by Allan Fish
(UK 1993-1996 1,350m) DVD1/2
Scunthorpe!!!
p Paul Abbott, Hilary Bevan Jones d Tim Fywell, Simon Cellan Jones, Michael Winterbottom, Julian Jarrold, Jean Stewart, Charles MacDougall, Richard Standeven, Roy Battersby w Jimmy McGovern, Paul Abbott, Ted Whitehead created by Jimmy McGovern
Robbie Coltrane (Dr Eddie ‘Fitz’ Fitzgerald), Geraldine Somerville (DS Jane Penhaligon), Christopher Eccleston (DCI David Bilborough), Ricky Tomlinson (DCI Wise), Lorcan Cranitch (DS Jimmy Beck), Barbara Flynn (Judith Fitzgerald), Kieran O’Brien (Mark Fitzgerald), Tess Thomson (Katie Fitzgerald), Edward Peel, Clive Russell, Paul Copley, Adrian Dunbar, Kika Markham, Beryl Reid, Andrew Tiernan, Susan Lynch, Christopher Fulford, Jim Carter, Samantha Morton, James Fleet, Robert Carlyle, John Simm, Liam Cunningham, Benedict Wong, Beth Goddard, Tim Healy, Don Henderson, Nicholas Woodeson, Brid Brennan, Ruth Sheen, David Calder, Emma Cunniffe, Emily Joyce,
When reviewing Cracker over a decade on, the first thoughts that race through one’s mind are whether it will stand up after the intervening years. The one off 2006 reprisal didn’t help, while it’s been done to death ever since in everything from Waking the Dead to Silent Witness, none of them are fit to lick the ash off the end of Fitz’s ever-present cigarette. To this add the fact that other cult milestones of nineties TV don’t stand up as well as once they did – This Life, for example – and that McGovern’s recent output has been pitiful in comparison would lead to trepidation.
For those who didn’t experience the buzz of the series first time round, a series about an overweight, shambling, hard-drinking, womanising, gambling criminal psychologist genius in Manchestermight seem a hard sell. Yet in a small screen world where crime series were of the Inspector Morse and Ruth Rendell Mysteries mould, this was like someone had dropped a meteorite into your living room. Cracker rewrote the rulebook, then tore it up again, redrafted it and then burnt it before our very eyes. Here’s a series in which its cops had a limited life expectancy, with two of the principals dying in vastly different but unforgettable ways, had its main female protagonist raped by another of its lead characters, had a central figure with more flaws than the criminals he was investigating and a desire to represent crime and its detection as it really is. This didn’t just mean realism and violence, but the fact that virtually none of the nine central story arcs that spread across the three splendid seasons ended happily. Its plots involved religious sects, juvenile delinquency, serial rapists, bombs, child abuse, prostitution, and dared to have several of its sought after psychotics be female. On top of all this, we had the liberal sprinkling of that perennial McGovern ingredient; enough Catholic guilt to flood theMersey in Holy Water. Many of its characters were undesirable, but they were all – psychos, cops, shrinks – painfully human and deeply flawed.
Think then of how it influenced future British TV; indeed many of the cast would go on to work for McGovern again in Hearts and Minds, Hillsborough and The Lakes, while writer Abbott later carved his own small-screen niche. The entire cast is superb, with Simm, Cunningham, Morton, Dunbar and Tiernan all getting excellent early opportunities, Joyce, Brennan and especially Carlyle unforgettable nutjobs, Tomlinson showing his power before The Royle Family domesticated him and Crantich and Somerville so good as to be inseparable from their roles thereafter. Then there’s Eccleston, whose murder was one of the most shocking and indelible in the entire history of television, gasping a final statement on the pavement. Yet great though they all are, this is one man’s show. Quite simply, Coltrane is as gargantuan as his gait, his Fitz like a distant Scottish descendant of Laird Cregar, getting everything wrong in his private life and uncannily accurate professionally. When Penhaligon calls Fitz an emotional rapist, one feels one could charge McGovern with the same. Our emotions are not only raped but mutilated; what’s more, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Reblogged this on 13 Shots Of Grit.
Goal! You’re on a roll!
“Then there’s Eccleston, whose murder was one of the most shocking and indelible in the entire history of television, gasping a final statement on the pavement…..”
