Cracker

Great to see the big man back, though I felt an inward groan when I saw the theme. But Jimmy McGovern has improved with rage - no appeasing one small section of the suffering population by focusing on Asians. He went for the big picture and said EXACTLY what many people have been feeling for several years now about American money backing Northern Ireland, the myth of the Yanks winning WWII for the Allies, and the b.s. that is the war in Iraq. Some top acting from the leads plus the usual McGovern snappy intelligence in the writing made it essential viewing. Jimmy McGovern is our national treasure. His scripts make up for the oceans of bad clichés strangling uniform operas such as The Bill, Spooks, and every other indigo-coloured cop show bloating up our screens nowadays. Thank you! The one aberration he didn't have time to mention is the other grave crime that the Americans have yet to answer for: the butchery of Robbie Coltrane in the name of the US-produced abomination 'Fitz'.

last nights episode of Cracker was a welcome return to a long lost friend. Robbie as ever played the role of Fitz to perfection. Not only did the plot revolve around current world issues but it was good to see that the subject of mental Health was also portrayed sensitively but with reality. While not all those with Mental Health problems will go the the extremes portrayed it helped to show that people with problem can and do successfully hold down full time jobs. it was an fictional representation that followed on well from the factual program screened by BBC2 earlier in the week "The secret Life of a manic Depressive" and while both programmes would appeal to different audiences and ages the message on this crucial area of health was the same. Congratulations to Jimmy Mcgovern and the team. Hope there will be another series soon - its been to long since we had drama of this quality

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.

That its a welcome return is a given because Cracker was one of most accomplished, socially aware dramas of the last twenty years. ITVs decision to revive it also makes sense as the channel is in terminal decline. It hasn't just been ten years since we saw Fitz, its been almost as long since there was anything approaching intelligent, well written drama in ITV's prime time schedule.

The new episode is therefore gratefully received but with more than a little trepidation - after all later Cracker episodes not written by McGovern struggled to maintain the standard and Paul Abbot's White Ghost, the last special broadcast in 1995 suffered from taking Ftiz from his native Manchester stomping grounds and a dearth of fully rounded supporting characters. The good news is that Nine Eleven is better than White Ghost - the bad news is that it suffers from multiple creative lapses - entirely avoidable and somewhat ridiculous given the talent behind the camera.

In the first instance McGovern' script is really just a channel for his political views on post-911 American hypocrisy, particularly their reconstructed views on Terrorism. The points he makes via Kenny, the ex-Northern Ireland solider who snaps and kills an American stand up making flippant jokes about the War on Terror, are valid and come from an intellectually well-sourced left wing position. Just don't say Mcgovern's an apologist for Islamic Fascism. The problem is that the subtley that characterised the best of the series, by which we mean McGovern's other polemics, Albie in 'to be a somebody' the most memorable example, is absent from this new episode. Watching it is like being hit over the head for two hours. News footage from the wars in Afganistan and Iraq open the story, a misstep that seems out of touch with the more grounded tone of the original series. Then there's Fitz's uncharacteristic obsession with September 11th and this is before a single murder has taken place. When McGovern sticks to his characters he always succeeds but here most are mere cyphers channelling his political views. Those who aren't part of this agitprop are relegated to bit parts and two dimensions - the new Manchester police lacking the definition of the old supporting cast who lent so much weight to the proceedings and provide Fitz with much needed foils and contrasting intellects.

That isn't to say that the new episode is poor - its weighty, provocative stuff - at times uncomfortable and challenging like the best of the series. Whats lacking is the balance that existed in previous McGovern scripts, here replaced by a bombast that makes characterisation secondary. Ill-advised production touches like the new graphics and the new order score tend to detract from rather than enhance the action and the conclusion leaves you happy you've seen Fitz again but cheated that there was so little of him, if you'll pardon the expression - so dominated is the episode by the vengeful soldier with the murderous bent.

I hope this isn't the last Cracker, though its a more fitting epitaph than White Ghost - clearly McGovern needs isshoooes to compel him to write the bloody thing but if he can be motivated and surely there's plenty of cultural angst left to probe, and a crack team of writers can be drafted in to help out, then a new series could yet hit the heights of those classic stories. All in all Nine Eleven was a slight disappointment. If there are future episodes lets hope they retain the distance of previous stories and give us something more than a political lecture masquerading as a piece of a finely crafted police drama.

It doesn't give me any pleasure reviewing this hugely disappointing 'Cracker' special "Nine Eleven". As somebody who considers 'Cracker' to be one of the best shows not just of its genre but ever, this reviewer was honestly expecting much more than this.

"Nine Eleven" is not a complete abomination. The best thing about it is the characterisation of the killer, a sinister but never one-dimensional and very much compellingly character worthy of being a classic 'Cracker' killer. He is brilliantly portrayed by Anthony Flannagan. Robbie Coltrane also does a great job as Fitz, he deserved much more to do but what there is of Fitz is enjoyable.

In fact, generally it is the acting that salvages "Nine Eleven" from being a complete waste. There is also some atmospheric scenery, and with a weighty and controversial idea this had real potential to be a classic 'Cracker' special.

So what stopped it from being so? The main problem is that it doesn't feel like 'Cracker'. The characters are nowhere near as intriguing, with Fitz being too much of a criminally underused supporting character in his own show and the police being shallow and underwritten with almost non-existent chemistry. The balance of writing and mastery of storytelling apparent in 'Cracker' at its best is not apparent here, apart from the odd bit of spark (but considering the calibre of the show it is far more deserving of having just the odd bit of sparkle).

One really misses the poignant emotion and dark, acerbic humour, which is replaced with too much of a heavy-handed and overused anti-American tone that comes over as far too preachy. Even the violence is not as unflinching. With a story-line as controversial potentially as it was on paper, what could have been weighty, harrowing and emotional stuff is spoilt by a lot of tedium, an overload of heavy-handedness and constant flashbacks and the whole Iraq stuff that only confused and padded out the story, not necessary really. The direction also lacks spark, and unusually mawkish, and there is nowhere near enough of the "whydunnit" psychology that made 'Cracker' so unique among other mystery/detective shows.

Visually, "Nine Eleven" is not much better, apart from some decent scenery, style, atmosphere and class is severely lacking with sometimes distractingly amateurish camera work and too dark lighting. The music can be intrusive and doesn't really add to the action or drama, instead taking away from it.

All in all, while a comeback of Fitz is always welcome he deserved better than this, which is not a good representation of why 'Cracker' is so brilliant. 4/10 Bethany Cox