robbie Coltrane drinking heavily and shouting than John Nettles asking the vicar if he wants more tea. With a bit of luck there'll be a few 'kickings in the head' from Elba to a maniacal perp or something. I don't know, I'm not a real reviewer so I don't get handy advanced copies of these things, but then we all love some wild speculation, don't we. Who loves ya, baby?




One more thing... feel free to leave comments about the show if any of you decide to watch it after this glowing (if uninformed) recommendation.