Did you know that in 1970s and 1980s Yorkshire there were death squads of heavily armed policemen whose job it was to assassinate anyone who got too close — be he witness, investigating officer, or informer — to unmasking their mysterious bosses’ sinister web of lies, deceit, corruption, betrayal, wife beating, torture and serial killing? No, I didn’t either.
Did you know that in 1970s and 1980s Yorkshire there were death squads of heavily armed policemen whose job it was to assassinate anyone who got too close — be he witness, investigating officer, or informer — to unmasking their mysterious bosses’ sinister web of lies, deceit, corruption, betrayal, wife beating, torture and serial killing? No, I didn’t either. But such is the thesis behind David Peace’s quartet of ‘Yorkshire noir’ Red Riding crime novels, now adapted into a lovingly made trilogy on Channel 4. Recently, Peace — who makes a big deal of how utterly grounded in reality his books are, merging very carefully researched facts (e.g., the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry) with his fiction so that the two seamlessly intertwine — was asked whether he wasn’t exaggerating a bit. Read ‘anything by the late Paul Foot’, he recommended.
But you know what? Even if I were remotely tempted to read a single word of that tedious, conspiracy-theory-obsessed public-school leftie — sorry Ian! — I bet I still wouldn’t be persuaded that the murky world depicted in Yorkshire noir is remotely plausible or probable. It’s a literary conceit. A graphic-novel-like parallel universe in which everything’s that little bit nastier and weirder than in this one. Peace’s dishonesty in failing to acknowledge this — he bangs on about the moral integrity of his work, how essential it is to respect the real victims of crime and not in any way exploit violence for sensationalism or money — makes me distrust the whole enterprise.
This was my underlying problem with Red Riding. It looked utterly fantastic: each part was given to a different director (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh, Anand Tucker) who seemed to have been given carte blanche to make whatever sublime arthouse movie they wanted about Oop North’s incredible grimness.
And my what a glorious job they did. In terms of pure rainwashed bleakness, it made Withnail’s and Marwood’s trip to Uncle Monty’s cottage look like Summer Holiday; in terms of northern, hard man bleakness it made Get Carter look like Carry On Camping; in terms of artiness, it made Fellini look like D.R. and Quinch’s Mind the Oranges, Marlon.
The acting was good too. So good, in fact, that even Sean Bean was bearable as the stereotypical Mr Big with the Jensen, local property interests and numerous friends in the police, who hangs out expensively in his favourite club, talks softly and wields a very big stick.
Aha, but note that word ‘stereotypical’. That’s a sign that this review is about to turn sceptical. You see, for all its myriad and immense virtues, Red Riding left me feeling at the end like the victim of an enormous con trick. Despite all its efforts to persuade me that what I was watching was a thousand cuts above your usual Lynda La Plante-ish two-parter, it was really just a more pretentious assemblage of the same old clichés.
Viz: the duffing up in the multi-storey car park; the harassed, overworked police colleagues, one with his marriage in tatters, finding sleazy solace in each other’s arms while working late — but then regretting it; the disgusting but piteous, low-life informer with the irritating tic; the complacent police chief who’ll cover up anything for a quiet life; the grim housing estate scene where the feral kids lurk; the grim block of flats scene where a pasty-faced woman with puffy eyes is unhelpful; the crematorium scene; the wake; the pub scene; the 501 other pub scenes; etc.
And the excessive violence, that’s what I really disliked. Overlong brutal torture scenes; a man killed with an electric drill; a serial child murderer whose sicko signature was to sew swans’ feathers into his victims’ corpses. For all its author’s claims, Red Riding has very little meaningful to tell us about the real world. It’s high-class porn, that’s all.
Comments