Episode #5.4

Luther should had taken Alice's advice. Let her kill George Cornelius.

Luther instead wanted to do the right thing and know finds himself sinking in a metaphorical quicksand.

Meanwhile Jeremy Lake plans a killing spree and it is left to Halliday to try to break his wife as Luther has to free Mark and Alice from the hitman.

I long ago gave up any sense in Luther, you just sit back and enjoy the ride.

You can sense Alice's disappointment when Luther lies to her. There were one or two killings that were senseless in my opinion and wasted good characters.

By the end Luther has nowhere to go and is even stripped of his long coat.

Mention must be made of Dermot Crowley as Schenk. The look of seething anger in his face when he learned of Benny's death was something else.

No plot , only key persons deaths without reason! Not even a clever puzzle to solve, all was a huge nothing!

If you discount the first season, Luther has been consistently solid in what it does and how it does it. The previous (fourth) season was too short, rushed, and unsatisfying, so it was good to see a run of 4 episodes for this season. Within this season it does the stuff you've seen it do before. There is a very weird killer doing very weird killings - Luther is going to get them, but it will be about three and a bit episodes before that happens. Meanwhile Luther is also tied up in some sideplot which he is trying to get ahead of even as it closes in on him. It does this all pretty well in terms of basic mechanics; it enjoys its violence, it enjoys its grim feel, and its characters all slouch and swagger around in a way that implies complexity and darkness. This is how this fifth season goes.

For it to work, it needs you to go with it, so it very much pushes brand recognition. Elba is the main thrust of this and continues to be the reason the show gets made no doubt. He thrusts his hands in his pockets, offers plenty that speaks to a complex, haunted character, and drives into violence with a heart that isn't thee on paper but he makes happen. Luther is far from an interesting character, but Elba is a great presence. The supporting cast are variable and mostly feel disposable, with plenty of them being plot devices. None of it feels particularly grounded in anything, but it ploughs on ahead, providing violence, style, and Elba to carry the viewer along.

Of course this limits it too, but it offers enough strength to just about cover for this, although you do need to ignore the lack of even internal logic, and the heavy reliance on these core values over anything more substantial.

The amount of killing in this episode and the whole season is ridiculous. It seems the producers just wanted to shock the viewers with gruesome kills without too much of a sensible plot. Talking of which, the plot was just messy, it wasn't very clear which storyline was the main one - the psychopath killing doctors, the mob king Cornelius and his lost son or a crazy psychopath Alice. Bringing her back from dead seemed like a very random plot twist which was probably supposed to simply shock us even more. The producers just overdid it this time with shocks, grusomeness and senseless killing of main characters, which is a shame.

Season 5 maintained the level of story integrity needed to keep my interest. There was an aspect of the story arc that seemed added to please the longtime fans but it was dealt with in a way that gratified me.

Of the five 'seasons,' this was my third favorite. While some in my family felt other choices should have been made by Luther, I thought he was consistant with his drive to help those in his life while trying to minimize the damage to his 'duty' caused from actions he knows are darker than grey: He wants to protect and do the right thing for individuals and is willing to compromise his professional duty for that goal. A bit like 'The Bureau' in that regard.

I felt one of the villians could have been stronger but the direction it went kept them human without being cliche. The writers seemed boxed into an inevitable ending if they wanted to keep the story's integrity plausable. I was okay with that and I still was left asking, "what's next?" ;)

Technically, from an editor's aspect, this was not the worse Luther season. The story building craft impressed me more than some of the earlier seasons and it came together better for me.