Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 7 i Crime Scene

All good things come to an end, as they say. Which is why Crime Scene is marking the conclusion of BROADCHURCH with our feature on the third and final series. As well as joining the cast by the seaside, we learned about the cloak-and-dagger measures employed to protect the show from plot leaks. But while some heroes reach the end of the road, others just keep on going. So this issue we salute enduring characters and their creators: REBUS and IAN RANKIN, HARRY BOSCH and MICHAEL CONNELLY, and DR. KAY SCARPETTA and PATRICIA CORNWELL. Plus, Jane Tennison’s back in the PRIME SUSPECT 1973 prequel, and we celebrate 30 years of MORSE on screen. But as we’re getting all emotional over the final case on Broadchurch, this month the team…

Trapped put Icelandic crime on the map in 2016, but it turns out another of the country’s crime dramas came first. Case, now available for UK viewers, begins with a young ballerina’s apparent suicide in Reykjavik’s National Theatre. The police investigation gradually reveals dark secrets including drugs, computer hacking and teenage sex tapes. The show’s director, Baldvin Zophoniasson, worked on both shows, as did Steinunn Olina Thorsteinsdottir, who plays the razor-sharp detective Gabriela. “What I really liked about Case is its slower pace, and it’s much darker,” says the director. “Trapped is a more typical whodunit.” Zophoniasson brings a queasy, documentary style to the show, which features intriguing characters such as the grizzled, alcoholic lawyer Logi (Magnus Jonsson). “He’s a troubled character with a bad reputation, but he’s a clever…

TELL US ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER… Gibbs is obviously one of Jane’s superiors and he’s [DI] Bradfield’s right-hand man. But the problem with Gibbs is that he’s got a bit of a short fuse. He’s not afraid to be quite heavy-handed with the criminals or junkies – he will go to quite extreme lengths to get any information out of someone. He’s not afraid to bend the rules and then expect help from his colleagues to try and get him out of trouble. IS THAT QUITE A ’70s ATTITUDE? Going back years and years, people were a bit more heavy-handed. What’s also really interesting about this is what Jane has to go through in terms of the chauvinistic side of the police. It’s great that it highlights what WPCs had to…

If you thought 2015’s And Then There Were None was a deliciously dark Agatha Christie adaptation, that was a just a primer for the bleakly compelling The Witness For The Prosecution. Produced by the same team, including writer Sarah Phelps, both of the brutal BBC miniseries shatter any preconceptions of Christie cosiness. For the two-part Witness, Phelps has augmented the original short story with a convincing First World War background. And where Christie gave us a sting in the tail, this goes even further with a genuinely shocking finale. A romantic prelude to the legal drama takes place in the trenches in Belgium – an unlikely place for a couple to fall in love. Several years later, in 1923, Austrian showgirl Romaine Heilger (Andrea Riseborough) and English chancer Leonard Vole…

Few TV detectives have grown over time as much as Jonathan Creek. In the 20 years since he made his bow, we’ve said goodbye to the windmill, sayonara to the duffel coat and ciao to his employer, chick-chasing illusionist Adam Klaus. Not only that, but we’ve galloped through four sidekicks, with Creek’s wife Polly (Sarah Alexander), introduced in 2013 special The Clue of the Savant’s Thumb, now his partner-in-crime-solving. There was a lot of goodwill lost with the last series in 2014. The wobbly mysteries and a disappointingly domesticated – and downcast – Jonathan suggested the once unconquerable David Renwick had lost heart in his creation. So “Daemons’ Roost” had a lot of convincing to do. Would it be a return to former glories? Would it convince JC diehards that…

As anyone who watched Series 1 of The Missing knows, intricate plots packed with unexpected twists are the hallmark of Harry and Jack Williams’ writing. But the first run now seems almost simplistically linear beside Series 2, which zips back and forth between three countries and four or five different time zones, tossing in enough clever twists, side-plots, red herrings and rabbit-out-of-hat revelations to keep our minds spinning. Series 2 isn’t a sequel as such, although it has its central theme in common. The first series focused on James Nesbitt’s attempts to track down his young son, who had gone missing from a small town in Northern France. This time around, the only major character to resurface is French police detective Julien Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo), who helped Nesbitt in his…

