Cracker: Best Boys and True Romance

"Paul Abbott's writing this one, Mark. Get out while you still have dignity..."

When we last left Cracker, Fitz had reconciled with Judith after the birth of a new son - though Fitz reneged on his promise to stop gambling. Penhaligon spurned any chance of reconciling with Fitz as her post-rape trauma grew knotted with guilt. This because Jimmy Beck went bungee jumping without a chord, ending a remarkably powerful story arc. It's not a neat and tidy resolution, but Cracker was never a neat and tidy show. (Just ask Nigel Cassidy.) With the series nearing its end, how could the show runners possibly match that?

Well, they couldn't, at least without Jimmy McGovern. Paul Abbott helmed the last two installments and they suck. Abbott offers characterizations either broad or perfunctory, treating lingering plot threads almost carelessly. Worse, his crime stories are uninvolving. None of the cutting sociological assessments or rounded characterizations of the best installments. Cracker goes from something unique to a banal cop show.

Maybe that was the intent. In his three scripts for the show, Abbott evinces little handle on the complexities of Fitz's world. Compared to McGovern's intricate web of social commentary, psychological complexity and ensemble melodrama, Abbott preferred "killer of the week" procedural dramas. Thus the "crime writers' greatest hits" feel to these stories (and his subsequent special, White Ghost); thus the decreased emphasis on Fitz's personal travails. It's like The West Wing post-Aaron Sorkin: the characters, setting and subject are the same, but the show becomes a formula drama without its original creator.

However flawed, the last five Cracker serials warranted in-depth dissections. These do not. Let's plow through and return to movies, shall we?

Best Boys 
Air dates: 11/6 and 11/13/95
Written: Paul Abbott
Directed: Charles MacDougall

Recycling may be good for the environment, but it's a death sentence for television shows. Best Boys is a thorough retread of Season 1's To Say I Love You, with a twist that the central couple's gay. This one almost gets by on good acting alone, but never proves engaging. Frankly it feels like a rush job, Abbott wanting to abruptly tie up some loose ends within a bland, familiar pallet.

Stuart Grady (Liam Cunningham) finds teenager Bill Preece (John Simm) sleeping in his factory. The two strike up a friendship which turns romantic, as Stuart finds Bill triggering his repressed sexuality. When the two kill Stuart's landlady they go on the lam, Bill determined to get revenge on his old foster family. Meanwhile, Fitz and Judith find that their new son hasn't resolved all their problems, Penhaligon struggles to cope with Beck's death and Wise, erm, scowls gruffly.

Best Boys does little that To Say I Love You didn't handle much better. By making his protagonists homosexual, Abbott provides two half-interesting characterizations: Bill a vengeful foundling, Stuart an aggressively closeted man. But we've already seen this story played straight (pun intended) and there's nothing fresh or inventive here. The characters retain interest thanks to guest actors Liam Cunningham and John Simm; Cunningham proves particularly effective in the hostage-taking climax. That the show even took that route is unfortunate, given that To Say I Love You ended with the exact same scene.

Even when Jimmy McGovern bungled his mystery plots, his character conflicts proved compelling. Best Boys treats them as almost a nuisance. Fitz and Judith are back to squabbling, with snotty brother Danny returning to insult Fitz some more. Danny served his purpose in Brotherly Love; now he's a bore. Why bring him back? Beck's sister (Aisling O'Sullivan) turns up for his funeral and gets one scene with Fitz, then bows out. Why bother? These vignettes don't help flesh out the characters or drive the story. They just mark time between killings.

Worst off is Penhaligon. We'd expect Panhandle to be traumatized by Beck's death and the resulting fallout. Her early scenes indeed show a potent mixture of grief and relief, as when she aggressively challenges Fitz to sleep with her. But then Penhaligion is forced to cover for dumbass DC Temple (Robert Cavanah) in exchange for a peak at Beck's diary. This subplot is handled so perfunctorily, one senses Abbott merely wished to rid himself of Brotherly Love associations. On such a continuity-heavy show, distancing from previous story lines isn't a good idea unless you're taking an interesting new direction. Abbott is not.

True Romance
Air dates: 11/20 and 11/27/95
Written: Paul Abbott
Directed: Tim Fywell

True Romance manages to be even worse. I don't know what bugs me more: the facile Fatal Attraction plot? The ham-fisted character development? The absent tension or plausibility? Cracker isn't just some programmer that burns willy-nilly through hoary potboiler plots, Mr. Abbott.

Fitz returns to his old university teaching job. One of his more attentive students is Janice (Emily Joyce), a lab assistant with an intense crush on Fitz. So intense, indeed, that she begins luring college boys to her flat for sex and death, just to get his attention. After the cops pull Fitz off the case, Janice kidnaps Mark. This time it's personal, with Fitz and Judith reconciling (again) as Janice debates her next move.

If there's one crime storyline more cliched than lover-killers, it's an obsessive stalker. True Romance really goes to town on this: Janice is the nebbish bookworm who resents shallow preppies so much she kills them in baroque fashion. That Emily Joyce has trouble getting guys is the first suspension of disbelief True Romance requires. For a show whose raison d'etre has been male insecurity, it's bizarre that Abbott employs a deranged misandrist villain, even if she has a twisted backstory. This episode would barely pass muster for Criminal Minds, let alone Cracker.

I've sounded like a broken record complaining about Cracker's protagonists being placed in danger. Yet here it is again, and done worse than ever. One could accept someone obsessively stalking Fitz: Robbie Coltrane may not be a looker but his charm's undeniable. But how, one wonders, does Janice know what fast food dive Mark's working at? (At least Albie saw Bilborough on TV.) Why kill everyone else but leave Mark alive? It's too obviously a screenwriters' ploy to drag Fitz into the mystery; thus, zero tension.

Fitz predictably goes through the emotional wringer, and Robbie Coltrane's very good trying to maintain a balance between professional and paternal concerns. Yet this doesn't register as strongly as it should. Cracker always got away with a basic credibility lapse: police, let alone psychologists, can't browbeat confessions out of suspects without a lawyer. That Fitz would be allowed to interrogate the woman who kidnapped his son places True Romance in the realm of pure fantasy.

If there were anything outside nuts-and-bolts storytelling True Romance might be passable. Even more than in Best Boys, however, ongoing concerns are treated cheaply. Danny Fitzgerald's back, this time to hit on Judith. Mark drops a bombshell that barely registers. DCI Wise becomes a full-on clown: his marriage unravels after his wife sees Fitz as a client, then he's stuck babysitting Fitz's son. (Cue laugh track!) Fitz tries once more to reconcile with Penhaligon, who instead shacks up with DC Temple. At show's end she resigns, a twist retconned by Abbott in a later special.

By the time True Romance lurches to its climax, our goodwill is gone. Better Cracker end here than continue its execrable decline.

* * *

Thus endeth Cracker. It lasted only three years but garnered a lot of awards and popularity, at least in the UK. Presumably because it doesn't match the American fantasy of Brits as posh aristocrats (Downton Abbey) or wacky toss pots (Monty Python), it found only a limited US following, despite syndication on BBC America. Regardless, it had a remarkable run, with three brilliant episodes that I'd place against anything television has to offer.

Oh, wait. We're not finished.