Luther (2010, NR)

I know this is a television series rather than a movie, but I watched the whole thing over the weekend and I really liked it so I want to tell you about it.  What I like about television series is that they can develop characters far more thoroughly than a two-hour film can.  Either the BBC consistently creates fantastic television (which I tend to believe) or I've just been incredibly lucky with the series I've watched so far (Sherlock, Jekyll, Party Animals, Luther, Doctor Who: I strongly recommend them all).  One of the factors I like so much about these British shows is that the seasons/series tend to be roughly 6 episodes.  I like shorter runs because it makes it easier to watch the entire story and it's far less intimidating to start (for example, I really want to watch all of The X-Files, but in the back of my head I know it will take me a long long time to finish and so I keep putting it off).  Also, the shorter year's-worth of programming tends to allow more quality per episode compared to pumping out a new episode every week for months on end.  Sort of interesting is that American shows call a year's-worth a season and the collection of all seasons as a series compared to British shows calling the year's-worth a series (I'm not sure what they call the combined series; perhaps one of my UK readers could help me out with that)... you could note that the British shows tend to make one solid story arc across the entire series (also with a solid story per episode) whereas American shows tend to be more episodic and disconnected.

Idris Elba (The Losers, Prometheus) played the title character, the flawed but very clever DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) John Luther.  I would describe this show as a cross between CSI (Crime
Scene Investigation), Sherlock and The Shield.  It's a procedural crime drama with a new case each episode like CSI, it has the individual intelligence and character arc from Sherlock (specifically the currently-running BBC series), and it has some of the moral ambiguity of The Shield.
  Mind you, Luther is nothing as corrupt as Vic Mackie from The Shield, but he does take severe liberties with the law in order to catch the bad guys.  I like the fact that he is generally good but also flawed: it makes him feel more genuine somehow and not some unrealistic ideal, not to mention that it allows for more dramatic situations to arise.  One character that I won't say too much else about (no spoilers) was kind of a cross between Moriarty from Sherlock, River Song from Doctor Who and Hannibal Lechter from Silence Of The Lambs; I pretty much fell in love with her.  The writing and acting were both great, the second part of which is quite a complement from me, because acting usually strikes me as competent or not, but this was noticeably exceptional.  I found myself liking (or at the very least respecting) pretty much every character in the series (except for, you know, the serial killers) even when they were at odds with protagonist (/anti-hero? slightly?).  The first series was 6 fantastic episodes, and the second series was only four that unfortunately couldn't quite hit the high standard established in the first series (though many elements that made the s1 so good are necessarily non-repeatable).  If you like intelligent crime stories with more complex characters, this show is for you.  If you don't like stories that involve violence/murder, then stay away, but otherwise I'd recomend especially the first series to pretty much anyone.  For me it's probably 4.5 or 5 stars.  I had been told by several sources that it is very good and I now wish I had acted on that advice earlier.  One of the sources that recomended Luther to me was an article in the back of a Criminal comic by Ed Brubaker; he tends to write good crime/pulp stories, so if you like those be sure to check out a post on the General Discussion board that I plan to post today.