I guess that stark detail is enough all by itself to tune in. First I’ve heard of this, but one shouldn’t be surprised all things considered.
It’s a wake up call, Frank. In the States, if it isn’t costume drama they aint interested.
I am not at all surprised to see this show listed but I am surprised to see it so low on the list – I am looking forward to seeing what crime genre shows you rank higher.
I have not seen “Cracker” in years, although I have it all (bar the 9/11 special) on DVD and will be revisiting over the next few years. My memories have it standing very distinctly apart from its contemporaries, as you state. I was young when this aired and it struck me as being more distinctly “adult” than other crime dramas I was watching, more for its disturbing approach to its themes rather than its use of graphic imagery. That said, to echo your comments, the death of Eccleston’s character was shocking, depicted in a prolonged way that felt all too realistic. But perhaps the most troubling of all for me was Penhaligon’s rape – something I found very disturbing indeed at the time and for my young sensibilities it almost felt like a betrayal that the lead female protagonist would be subjected to such an ordeal. I remember the rape as being grimy and non-sensationilistic which if anything amplified its effect. In 2012, after many years of seeing sexual violence become a standard plot device in crime drama, I wonder how it would impact upon me? I suspect the answer is just as disturbingly as it did first time around.
Three dimensional and very flawed characters placed into interesting plots which inviite the viewer to address their own beliefs about the subjects being depicted. British crime drama at its peak. (or not? …)
That it’s so low, David, is no blight on the show, quite the reverse, but that i rate 90 or so more higher. But as modern British crime dramas go, it takes some beating as most are strictly of the formulaic variety and pale beside The Wire and the recent Scandinavian The Killing and The Bridge.
Then I very much look forward to seeing what is ahead and, indeed, would be interested to know at the end (two years from now?) which, if any, best The Wire from your viewpoint…
The Wire is the pinnacle of US TV and one of the three or four greatest TV shows of all time. No UK crime show matches it, though they come closer than other US shows. But then again, The Wire is only a crime show on the surface.
Oh and it won’t be two years, David, it’ll be nearer to one. I will have 2 gloing up most weeks, with just the odd Obscuro or biopic piece going up in between.
Great and yes I agree completely regarding The Wire. The sprawl of that show, becoming ever more apparent when season one is passed, is magnificent and, I will claim, unmatched…
I haven’t revisited this in recent years, but remember the series having a powerful impact at the time, especially Robbie Coltrane’s performance, though if anything I liked him even more in ‘Tutti Frutti’, which I’m hoping may show up in your countdown too. Carlyle’s creepy performance also sticks in my mind.
No, Judy. I liked Tutti Frutti and he and Emma in it, but not up to this 100. I need to watch it again, though.
Cracker certainly propelled several excellent actors to the public consciousness, with Samantha Morton, John Simm, Bobby Carlyle and several others getting big breaks.
95 is ludicrously low for a series as compelling as this, as essentially Zeitgeist and state of the nation for post-Thatcher Britain as the Wire is for post-Clinton America, you’d be hard pressed to find any show which has pulled off the nine hours of consistent excellence Cracker manages in it’s perfect second season, but quibbling over list order is childish stuff. Whilst Coltraine is a consistent scenery chewer, there is something relentless and unchanging about his character, his size and presence are as much part of the performance as his acting alone. The most stark, tragic and in many ways the heart of the show is Lorcan Cranitch’s incredible turn as DS Jimmy Beck, who for my money deserves to be mentioned amoungst the pantheon of great TV characters. He is Cracker’s consistent antagonist throughout, a monster, a fool, dangerous and pathetic, reactionary, but utterly broken and self-loathing, he loathes himself even more so than the audience can, as we know there is no judgement or punishment we can dream up for him that he hasn’t dreamt up himself. The introduction of someone like Fitzgerald into his life and his narrow minded point of view is like an awakening of a post modernist reality for him, suddenly meaning and justification is erased, Fitz’s cool moral flexibility and cancerous presence turns a police attack dog into a rabid one who no longer knows morality up from down and so (at first) happily uses this newly acquired freedom to attach it’s own kind. Whereas Fitz’s mind and ego are vast enough to keep a grip of his own contradictory nature, DS Beck’s implodes. Whilst most of the other characters are relatively unchanging on the show, it is Beck who bears the burden of the gradual unfolding horror case by case, and in that sense also acts as the show’s moral heart.