“YOU’LL LEARN HOW TO DO SOME VERY ILLEGAL THINGS AS WELL AS BEING ENTERTAINED” When Jack Parlabane began his mayhem-filled journalism career more than 20 years ago in Christopher Brookmyre’s debut novel Quite Ugly One Morning, he seemed to be made of Teflon, bounding cheerfully from one disaster to another with no emotional ill-effects. But in the most recent novels, the character has gained more depth. Middle-aged and divorced, his disdain for the niceties of the law when in pursuit of a juicy story has made him persona non grata in the new world of journalism post-Leveson. As Brookmyre puts it, in typically salty fashion, “Parlabane knows what it is to have everyone believe you’re the worst of the worst, a bottom-feeding sleazebag low enough to rim a rattlesnake.” And…

1. THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD BY JOHN LE CARRÉ John le Carré is a master storyteller, and this gripping novel of love and betrayal is a truly genre-defining Cold War thriller. So it comes as no surprise that the BBC are adapting the book following the huge success of The Night Manager last year. 2. CRISIS BY FRANK GARDNER Crisis is the bestselling debut by BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. Featuring Luke Carlton, an ex-Special Boat Service commando, the book’s fly-on-the-wall insights, fast-paced writing and tense plot guarantee Gardner’s new novel a place in our list of thrillers. 3. CASINO ROYALE BY IAN FLEMING Fleming’s first James Bond novel (published in 1953) is packed with thrills and suspense, showcasing everything we know and love about the…

 How is the community of Fortitude coping after the traumatic events of Series 1? “I didn’t want people to know too much about Sarah. I liked her secrets, I liked her mystery ” The first series was about surviving and about life and death. In my personal life, I recognise that in any real crisis you use all your resources, but actually it’s the moment after that’s really interesting. Who am I now? Why am I alive? What has happened? That atmosphere of having survived and at the same time being completely lost is fascinating. The community in Fortitude is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s carrying a lot of scars, definitely. What is the emotional state of your character, Hildur, the governor of Fortitude? She’s not in a great…

What’s it like being part of the Criminal Minds TV franchise? It’s crazy. I have made my entire career on procedurals, which is such a gift. So when you join something like Criminal Minds it’s a nice feeling. There’s this comfort level in the fact that it is a procedural, but also you go from country to country, so you’re learning about cultures and language and protocol. The show features global settings, but where’s it filmed? It’s all LA; isn’t that crazy? They do such an incredible job. I travelled a lot when I was younger and so I’m always amazed when I walk on set. I’m like, “that’s India, that’s Thailand, that’s Japan”. It’s so cool. People say to me aren’t you frustrated that you…

How did you go about writing the novel? I had to audition! There was more than one writer up for the job and we all had to turn the first act of episode one – that’s right up until the heartbreaking moment that Beth sees Danny’s body on the beach – into prose. When I got the gig, it was a tight turnaround – just a few months – but of course the plot, setting and character were all taken care of. It was a joy to write. What sort of reaction did the book get? Well, my favourite compliment was from Chris Chibnall, who said I made him cry. Which was fair enough, as he’d done it to me, too. I’ve had great feedback from readers all over the…

 Get ready for even more Morse. Following strong ratings for the recent fourth series of Endeavour, which marked the 30th anniversary of the first broadcast of Inspector Morse, ITV has confirmed that the fifth season of Endeavour will be extended from a quartet of investigations to six feature-length episodes. “As much as it’s obviously a prequel to Morse, Endeavour is its own series” Shooting begins in April in and around Oxford for a series, set in 1968, which will further explore this enduring character in the early stages of his career. It’s a gift for the original show’s fans, who get to see the young Morse in what are essentially six lavishly produced films. “I’m glad you said that, because that’s our intention – we hope that each director will…

“Rebus is a born detective,” he tells Crime Scene. “It’s how he deals with the world, looking into other people’s problems to stop him looking at his own. He can’t give it up, it’s in his blood, and without it he almost ceases to exist.” Like his fictional detective, Ian Rankin is a man who’s at home in a pub. John Rebus is, of course, a regular at the Oxford Bar in Edinburgh. The real-life pub attracts Rebus tourists and receives fan mail for Rankin, who has a permanent presence alongside the actor who played the detective. “There’s a picture of Ken Stott above the bar, because he came in for a drink once, and there’s a picture of me,” says Rankin. “That’s about as much immortality as they’ll give…

