Episode #5.4

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.

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!

I mentioned previously, that I hoped for the perfect series, that's four episodes rated 10, and that is actually the case, absolutely one of the most satisfying things I've seen on TV for years. I've always loved the show, but for me this has been the best series to date, and this episode sums of what's been so good about it, the intensity, the guessing games, the story, characters, and of course Ruth Wilson.

The scenes between Luther and Alice were absolutely mesmerising, I know it's early days in the year, but these two are seriously worthy contenders for awards following their incredible performances, as always it's Wilson that keeps me glued. I thought Dermot Crowley was terrific here too.

One little irritation, was the occurrence that I predicted happening in my review of episode one, a particular death, which didn't need to happen, I won't spoil it for anyone that hasn't seen it, but it's a character I'd have loved to return.

Mind blowing, pulse racing, shocking, engaging, literally any superlatives you can think of, would not be out of place. 10/10

A great New Year treat for all us Lutherans out there with another life in the day of troubled 'tec John Luther, played of course by Idris Elba. Over four tense, exciting episodes, various people and situations reappear from his troubled and sometimes chaotic past and are replayed in what seemed like a valedictory, loose-ends tied-up way, intertwined at the same time with another separate fetishistic, gruesome murderer, who Luther also has to find a way to stop.

Both story strands were equally engrossing, the former seeing Luther caught in a war between his two oldest nemeses, a conflagration which includes along the way the shocking murders of two of his confederates, one old, one new and a repeat reminder of our first ever arresting sighting of Luther all those years ago, holding an individual up by their arm from a great height in a life or death situation to prevent them falling.

The other strand sees Luther on the trail of a deviant killer, who dons a luminous mask in the act of extreme violence but whose actions ultimately lead a trail to a beyond strange husband and wife team, he a heart surgeon with abnormal tendencies and she a psychoanalyst whose counselling seems more to fan rather than douse the flames of his implacable madness.

As ever with Luther, for all the realistic acting and locations, you could never confuse the plotting or characters with real-life. Luther is a larger-than-life, intuitively brilliant cop, able to make spot-on deductions and identifications from airy nothing. In the end you have to accept this bloody and vengeful alternative reality which Luther walks, surrender to it and just roll with the hefty punches thrown.

As ever Elba bestrides the whole enterprise, taking every setback, physical and mental, squarely on the chin but always going forward following his sometimes warped but essentially well-intentioned instincts to try to right every wrong. Ruth Wilson reprises her twisted Alice character as she openly takes on crime king George Cornelius, played by Patrick Malahide, in a no-holds barred contest only two can play

Like I said, this had the look of last orders please with no easy way these characters can walk around the block again, apart from one important consideration, that our man is still in the game. Still, if this was the last time, it was certainly a tour-de-force and a fitting ending to one of the best cop shows on TV for years.