The Shadow Line

This series lost viewers from a strong start (for a BBC2 series) and got mixed reviews. You cannot win can you? All the signposted, glib, lazy, pandering excess of cop/thrillers blocking up the schedules, not just from the turgid ITV1 either, which many reviewers rightly are fed up with. Blick dares to dare at least.

'The Shadow Line' was not easy comfort viewing, that was the point of it, surely?

It compares very well to the missed opportunity of 'Luther', though in that case perhaps having one of the stars of 'The Wire' raised impossible expectations, even so, what a load of overblown, overheated, all sound and fury signifying nothing 'Luther' is - I gave up on it after series 1.

The Shadow Line had some of the very best, most tense, often shocking set pieces of anything on UK television for many a long time, these were not isolated either. This I think is where many draw comparisons with classics like 'Edge Of Darkness', The Shadow Line does not match up to that one - what does? Still, the comparison with 'Between The Lines' of 20 years ago, as some critics have cited, despite the very different series formats, is a fair one.

Overall, a good effort, worthwhile, a series that will be looked back on rather more fondly that the more negative reviewers think.

This extraordinary TV series has all the intensity of David Lynch's MULLHOLLAND DRIVE (2001, see my review), and director/writer/producer Hugo Blick with this effort has really entered the top ranks of mood-makers. From the very first shot, looking down on a deserted car at night from a high crane, as two policemen gingerly approach it to look for a corpse, we know we are in deep and moody noir territory. The lighting, shots, composition, editing, pace, are all done in an elegiac mode. The acting is intense, the camera dwelling on the faces, many of them ravaged, is intense, the emotions are intense, we are in deep purple mood as a variety of horrible drug dealers struggle against The Unknown, and get killed one after another. The entire series has a kind of metaphysical feel, as if conceived by Jean-Paul Sartre as a struggle against Le Néant ('Nothingness'). Our hero, the lead policeman, suffers from amnesia and cannot remember key things which relate to the case he is supposed to be investigating. He is not sure whether he was once a corrupt cop or not, and no one will tell him. But he does find a briefcase stuffed with £250,000 in cash concealed in his bedroom. He just can't remember how he got it, and dreads finding out. He is repeatedly told that the only reason he is still alive is that he cannot remember certain things. He has a nagging ex-mistress who constantly pressures him by shouting: 'When are you going to tell her?', referring to their child which his wife does not know exists, even though the relationship itself with the mistress is over and has dissolved in recriminations and resentments. This series features an excellent but very scary performance by Rafe Small, son of the distinguished actor Timothy Small, as a young psychopathic criminal. Small has mastered the 'Tony Blair swivelling, insane eyes' motif perfectly, and may have modelled himself on that famed Conqueror of the WMDs which never existed, except for one thing, that he speaks very quietly and low key. All the cast in this series are excellent. The lead is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a name which requires a certain amount of concentration not only to pronounce but to remember. It does not trip as lightly off the tongue as Clark Gable, for instance. However, despite the difficulty of coping with his name, we can only respect his intense, concerned, and worried performance as the good-natured cop struggling to overcome amnesia while solving murders which just keep on happening and which all appear to be linked somehow, but no one knows how or why. The parallel story of his complicated personal life adds to the strain the poor man is under. The spookiest and most menacing, and perhaps the most brilliant, of all the performances in this remarkable series is by Stephen Rea. He is just over the horizon of visibility, where police, security, corruption, drugs, criminals, and mania all lurk. He embodies all the unknown horrors of what threatens us, and he does it with such calm and unperturbed perfection. When he kills, it is with the same unconcern with which one switches off a car ignition after parking. We discover that he is motivated by a control mania so extreme that it reminds us of all our least favourite politicians. What is it about the times in which we live which breeds so many maniacs who wish for total control of everyone and everything? And how is it that they get elected and appointed? Stephen Rea's eerie performance stands for all that, for all the unspoken, slow, relentless creep of control over everything being exerted by insane persons at the top. And he cannot be stopped, any more than the Terminator can, or than the World State, the European Union, the Patriot Act (which no one in Congress read before passing it), the public bailout of Goldman Sachs by the former head of Goldman Sachs (Hank Paulson, proud possessor of another set of 'Blair-style' swivelling, insane eyes), the controls which prevent us from taking hand cream onto planes, the closing of children's playgrounds because they might fall and bruise their knees, the monitoring of everything and everyone, the many Mount Everests of unread email intercepts and unheard phone taps, which fill all the world's demented security agencies, where total control and total knowledge amount to … what? A vacuum of futility. Somehow Blick manages to convey all of these background fears of our time, as well as the moral emptiness of those causing them, by profound and sustained innuendo throughout this series. There is always 'them'. Who are 'they'? No one knows. Even 'they' do not know. But whoever 'they' are, there is always evil, there is always corruption, there are always drugs, there are always suitcases stuffed with cash, there are corpses discovered in strange positions, there is betrayal, as well as betrayal of the betrayers, and finally there is the Nothingness. It is the Nothingness which lies behind all of this. That is who is to blame. And that is the true secret of what is on the other side of 'the shadow line'.

