For those of you who've never heard of it (or seen it on A&E), Cracker is a brilliant British TV show about an overweight, chain-smoking, foulmouthed psychologist named Fitz who helps the Manchester police department get into the heads of violent criminals. It's considered to be one of the finest shows ever to come out of England (and that's saying something), and was tremendously successful in England and around the world back in 1993.
Now, the original stars have re-teamed with the original writer to knock out one more 2-hour episode. I've loved this show ever since I'd first seen it, over a decade ago. The DVD box set holds a place of honor in my collection, and I can quote a good deal of Fitz's interrogation scenes practically word for word. The idea of Robbie Coltrane reteaming with Jimmy McGovern for another TV movie about Fitz filled me with absolute glee.
I'll start with the good. One of the many things that impressed me about the original Cracker series was how quickly Fitz was defined as a character. Five minutes into the first episode with his lecture (throwing the books into the air), his drinking, and his cussing of the guy after him on the gambling machine queue and you knew, simply knew, who this character was. You could feel him "clicking" in your mind, the kind of click that only happens when a great actor gets a great role written by a great writer.
Coltrane, of course, remained great throughout the show, but I always felt that some of the later episodes those not written by McGovern mistreated the character.
So the good news is this: Fitz is back. As soon as you see him in this show making incredibly inappropriate comments at his daughter's wedding you'll feel that "click" once again. It's him: petulant one moment and truly sorry the next, always insightful, sincere to the point of tactlessness but brilliantly funny in the process. If you love this character as much as I do, you'll be delighted with how he is portrayed in the movie. And this extends to Judith and Mark: in fact, everything having to do with the Fitzs is handled perfectly.
The problem I do have with this movie revolves around the crime Fitz is trying to solve. In standard Cracker fashion, we know exactly who the criminal is in the first five minutes the suspense lies in seeing Fitz figure it out. In this case, we have a serial killer who is out for American blood. And the reason for this, unfortunately, is not due to any believable psychological trauma rather, it seems that the murders are here simply to allow the writer to display his personal political beliefs.
It's difficult for me to write this, as I truly believe that Jimmy McGovern is one of the greatest writers in the world. Nor do I have a problem with movies that are about current issues, or movies that take a political stand. But in the Cracker universe, we expect to see the characters behaving like human beings, not like caricatures. Instead, the Americans in this movie are all depicted in an entirely stereotypical fashion. They're know-nothing loudmouths who complain about everything, treat the locals like crap and cheat on their wives one of them even manages to do all of the above within less than 5 minutes. I honestly thought I'd mistakenly switched channels or something.
But it doesn't stop there. We get constant reminders of just how badly the war in Iraq is going reminders that have nothing whatsoever to do with the story and appear practically out of nowhere. The killer is so busy ranting about how Bush is worse than Hitler that he almost forgets to get on with the killing; but more to the point, he is such a mouthpiece for the writer's political views that he forgets to act like a believable human being, and thus we as an audience don't buy his sudden transformation from a happy family man to a tortured serial-killing soul.
I can't say that this ruined the show for me it's was still good TV, better than almost everything else in the genre (mainly due to, once again, Coltrane). But its constant politicizing made it impossible for it to be as good as the real Cracker classics like "To Be A Somebody" an episode that was just as "issuey", but one that was handled with far more subtlety and psychological depth.
Two other small points: Panhandle not being around is a disappointment, but what's worse are her replacements. The entire police department which for so long filled with such great characters - is now full of vanilla. Completely interchangeable cops who lack any and all personality (how you could drain Coupling's Richard Coyle of personality is beyond me, but it is indeed missing here).
Also, there are couple of moments where the show lost its believability for me. One such instance revolves around Fitz having to narrow down the entire population of Manchester from 1 million to a hundred based on some very strange criteria (French windows? How does the computer know if I have French windows?) he not only succeeds in doing this, but he succeeds in less than an hour. I don't think so.
So, all in all, I was a little disappointed. It's recommended viewing, but remember to leave at least some of your expectations at the door. Still, if there's new series to come after this, it would all have been for the good: I'm convinced that McGovern can still write great stuff, and maybe now that he's got his politics out of his system he can go back to writing about people.
