At first I thought Luther was a show about Martin Luther, in the vein of The Tudors or The Borgias (Man, I watched an episode and a half of The Borgias, that shit was AWFUL. No offense, Jeremy Irons, but you are terrible in pretty much everything except The Lion King. Actually, offense.). So how pleasantly surprised was I to learn that it is nothing of the sort, but instead an incredibly intense but awesome crime procedural starring Idris Elba as a mentally unstable DCI named John Luther? Quite pleasantly, I can assure you. Now Luther quite clearly owes a lot to Vincent D'Onofrio's Detective Bobby Goran on Law & Order: Criminal Intent (which sadly just ended its 10-season-long run with quiet, understated elegance and some great guest stars); they both have mental health and anger issues and they both have a strange, quasi-sexual relationship with female sociopaths. But since Luther is Luther and Bobby's story was part of a Law & Order franchise, much more weight is given to John Luther's personal life and motivations.
The series opens with Luther allowing a serial killer and pedophile to fall to his death. However, he doesn't die, and his coma hangs like a threat over the show. Seven months pass and soon we learn that Luther's part in the fall has been seriously questioned but found to be ok or by the book or whatever, and that he is estranged from his wife, whom he loves passionately. And that's all I'm going to give away. This is a show that builds, sometimes delicately and sometimes quickly and furiously, but there is always an emotional payoff, even if it isn't quite where you think it'll be.
The crimes they work on are usually incredibly violent and gory. The first episode has about five scenes where we are shown a dog with its face shot off, which is five scenes over my threshold for seeing murdered dogs; but the violence isn't gratuitous, it is used carefully to provoke your emotions or to further the story. Yes, sometimes I have to hide my face in my hands, but the rest of the show makes it totally worth it. The crimes take unexpected turns, and often say more about the detectives solving them than about the criminals themselves. And we are constantly reminded of Luther's own murderous impulse and left to guess as to what his exact capacity for violence is. However, even when beating a door to splinters in his ex-wife's home, Luther remains a sympathetic character.
Of course, that sympathy can be attributed to the fantastic acting skills of Idris Elba, who, as everyone knows, is an acting genius. Every role I see him play is miles different from the last, yet he inhabits each one absolutely. Gone from John Luther is any sense of Elba's suave sophistication; he is a man who wears his mental breakdown unabashedly on his sleeve, and in every tiny detail. You can tell he needs a haircut, and a proper meal, and someone to iron his shirts, but that he could give a shit about what anyone else thinks of him. And despite Luther's anger, obsessive behavior, serial-killer "friendship", and propensity for breaking things when provoked, he is still quite clearly the hero of this show and the person you most want to root for. He is a fallible, flawed human, but he has a clear moral compass and follows it closely. I think this exchange between him and his (young, but not naive) partner sums up the character nicely:
"But it's wrong!"
"Yes."
"Then why are you doing it???"
"Because it's right."
It can be much harder to write about and recommend dramas as opposed to comedies; people have different senses of humor, yes, but everyone likes to laugh and even those comedies you might not particularly like can usually still elicit a chuckle or two (just because I've gotten stoned and laughed at Family Guy - EARLY Family Guy - doesn't mean I'm a fan of the show). But some people love dramas and some people hate them; some people have really great taste in dramas and some people (my dad) will spend weeks watching nothing but NCIS and Bones. Some people think that House is still a good show. Some people think that Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad are comedies (bullshit). Some people like Westerns (those people are not me) and rave about Deadwood and Justified, and some like football enough to watch Friday Night Lights (also not me). Some people think that the overblown empty gangster tripe of Boardwalk Empire deserved a Golden Globe and some of us just wish that Paz de la Huerta would keep her clothes on and her cunny where it belongs. As you can see, sometimes I judge (mostly when something is so highfalutin' and pretentious that it's just begging for critique), but I also watch a wide mix of oft-terrible dramas because I'm a sucker for a crime procedural and a good mystery, but the acting has got to be up to par. I judge Bones because the acting on that show is mind-numbingly atrocious; it should just be called Nepotism. This is all to say that if you are into gritty, gory crime dramas about the tortured condition of the human soul (i.e., do you like Sherlock?), than Luther is for you. If you're into sexy British men who are so tall their head almost touches the top of the doorjamb, then go watch this show. The writing, direction, and especially the acting in this show are so fantastically engulfing, that for once the UK six-episode season will feel like enough.
You can find the first season of Luther on Netflix; the second (sadly, only four episodes) season concluded a month ago (links here).
Image via DaemonsTV
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