Cracker

It's been a decade since the last Cracker (the below par White Ghost) and 11 years since the last decent Cracker so expectations were high, but unfortunately Nine Eleven just did not deliver.

The two hour special was certainly controversial, raising issues about the US's financing of terrorism in the Middle East and in Northern Ireland that most TV dramas, certainly ITV dramas, would usually steer well clear of.

The problem was it just didn't feel like a Cracker episode, McGovern had things he wanted to say and just tacked Fitz onto an idea to make it more accessible to a wide audience. As always, McGovern's ideas were interesting but they just didn't work in this context, it felt rushed and would have benefited from being developed further, into a more rounded Cracker episode or maybe a separate project altogether.

The police were completely 2 dimensional, embarrassingly underwritten when compared to the likes of Beck, Wise, Penhaligan and Billborough, while Fitz really had very little to do - it seemed obvious that McGovern had grown tired of writing for this character, in contrast, he seemed to relish writing for Kenny, the killer, the only new character in this film who seemed at all believable.

Stylistically the production was also a failure. Flashing boxes flickered at the beginning of the programme and in and out of the breaks for no apparent reason - they looked horrible and distracted from the story! I can't believe anybody thought it was a good idea to sacrifice the classic white on black text of the original shows for these new graphics and text - if it isn't broke don't fix it! Cracker shouldn't be trying to emulate the style of Spooks and CSI - it was 10 times better than these shows in it's heyday!

And what was with all the flashbacks?? What worked so well in the original series is that Fitz would get into the head of the killer and we'd understand their motives through ACTING!

Did we have flashbacks to Hillsborough in To Be A Somebody? NO!

Did we have flashbacks to Floyd sitting in a bath of bleach in Men Should Weep? NO!

WHY? Because we didn't need them because the performances alone were strong enough for us to understand the motives of the killers. Flashbacks are usually a cheap devise used to reinforce a story when the writing isn't strong enough - and weren't necessary here. Anthony Flanagan's performance as Kenny was the stand out of the episode and the constant flashbacks to Ireland and the completely unnecessary 9-11 and Iraq news footage only distracted from the story.

Nine Eleven was something of a wasted opportunity, it had good elements - Fitz trying to fit into a very changed Manchester, a classic Cracker killer, and a controversial storyline - but this could have been so much better if supporting characters had been better written and the style and feel of the original series had been retained. On this evidence, I wouldn't want any more Cracker films in the future.

The pleasure of seeing Robbie Coltrane as police psychologist Fitz probe a suspect's psyche is worth about three of the four points I gave his long-awaited return as "Cracker." But the heavy-handed production and mawkish direction drained all the sap out of what have should have been an exciting reunion. Since the thin plot clearly doesn't merit some two hours, the camera lingers on long, dull shots of angst-ridden characters mixed with time-killing news clips of the war in Iraq. Several contributors have pointed to the anti-American tone of the piece and true, the American characters (particularly one arrogant philandering victim) range from nasty to clueless. Fine, if the writer thinks we're all a bunch of clods, that's his privilege. But boring dialogue and an overdose of deus-ex-machina (the coincidental encounter of a criminal and a witness) is less excusable. I'd love to see Coltrane play Cracker again. But til someone comes up with a better script and a decent production, I'll settle for the Harry Potter series.

For those of you who've never heard of it (or seen it on A&E), Cracker is a brilliant British TV show about an overweight, chain-smoking, foulmouthed psychologist named Fitz who helps the Manchester police department get into the heads of violent criminals. It's considered to be one of the finest shows ever to come out of England (and that's saying something), and was tremendously successful in England and around the world back in 1993.

Now, the original stars have re-teamed with the original writer to knock out one more 2-hour episode. I've loved this show ever since I'd first seen it, over a decade ago. The DVD box set holds a place of honor in my collection, and I can quote a good deal of Fitz's interrogation scenes practically word for word. The idea of Robbie Coltrane reteaming with Jimmy McGovern for another TV movie about Fitz filled me with absolute glee.

I'll start with the good. One of the many things that impressed me about the original Cracker series was how quickly Fitz was defined as a character. Five minutes into the first episode – with his lecture (throwing the books into the air), his drinking, and his cussing of the guy after him on the gambling machine queue – and you knew, simply knew, who this character was. You could feel him "clicking" in your mind, the kind of click that only happens when a great actor gets a great role written by a great writer.

Coltrane, of course, remained great throughout the show, but I always felt that some of the later episodes – those not written by McGovern – mistreated the character.

So the good news is this: Fitz is back. As soon as you see him in this show – making incredibly inappropriate comments at his daughter's wedding – you'll feel that "click" once again. It's him: petulant one moment and truly sorry the next, always insightful, sincere to the point of tactlessness but brilliantly funny in the process. If you love this character as much as I do, you'll be delighted with how he is portrayed in the movie. And this extends to Judith and Mark: in fact, everything having to do with the Fitzs is handled perfectly.