THE AUTHOR Chris Ould is the author of The Blood Strand, the first book in the Faroes series – which Booklist declared “a winner for fans of both Scandinavian and British procedurals” – as well as two Young Adult crime novels. He is a BAFTA award-winning screenwriter who has worked on many TV shows including The Bill, Soldier Soldier, Casualty and Hornblower. He lives in Dorset. Faroese detective Hjalti Hentze is called to the scene of a murder, one which he suspects is connected to the violence between the islanders and activists. Ári answered on the sixth ring. “Do we have an identity for the body?” Ári asked. “Not at the moment.” “All right, well you’d better go ahead and see what it looks like,” Ári told him, and Hentze…

The burly shadows of Rupert Davies and Michael Gambon loom large over the latest incarnation of Georges Simenon’s iconic detective – to the detriment, alas, of Rowan Atkinson, surely no one’s idea of a pipe-puffing chief inspector in the Paris Police Judiciaire. To his credit, the Bean star does endeavour to put his own ruminative, melancholic stamp on the character. The result is so understated, however, as to make him virtually invisible in a role that offers fleeting opportunities for Atkinson to flex his comic chops. Luckily the two feature-length specials here – “Maigret Sets A Trap” and “Maigret’s Dead Man” – fare somewhat better in the villain department, whether it’s a mother-fixated killer of Montmartre prostitutes or a fur-clad ladies’ man living off the savings of slaughtered farmers. The…

The real-life case of Notting Hill mass murderer Reg Christie was famously filmed by Richard Fleischer in 1971 as 10 Rillington Place, featuring Richard Attenborough in one of his finest screen performances as Christie (and John Hurt playing the wretched Timothy Evans, who was wrongly hanged for Christie’s crimes). But in the BBC’s three-parter, Tim Roth equals (maybe even surpasses) Attenborough. Roth’s Christie – round-shouldered, bald and bespectacled, shuffling, smiling apologetically and speaking in a self-effacing whisper – seems to be such an insignificant, harmless little man that his killings are all the more horrifyingly hard to credit. As, apparently, was the case with the real-life killer. The rest of the Rillington Place cast – Samantha Morton as Christie’s manipulated wife Ethel, Nico Mirallegro as poor naive, gullible Tim Evans…

You expect high style from a film by a fashion designer, but Tom Ford also brings substance to NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, adapted from Austin Wright’s novel Tony And Susan. When struggling writer Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends his novel to his successful but neurotic ex, Susan (Amy Adams), we’re plunged into a deep-noir nightmare of murder, revenge and marital-meltdown metaphors. Jigsaw plots like this often emerge disjointed or stifled from within, so it’s to Ford’s credit that his layered, lushly mounted meta-mystery packs its themes tight with suspense, feeling and tension. Pulpier pleasures drive JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK... Tom Cruise man-grapples again with the role of Lee Child’s ex-military hero. Being Cruise, he also grapples with superiors over a conspiracy, helped by the woman (Cobie Smulders) in his old job and…

There’s nothing like a grisly murder to get the old pages turning, so how about six for the price of one? Daniel Cole’s debut novel starts with half a dozen bodies, butchered and sewn together to form the marionette-like ragdoll of the title, and Detective William “Wolf” Fawkes of the Met is at the centre of the mystery. The pace of Ragdoll is breathless – it began life as a prospective TV script, and it shows: it’s stuffed to the gills with action and cliffhangers, the killer releasing a list of names of his next victims with the date they’re due to meet their sticky end. But what makes the book so readable is the gallows humour running through it, a deeply British knack of finding the funnies amid the…

The dustbowl towns of Mississippi: a place where the cops are even worse than the criminals, everyone drives all night with beer bottles between their legs, and the lost and desperate are way out on their own. Here we find Russell Gaines, fresh from 11 years in the pen for killing a teenager while drink-driving, and now being hounded by the kid’s vengeful brothers. Meanwhile, social castaway Maben is running from the relentless cruelties of the world with her young daughter, only to find herself shooting down a police officer. The set-up is pure Southern Noir, but Michael Farris Smith’s third novel aspires to the emotional detail and finely traced internal lives of Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy or Harper Lee. Action is brief and brutal, while a good deal of…

When a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome and her six-year-old son vanishes, police assigned to the case assume an abusive husband is the culprit. However, the chief of Rome’s Major Crimes unit has his doubts, and lures Deputy Captain Colomba Caselli — on medical leave after surviving a bomb explosion that left her with PTSD panic attacks — to investigate the case. Caselli has the assistance of the cripplingly claustrophobic Dante Torre, a modern-day version of Sherlock Holmes who spent his childhood trapped inside a concrete silo by a man known only as “The Father”. Increasingly unsure of who he can trust, Torre believes his captor to be back and active. The investigative duo end up ever further outside the law as they attempt to find sufficient…

