Jonpow

I'm a huge fan of Mick Herron's 8-book Slough House series, especially the audiobooks narrated by Gerard Doyle. The Apple TV series is a cut above most crime/spy productions, but in order to fit into 6 shows per season (book), so much of Herron's plot, humor and characterizations are stripped out. The books language, the hilarious internal monologues, the quirkiness of the full cast of characters is reduced, often, to cliche. Read the books! Listen to the audiobooks!

Update into Season 3: The books are so good because, first and foremost, they are funny and each character adds a layer of inner hilarity; the plot and "action" is secondary, just the structure for fun. The tv series upends this, going for heroic, action and little genuine characterization. The scripts are too much BBC crime formula.

This series has the atmospheric look of that now standard, middle of the road, UK police procedural. But it never rises above what feels like a first-draft of a series following a formula of a scenic and brooding location, an emotionally damaged brooding detective who has a thing for music, a socially appropriate subplot involving gay marriage with children (and more on the way!), and twisting plots that seem familiar...if not memorable, or the point in this exercise. No character or cast member pulls you in. The lead character, retired detective blah blah blah...mopes along, more depressed than anything interesting, and well-known actor Adrian Dunbar seems wholly miscast. Then again, he's given little to work with: a murky tragic past that isn't revealed til episode 3 and plodding, wooden dialogue. It feels like it was torture for him to put on his location-specific woolly jumper and get through this production, one painful scene at a time. And then he sings! Which has more of a comic relief effect than, well, making him human when not staring at a cold corpse on the moor. Also rather comic is how the plot drags along, challenging you hang in there, hoping for a memorable moment, if not an original crime. But, please, no more singing.

This short, 4-hour series will be a surprise if you're expecting these two actors in a crime tale as they often play. And if you can't bear drama with moments of comic relief, more like a stage play, you'll call it boring. But by the end of the first hour, it hooks you, a family all with issues or pain and funny/familiar defense strategies. Eventually, you find yourself wondering why more TV isn't this good, this inventive. This is not a comedy, but in form and daring it reminds me of Fleabag and Catastrophe, two hilarious and unconventional British hits. And how shallow American TV generally winds up feeling.