Luther - Neil Cross
This is part of my unedited thoughts series
Season 1
I have so much praise for the creation of this great character that Idris Elba brings to life. He is a cop who wants to stop the bad guys. He doesn’t want to arrest them. He wants them stopped. And they are some really bad guys.
We are slowly let into this motivation by seeing how he acts. It is later explained by his wife – Life is the most important thing.
If life is the most important thing – murder is the worst act imaginable. Just catching a murderer isn’t enough. The murders must be stopped.
He is a brilliant detective. Not only is he brilliant but we get to go along with the ride almost as if we are the brilliant ones. The way the writers achieve this is great. They cast a compitent, but new detective with him. This allowes Luther to explain things to the detective, and us, and we see things as Luther does.
The setup of the first villain as truly psychotic, but brilliant, works extremely well for the arc. Luther figures out the crime but in a way that they can never charge her. She is impressed with Luther. She thinks they become friends and she recurs throughout the first season in unexpected ways.
Running parallel to the policing is the relationship story with Luther’s wife. The progression of this arc is huge in the first season and could easily have been milked for longer. Bold steps are taken to leave Luther on the run from the police, accused of her murder. A bold step to take in the first season of a show.
What I find amazing about this show is that if there were any missteps by the writers or the actors we could easily end up hating Luther. But we don’t. While we probably wouldn’t do the things he does we can understand why he does them. And to be completely honest I would be happy to know if there was a policeman out there prepared to go to the lengths he does to stop the bad guys.