“THE ELEGANT PLOTTING IS NEAR INVISIBLE AMID THE RICH INTERIOR LIVES ON THE PAGE” As a metaphor in a crime novel, an eclipse has a certain resonance. In Erin Kelly’s sixth book, her characters are kept in the dark about crucial details – much like the reader. Yet the facts would seem to be incontrovertible: a woman has been assaulted during the total solar eclipse of 1999 at a grungy festival in Cornwall. A young couple, Laura and Kit, witness the rape and aftermath – a twist of fate that will affect their lives for the next 15 years. He Said/She Said confronts you with that stark and disturbing scene, followed by the trial several months later. The harrowing nature of the case is compounded by the insensitivity of the…

Inspired by a real-life (and unsolved) case in which an entire family was murdered, as well as a fortuitous channel-hop landing on a shopping network (advertising a CD collection, playing the song that would become this book’s title), British-born writer Nicolás Obregón’s journey to his debut novel was an unusual one. Blue Light Yokohama is an odd read. It frequently feels like four novels in one, with a strong main narrative – the investigation into the murder forming the backbone of the book – supported by several overlapping plotlines that appear mainly in the form of flashbacks and dream sequences. However, these elements aren’t entirely successful, bordering on confusing, with little resonance beyond occasional red herrings, which is a shame – especially as the novel’s central mystery is so compelling.…

“The books use ideas that won’t work in the show” The show is very much a homage to the Agatha Christie books I read when I was growing up. But it’s also infused with my love of Midsomer Murders, Jonathan Creek, Murder, She Wrote, Monk – basically any kind of murder mystery story. It’s always challenging coming up with the plots, but this is where the TV show really comes into its own: a whole bunch of us sit in a room trying to come up with ideas, and it’s a hugely enjoyable process, while also being very demanding. You have to deliver a satisfying murder mystery, but you also have to have plenty of scenes of comedy, warmth and sunshine. I got the idea after reading that the Pakistan…

There’s a buzz around The Fact Of A Body (Macmillan, 18 May), the true story of a law student who took a summer job in Louisiana on the retrial defence of a convicted murderer and child molester on death row. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, the daughter of two lawyers, was opposed to the death penalty when she took the case. But as soon as she hears the client speak of his crimes, she’s overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. When Marzano-Lesnevich digs deeper, she’s forced to confront her own family secrets. For a wide-ranging take on true crime illustrated with infographics, The Crime Book (DK, 3 April) is a bloody, engrossing history of criminology, from bandits and serial killers to 21st century cyber predators. Famous cases include Jack The…

 What’s the very first crime novel you ever remember reading? “I think I’d probably murder someone – that would be great research, wouldn’t it?” Well, my first crime novel – if you discount The Secret Seven and their detective exploits – would have been And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. She’s just the master of plotting, so that was a great grounding. What’s your favourite crime novel ever and why? Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was my first insight into domestic suspense – that would be one that I would read again and again. It’s the characters and the sort of creeping dread that runs through the book that I love. Who has been your role model? I really look up to Mark Billingham and Peter James, not only…

Chris Chibnall might be the most famous TV writer in Britain right now. When Crime Scene is granted an interview with the 46-year-old behind Broadchurch, he’s about to regenerate into the showrunner for Doctor Who. But for a man who has to satisfy the expectations of millions of viewers – of both the ITV crime drama and the BBC sci-fi institution – he’s remarkably laid-back. Our conversation even deviates into Downton Abbey names – a security precaution used on the scripts in case they fell into the wrong hands. Apparently Series 3’s fake title was Returning Home by Margaret Cedars. As Chibnall explains, his Downton name formula is grandmother’s first name followed by primary school. For the record, Crime Scene’s is “Joan Paddock”. “You can then figure out whether you…

