Crime watch

Oh. My. God. Can it really be, like, 16 years since it was 1993? I very much fear it can and the reason the thought is so bothersome is that I remember thinking, even back then, ‘Blimey, I really am getting on a bit. Can’t do pills nearly as often as I used to. The yawning grave beckons. Etc.’

This all came back to me while watching Murderland (ITV1, Monday) in which Robbie Coltrane plays someone a bit like Fitz from Cracker — only with most of the vices (drinking, chain-smoking, gambling) removed. Coltrane has denied there’s any connection, pointing out that this new character is a detective, not a criminal psychologist, and that the new series is more multiple-viewpoint psycho-drama than police procedural. ‘Yeah, right,’ we viewers all thought, the second Coltrane slunk on looking troubled and rumpled and said something rumbly and Scottish. ‘If this isn’t Cracker Mk II then I’m Hagrid’s jockstrap.’

And none the worse for that. Cracker was probably the most influential British crime TV drama of the Nineties, launching everyone involved into the small-screen stratosphere: scriptwriters Jimmy McGovern and Paul Abbott; actors Christopher Eccleston, Geraldine (phwoar — in a weird and interesting way) Somerville, Lorcan Cranitch, Robert Carlyle, John Simm, Samantha (also phwoar — in a weird and interesting way) Morton, and of course Robbie Coltrane. Indeed, I’m quite prepared to believe that, if it hadn’t been for Cracker, the Noughties would never have happened.

One effect Cracker had which wasn’t so beneficial, I think, was its love of warped, sadistic ultraviolence. At the time it felt quite refreshing and different for British TV but now, such is our appetite for the decomposing corpses of pretty little murdered girls who’ve had butterfly wings stitched on to their eyelids and their skin crocheted with the pages of the King James Bible (or whatever new pervy serial-killer signature the scriptwriter has dreamed up), you simply can’t sit through a crime drama without a stiff drink and a ready sick bag.

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