Run

This review is later than planned because 'Run' is stripped across four consecutive nights on Channel 4 at 10pm, which is after all what recording devices are for, no?  I suppose watching it live is wonderful for anyone whose memory is more like a goldfish than an elephant, but for many of us it's just impossible.  So there, TV schedulers.

Anyway, to the drama itself.  Olivia Colman is the estranged partner of an abusive man and the mother of two troubled and troublesome teenaged sons.  She lives on an estate with walkways and underpasses and works in a dead-end job.  It might be 'Shameless' without the laughs except that the family dynamics and the plot take some very dark turns indeed.  Less shameless than unflinching, and a very believable exploration of lives behind cases on the news and in court.  It's not an enjoyable watch, or a comfortable one, with our put-upon mum smoking like the proverbial chimney and drinking tins of cheap lager every five minutes, but the writing is raw, and Colman's performance is one of her finest.  You want good things to happen, even while you know they are unlikely.  Roll on eps. 2-4.  Parliament should be made to watch before ever again uttering words about Broken Britain and cuts as though they knew what that means for millions.

Update, having watched the remaining episodes.  They didn't disappoint, so a big hello to the two writers, from whom we hope to have more.  And we liked Lennie James before but now we love him.  We defy anyone who has a heart not to have it wrung out by his rehab dad, even if they hate drugs and love their cars - can't say more without spoilers.  Fabulous.

Line of Duty

Having made no effort to catch Jed Mercurio’s previous antiseptic offerings ‘Bodies’ and ‘Cardiac Arrest’, we came to this with only the hope of something less self-conscious than ‘The Shadow Line’ and less run-of-the-mill than almost every other cop show.

The first of five episodes set up some nice ambiguities.  If none of the characters are hugely sympathetic, so far, then they’re not outright bad-guy villains either, just people making choices according to circumstance.  Wonderful Lennie James is DCI Tony Gates, whose soaring crime clear-up rate brings him under suspicion of cherry-picking easy-win cases.  DS Steve Arnott (Martin Compston), whose moral compass points so truly to north he probably can’t sit down, is assigned to Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar) to investigate.  DC Kate Fleming (Vicky McClure) meanwhile has succeeded in joining Gates’s team undercover.  Whether guilty or innocent of the above, Gates is compromised: he has a wife (Kate Ashfield) and children, as well as a mistress (Gina McKee) who has dragged him into covering up her involvement in a hit-and-run that may have been deliberate.

Nothing to dislike so far.  (Neil Morrissey as a sleazy cop may just be inspired casting.)  The style is background to the script and action, for once, and it’s a promising premise to look at the system of modern policing as something that allows or even encourages foul play.