Coppers who rely on brains not brawn,” announced the TV Times when Inspector Morse arrived on a Tuesday night in January 1987. The three feature-length episodes in the first series quickly established the show – based on Colin Dexter’s novels – as a superior whodunit. Yet the casting of John Thaw as the cerebral detective was a surprise move at the time. The actor was best known for playing Jack Regan, the macho Flying Squad officer in The Sweeney. Morse was a more sensitive soul: a lover of poetry, a romantic and a loner. Opening episode “The Dead Of Jericho” is almost a deliberate rebuke to TV’s cursing coppers who administered slaps to villains. Anthony Minghella’s adaptation, directed by Alastair Reid, begins with a choral recital intercut with a scene…

1 KNOTS AND CROSSES (1987) Rankin was still finding his voice as he switched from literary fiction to crime, while Rebus is not quite the finished article in this debut outing. But it’s still a must-read that offers a glimpse into the detective’s troubled past in the SAS. 2 BLACK AND BLUE (1997) With a title taken from an album by one of Rebus’ favourite bands, The Rolling Stones, the eighth book in the series was inspired by a true crime case from the 1960s. The detective’s career and life are on the line as he hunts a killer. 3 EXIT MUSIC (2007) Named after a Radiohead song, this novel has Rebus retiring for the first time. But while he’s supposed to be quietly concluding his police career, the dogged…

“THE SELF-INDULGENT PSYCHO-PANTO MAKES FOR HEADY ENTERTAINMENT” “In saving my life she conferred a value on it,” says Sherlock Holmes, paying eloquent tribute to a woman who took a fatal bullet for him. “It is a currency I do not know how to spend.” An egomaniac like Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes might not acknowledge it (or even realise it), but that currency-based challenge extends beyond Sherlock himself. It stretches to the series, which sets out in season 4 to justify two things: a central character’s death and fans’ long-haul investment in the show. Critics were splintered over its success, but give co-writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss this: they damn well try to challenge their show. Even the choppy Gatiss-written opener, “The Six Thatchers”, improves on 2016’s self-satisfied special “The Abominable…

The old-school dynamic between cop and criminal still has legs when it comes to crime drama. Continuing TV’s recent form in period serial killers – Rillington Place, Dark Angel – ITV casts a crack duo in its psycho-study of how a detective gradually nailed ’50s Scottish spiv Peter Manuel, a cop-taunting murderer. Terrific as Manuel, Line Of Duty’s Martin Compston pinpoints the Brylcreem’d beast of Birkenshaw’s vanity, a weakness that would prove crucial – in plain sight – to his eventual capture. Detective William Muncie’s doggedness is equally well captured by Douglas Henshall (Shetland), all beady eyes and soft-spoken steel. Although three episodes isn’t enough to convey Muncie’s long-haul patience, every nicotine-harrowed interior feels lived-in, and director John Strickland’s discreet details bring the story to life: while Manuel’s letters ooze…

When crime no longer stops at international borders, police forces in different countries have to work together. That’s the premise behind Peter Thorsboe and Mai Brostrom’s The Team – which, while lacking the innocent exuberance of 1980s action series The A-Team, is a solid attempt to show how technology and human reason can ensure justice for victims of crime, regardless of geography and judicial borders. Lars Mikkelsen — chilling in Sherlock — here plays good-natured Harald Bjorn, an internationally acknowledged expert in organised crime who links up with Antwerp-based Alicia Verbeeck (Veerle Baetens) and Berlin-based Jackie Mueller (Jasmin Gerat) as they slowly build a case against Marius Loukauskis (Nicholas Ofczarek), a Lithuanian billionaire up to his eyes in human trafficking, forced labour and murder. The narrative pace across the eight…

“A SLIPPERY, DEVIOUS STORY IN WHICH THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS WHAT THEY SEEM” Anyone who’s read Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love will have found it hard to forget the book’s traumatic ballooning disaster. With Dead Woman Walking, Sharon Bolton seems determined to top that with a horrific opening that feels like the moment of impending doom in a disaster movie. Over 30 breathless pages, you experience every violent jolt as 12 passengers lose control of their hot air balloon over Northumberland National Park. Their frayed tempers are a prelude to a crash landing in which everything seems to go wrong, from the power lines in the way to the loss of the radio connection that might have saved them. In a malevolent twist, this is a tragedy brought about by one…

“THE WRITING’S CASUAL AIR MAKES IT FEEL LIKE BEING TOLD A STORY IN THE PUB” Peter Manuel doesn’t like to think of himself as a criminal, although his rap sheet is a laundry list of grotesqueries. No, Peter Manuel likes to think of himself as a storyteller. So when he reaches out to William Watt, a man accused of murdering his wife, daughter and sister-in-law, he’s planning to tell him a story. Watt is desperate for answers about what happened to his family on the night he went on a fishing trip and returned to tragedy; Manuel wants... well, he’s not entirely sure, but it definitely involves being recognised as the writer he thinks he is. The problem for Manuel is that he has no skill for narrative. Happily, though,…