This decade alone has seen so many great British crime/detective (mini)series that it has been difficult to keep track, but thanks to IMDB and Wiki, it is possible to look for references and like-minded works. I have to say I had never heard of The Shadow Line before - thus I began to watch it this Month only, with episodes in succession, of course.

Well, I can´t say I was very pleased with the first episode as it did not let me think of so many different levels, intertwines and twists I could see later on... I was pleasantly suprised about Rafe Spall´s performance, but Stephen Rea was not visible yet - and when he appeared, then the thrilling pace enhanced and I could admire Mr Rea´s talent again (in my opinion, many "more supporting" actors excel the "more leading" ones a bit). I became very eager to wait what would happen next, how and if the things proceed and what would be the outcome of this complex mess without really good characters... So, the final episode included additional surprises and the ending scenes differ greatly from usual round-ups of crime series.

All in all, well done, similar quality as Line of Duty or Luther... Again, I have some doubts regarding plausibility (what about such links in an EU/NATO country police force) but as all this was depicted in a thrilling and fluent manner, then I just let me carry off with the events and witty solutions.

Hugo Blick, the writer and director of 'The Shadow Line', has spoken of his inspirations as a television dramatist: the incomparable 'The Singing Detective' (a story based on buried personal drama); 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' (with its deceptively quiet middle aged protagonists); and 'Edge of Darkness' (and its mood of general paranoia). On watching his series, however, I was reminded of some American films: 'Things to to in Denver When You're Dead', and 'Brick', for example, as well as many of the works of David Mamet. What these tales have in common is a certain stylised dialogue, and more generally an internally consistent world which only partly resembles our own and which exists entirely within the prism of its own construction. In the case of 'The Shadow Line', Blick manages to keep this going for seven full hours, mostly successfully: the series is artfully shot and orchestrated and full of memorable scenes, the devilish and inventive plot even makes some sort of sense in the end, and a superb gaggle of character actors rise superbly to the script, none more so than Stephen Rea whose wonderfully-named character Gatehouse is the role of a lifetime. It's not perfect, however: with a plot so intricate, and an entire drama consisting of the sorts of encounter that might normally be found only at the most critical moment, there's no room for normality: it's hard to care about the characters or even, in it's most baffling moments, the story, however much one is absorbed; the personal elements are not as superfluous as might be thought half-way through, but one's still more likely to laugh as the preposterous twists as one is to cry for the death of one of the few sympathetic figures. Against a backdrop of such a superb cast, Chiwetel Ejiofor is a little lightweight in the lead role; and with so many characters, almost all of them dodgy, that at times one can lose track of which is which. But it's bold and inventive, a character-led drama whose characters are (in the real world) scarcely plausible, but who make perfect, chilling sense on the other side of the line.

Edge Of Darkness and State Of Play have already been mentioned, but come episode two and we have an obvious reference to Tinker Tailor. This show is not overshadowed in such illustrious company. It is a deep, dark labyrinthine plot carried by a superb cast, each member on top of their game. The dense text will not be to everybody's taste, but for those who enjoy the likes of Bleasdale, Pinter and Potter this will probably be the first great television masterpiece of the 21st century. It is hard to pick out one performance that outshines the rest. Chiwetel Ejiofor is truly sympathetic as the cop who has to battle with memory loss to discover whether or not he is corrupt. Leslie Sharp battles to retain her fast fading memory as she descends into the Hell that is Althseimers, whilst her husband played by Christopher Ecclestone, juggles an Hogarthian cast of crooks until he can make his last deal. Rafe Spall gives a magnificent over-the-top performance as the deranged nephew of Mr. Big and then in comes Stehopen Rae as the villainous Alec Guiness style dark brother of GEORGE smiley. Absolutely wonderful!