'The Shadow Line,'
implausibly good
Some of the plot elements of this Brit import are jarring
By Tom Conroy
Feb 17, 2012
Perhaps because they have lower budgets than American shows, British TV dramas tend to look and feel gritty and real. This can be confusing when they take the liberty of using the sort of implausible plot devices that we're used to seeing in slicker productions.
"The Shadow Line," a seven-episode BBC cop show premiering on DirecTV's Audience Channel this Sunday, Feb. 19, at 9 p.m., is a skillfully constructed, suspenseful drama with some over-the-top elements that wouldn't be out of place in a high-budget crime thriller but that seem odd when acted out in such drab locales and under such gray skies. But once viewers realize they're not getting a realistic procedural, they should get swept up in the story.
The series revolves around the investigation of the shooting death of Harvey Wratten, a drug kingpin who had just been pardoned and released from prison. The police detective in charge of the case, Jonah Gabriel (Chiwetel Ejiofor), has been instructed to tread lightly because of the politically sensitive nature of the pardon.
But Jonah has a bigger issue: He has just returned to work after having been shot in the head. The bullet remains lodged in Jonah's brain and has caused partial amnesia. Jonah can't remember any details of the shooting, which resulted in his partner's death. By the end of the first two episodes, both of which were made available for review, we come to suspect that Jonah may have reasons to want to forget.
On the other side of the law, most of the characters have some claim on our sympathy. Joseph Bede (Christopher Eccleston), who is trying to take over Harvey's criminal enterprise, is deeply in debt, having set up a front business for the drug operation. He's also taking care of his wife, Julie (Lesley Sharp), who has early-onset Alzheimer's.
The least sympathetic character is Harvey's nephew Jay (Rafe Spall), whose interest in avenging his uncle's death seems to be driven by his own fondness for terrorizing and brutalizing other people. The twitchy sociopath is a familiar character type, not so much from gangster movies as from gladiator movies featuring young, insane emperors like Caligula and Commodus.
Jonah, Joseph and Jay all attempt to locate Andy Dixon (Tobi Bakare), the young man who drove Harvey the night of his death. Suddenly a creepily soft-spoken character named Gatehouse (Stephen Rea) starts his own pursuit of the driver.
In a tour de force of screenwriting and acting, we see repeated scenes in which the crooks or the police meet with Andy's mother (Sharon D. Clarke) and his girlfriend (Bryony Afferson) and tell them they absolutely must contact them first if they hear from Andy. Gatehouse is particularly convincing in explaining why Andy wouldn't be safe in police custody
We also hear repeated references to a man named Glickman, who may be the mastermind behind the whole setup.
Remarkably, the series is far less confusing to watch than it is to describe, and the plot pulls us along smoothly. The actors, a mix of unknowns and familiar faces, are excellent. But throughout there are nagging false notes.
A cop with a bullet in his brain and partial amnesia sounds like the premise of a very bad American crime show. Jay seems too crazy and Gatehouse seems too low-key to survive in organized crime, and neither character is original.
In the second episode, in a scene reminiscent of "24," the police pursue Andy via his cell-phone signal while Gatehouse reveals the kind of escape skills that helped drag out the stories on "24" for 24 hours. The suspense works, but we feel we're being manipulated.
In one scene, a philosophical Turkish drug kingpin named Babur (Stanley Townsend) complains that the crooks he deals with keep using the phrase "It's just business," which he thinks they got from watching movies or TV. Maybe this series' creator, Hugo Blick, is winking at critics who might accuse him of also borrowing from past works.
But good TV series teach us how to watch them. As "The Shadow Line" develops, the artificial elements blend in better. The ending may not feel real, but it should be really entertaining.
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