“THE MISFIT SPOOKS GRIP OUR ATTENTION THROUGHOUT THE OFFBEAT, INTRICATE PLOT” Slough House – as you might guess from the name – isn’t exactly the most prestigious arm of the British Secret Service. In fact it’s by way of MI5’s refuse tip – a shabby, crumbling building accessed via a putrid alleyway in east-central London, staffed by an ill-assorted bunch described as “the catastrophes of the intelligence world”. The team turn out to be a rich gallery of addicts, obsessives and psychological walking-woundeds, dumped in this scummy backwater of the Service for varied misconducts, or simply for having antagonised the wrong person. They’re headed up by the breathtakingly charmless Jackson Lamb (“I don’t think of you as a team, I think of you as collateral damage”), the foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking…

Despite the prevailing financial crisis in Greece, business is good for Stratos Gazis. The Athenian hit man (he prefers the term “caretaker”) has a steady supply of clients, although his latest job goes awry before he can get near the target: a lawyer who’s apparently been mistreating his wife, a famous model. Soon after she hires Stratos, her BMW is peppered with bullets at a crossroads. But the victim driving the car turns out to be a different woman with a striking resemblance to the glamorous celebrity, who’s apparently gone into hiding. While the average hit man might hold out for a less convoluted case, Stratos has clearly got a thing for his client, despite a film noir obsession that should ring alarm bells where femmes fatales are concerned. Hired…

Jonathan Craine is corrupt. Nominally, he’s employed as a detective with the LAPD, but that’s really just a cover for his role as a “fixer”, a man who ensures that scandal never attaches itself to Hollywood stars and executives. He’s also a man in mourning following the death of his actor wife, an event that’s convinced him to start anew. Shame nobody told MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, who calls on Craine when a producer working on The Wizard Of Oz is found dead in his home. Craine’s role is clear: to have the death declared a suicide and to protect Gale Goodwin, the newly widowed starlet, from the press. Except that’s not how things work out. Partly because a young cop, O’Neill, won’t take short cuts and because he…

“RARELY HAS THE PRESENCE OF A CREAKY DETECTIVE SEEMED SO APPOSITE” On 10 May 1940, a force of Royal Marines landed in Reykjavik. They encountered no resistance. So began five years when Allied troops – first British and Canadian, later American – occupied Iceland as a way to deny Germany from establishing a military presence on an island crucial to control of the North Atlantic. If we Brits have chosen to forget invading a neutral neighbour, perhaps because it doesn’t sit well with our narrative of plucky resistance to Nazi aggression, Icelanders certainly haven’t. It is, after all, difficult to overlook a period in your recent history when 40,000 US troops were stationed in a country with a population of just 120,000 people. It’s these events that form the backdrop…

When Norfolk crime lord Richard Goodwin dies after his car ends up in a river, his family’s grief only goes so far. His wife, Tatty, coped with his brazen cheating by dosing herself up on prescription pills, while their grownup children had retreated from the baleful influence of a bullying father and the biggest crook in Great Yarmouth. But when Tatty realises it was murder rather than suicide, the widow’s natural instinct for revenge suggests she’s just as ruthless as the gangster she married. Although the windswept seaside town may be a bit of a backwater, the power vacuum means Yarmouth increasingly feels like the New Jersey of The Sopranos. Drug dealers are executed, bodies are buried under the mud, and Tatty soon starts throwing her weight around, including a…

“The extended montage shows who’s up and who’s down ” “Let’s go home” THE WIRE (2008) Some shows end with a bang, others with a whimper. After five compelling and often bleak seasons, The Wire’s finale got it right. As a feature-length conclusion to one of the most acclaimed TV shows of all time, the closing episode had to be something special. Creator David Simon’s masterstroke was an end sequence that felt like a separate mini-series compressed into five minutes. As disgraced cop and boozy philanderer Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) contemplates the Baltimore skyline, a montage reveals the fates of characters you’ve lived with over 60 episodes. Simon created a series that heralded a new Golden Age of television. A former newspaper reporter, his drama had the revelatory impact of…