The problem I do have with this movie revolves around the crime Fitz is trying to solve. In standard Cracker fashion, we know exactly who the criminal is in the first five minutes – the suspense lies in seeing Fitz figure it out. In this case, we have a serial killer who is out for American blood. And the reason for this, unfortunately, is not due to any believable psychological trauma – rather, it seems that the murders are here simply to allow the writer to display his personal political beliefs.

It's difficult for me to write this, as I truly believe that Jimmy McGovern is one of the greatest writers in the world. Nor do I have a problem with movies that are about current issues, or movies that take a political stand. But in the Cracker universe, we expect to see the characters behaving like human beings, not like caricatures. Instead, the Americans in this movie are all depicted in an entirely stereotypical fashion. They're know-nothing loudmouths who complain about everything, treat the locals like crap and cheat on their wives – one of them even manages to do all of the above within less than 5 minutes. I honestly thought I'd mistakenly switched channels or something.

But it doesn't stop there. We get constant reminders of just how badly the war in Iraq is going – reminders that have nothing whatsoever to do with the story and appear practically out of nowhere. The killer is so busy ranting about how Bush is worse than Hitler that he almost forgets to get on with the killing; but more to the point, he is such a mouthpiece for the writer's political views that he forgets to act like a believable human being, and thus we – as an audience – don't buy his sudden transformation from a happy family man to a tortured serial-killing soul.

I can't say that this ruined the show for me – it's was still good TV, better than almost everything else in the genre (mainly due to, once again, Coltrane). But its constant politicizing made it impossible for it to be as good as the real Cracker classics like "To Be A Somebody" – an episode that was just as "issuey", but one that was handled with far more subtlety and psychological depth.

Two other small points: Panhandle not being around is a disappointment, but what's worse are her replacements. The entire police department – which for so long filled with such great characters - is now full of vanilla. Completely interchangeable cops who lack any and all personality (how you could drain Coupling's Richard Coyle of personality is beyond me, but it is indeed missing here).

Also, there are couple of moments where the show lost its believability for me. One such instance revolves around Fitz having to narrow down the entire population of Manchester from 1 million to a hundred based on some very strange criteria (French windows? How does the computer know if I have French windows?) – he not only succeeds in doing this, but he succeeds in less than an hour. I don't think so.

So, all in all, I was a little disappointed. It's recommended viewing, but remember to leave at least some of your expectations at the door. Still, if there's new series to come after this, it would all have been for the good: I'm convinced that McGovern can still write great stuff, and maybe now that he's got his politics out of his system he can go back to writing about people.

There are 3 great English series: Cracker, Prime Suspect and The Prisoner (with The Lakes a 4th). This latest movie is probably the best - the ending was one great piece of writing and simply devastating. Cracker was made to be Fitz and vice versa. Jimmy McGovern is just fantastic as usual - I wonder if they appreciate him in England. Likewise Prime Suspect is Helen Mirim's best work and Pat McGoohan will always be The Prisoner to me. I just caught a few episodes of The Lakes (can't find it anywhere) but it is worth a watch if you ever get a chance to see it. I have the older Cracker series and they are all fantastic - easy to watch more than once.

For fans of the original Cracker nothing will ever measure up - how do you follow class acts like series 1 and 2? Answer - you can't really, times have moved on, no follow up can ever hope to have the same impact as the original and so it must be taken for what it is - a follow up which does its best to keep the feel of the original but which has to accept that, over a decade on, the country in which it is set has been through a lot of changes too.

Nevertheless this latest Cracker special isn't quite the abomination it's been made out to be, and I feel a lot of the criticisms aimed at it have missed the point.

It's true that the police are pretty characterless compared to old favourites like Bilborough, Penhaligon and Beck, but as opposed to being a criticism I see this as a clever comment on how PC has turned people in this country into cardboard cut outs scared of having a personality, especially in jobs where they have to deal with the public. Neutral, bland and nondescript, the attitude of our age is sharply observed as nobody wants to put their head on the block and be personally accountable for anything - passing the buck is the order of the day as they refuse to commit themselves to saying or doing anything that might come back on them later, accurately reflecting the paranoia of the modern workplace.

The anti-American sentiment is not as extreme as it could have been, but a few uncomfortable truths come out which I can see people being upset about. Too bad. To me this is not the writer projecting his political views onto the audience, as has been suggested, but that Cracker remains tough, topical and not scared to tell people the truth about themselves.

The plot could have been tighter in places and the coincidences it relied on are a little more obvious than in previous episodes, but not anything new in themselves. They've always been there in murder dramas, which by their nature are event driven.

Fitz is not as effective here which is a bit disappointing but is also more realistic than having the police bend the rules for him, which would have been out of the little character they have. He still manages to show his healthy disrespect for authority in small ways, like smoking in the police station, which I find just as entertaining as his more outspoken rants in earlier episodes. Times have changed and he's older. Robbie's performance has been called sleepwalking through the part but it could also be seen as Fitz being a lot more world weary since he is now in his 50s. As always, he is a joy to watch, and I can forgive a lot of the shortcomings of this episode to have him back.

To sum up, it's not Cracker at its best but it's not a disaster either. You could waste two hours on worse than this. In the modern day TV arena of the bland leading the bland, it still shines.