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Thursday, November 12, 2009

A few thoughts on Murderland

2:59 PM / Television / No Comments

Murderland is a three-part crime drama starring Robbie Coltrane that aired on ITV1 over three weeks, from October 19 to November 2. Crime dramas are, of course, a dime a dozen on ITV's evening schedules, whether they're long-running series like Taggart and Wire in the Blood or standalones like this, but this one caught my attention because of its use of the "parallel perspectives" method of storytelling, of which I'm rather fond... when it's done well. Basically, each part, it seemed, would tell the story from a different character's point of view, with each revealing information to which the protagonists of the other two parts are not privy. In reality, Murderland essentially drops the ball in that regard, but more on that in a moment.

It's standard murder-mystery fare: in the mid-90s, thirteen-year-old Carrie Walsh returned home from a party to find her prostitute mother murdered. There was no sign of sexual assault, but the attack was so brutal and frenzied as to suggest that this was not some spur of the moment thing: whoever did it bore a serious grudge against the poor woman. Bereft and with no immediate family upon whom to rely, Carrie turned to Douglas Hain (Coltrane), a scruffy detective inspector with an unconventional work ethic. Despite his promises to Carrie, however, the murder was never solved, and Hain's conduct resulted in the case being jeopardised and him being forced into early retirement. Fifteen years later, on the eve of her wedding, Carrie - now calling herself Carol - turns up on Hain's doorstep, adamant that she can't move on with her life until she knows the truth.

It's safe to say that the first instalment, told from the point of view of Carrie on the day of her mother's murder, makes the strongest impression. The writer, David Pirie, teases us with just enough information to get our attention and presents us with a genuinely unsettling view of events as a young, naive girl's life is turned upside down in the space of a single day. The material is all fairly conventional, but the perspective from which it is told puts a fresh spin on it. We see the world through Carrie's eyes, and it's a frightening place, filled with adults acting in odd and sinister ways, the reasons for their behaviour unexplained. A variety of suspects are introduced, but they all remain shadowy and ill-defined, as befits the perspective from which they are seen. Things will, we justifiably assume, become clearer in the subsequent episodes.

Only, in reality, they don't. The second episode, while told from a different perspective, essentially rehashes the first episode in its entirely, providing virtually no new information and failing to move the present day narrative forward. This is the first warning sign that the "parallel perspectives" concept isn't really being used in a meaningful way, and the big problem is that the script doesn't play entirely fair. The Hain character, from whose point of view the second episode is told, knows more than Carrie, but Pirie deliberately keeps certain information from us until the third episode. As such, Episode 2 may superficially be told from Hain's perspective, but we don't really get into his head and see the case through his eyes. The additional material in his episode ultimately amounts to little more than a few cutaways to him speaking privately to his colleagues. Since Episode 1 was told from Carrie's perspective, we weren't privy to the content of these conversations, but when revealed to us in Episode 2, they consist either of what we could already have guessed or pointless asides which bring nothing new to the table.

It doesn't really work because, although we're meant to suspect him, we never buy Robbie Coltrane as a plausible suspect. Beyond a cliffhanger at the end of the first episode, the script never really does anything more than toy with the notion that Hain could have committed the murder. This is partly a structural problem: the second episode, shown from his perspective, leaves the audience in no doubt that he is innocent, but the third episode, which picks up the story in the present day and tells it primarily from the adult Carol's point of view, again tries to cast suspicion on him in a very half-hearted way. The third episode is certainly a step up from the second, as it does get the plot moving once more towards its conclusion, but it is filled with contrivances and coincidences that seem to have been inserted because they are needed in order to wrap things up rather than coming organically out of the narrative. In one of the more ludicrous developments, Carol begins working at the same brothel her mother used to frequent (why she does this is not made entirely clear, but it seems to have something to do with her wanting to step into her mother's shoes to get to know her better), and on her very first night there happens to cross paths with one of the suspects. (This also leads to an oddly gratuitous scene, out of step with the tone of the rest of the programme, in which we see her having sex with a client in rather sordid detail.)

There are some genuinely chilling moments, the stand-out being when Hain is awakened in the middle of the night by undertakers who have been sent to pick up his body (the implicit threat being that they will be carting him away in a pine box for real if he doesn't cease his meddling), but not enough to keep tensions raised for three hours. Meanwhile, too little time is spent actually developing the various suspects (the second episode should have been the ideal point at which to do this), so they barely even register with the viewer. The result of this is that we eventually cease to care about the identity of the perpetrator, as it is essentially meaningless: it makes little difference which of the handful of vaguely drawn men is guilty (or indeed more than one of them). It all adds up to an incredibly pat ending which feels rushed and concludes on a deeply unsatisfying note. We're told that everything has been wrapped up neatly and that Carol can now move on with her life, but it's hard to shake the feeling that this is not because the character has found any real closure but rather because the show's time is up and the 10 o'clock news is about to start.

As for the acting, Coltrane is a good, solid presence, although it's hard to forget his role as Fitz in Cracker, just as, when watching Ken Stott's anaemic interpretation of Rebus, it's impossible to forget his far more compelling turn as Pat Chappel in The Vice. Coltrane has one of those instantly recognisable faces, and unless the material is very good indeed, it's hard to forget the actor and concentrate on the character. Sharon Small does what she can with the criminally underwritten part of an interfering (in Hain's eyes) child psychologist, and virtual unknown Amanda Hale does a decent enough job portraying the adult Carol. The stand-out performance, however, comes from Bel Powley as her thirteen-year-old counterpart. She has a very odd style of enunciation, which oddly enough works because it firmly plants the character in our heads. All three episodes are attractively shot, with Hain and Carol's memories given an appropriately hazy quality. The director, Catherine Morshead, goes in for lots of tight close-ups of her cast's faces, and the handheld camerawork adds to the feeling of disorientation and confusion.

Fine performances and slick cinematography aside, though, Murderland ultimately feels like a bit of a letdown. In this day and age, it's actually asking rather a lot of an audience to tune in for a combined running time of three hours, and it only seems fair that they be rewarded with a satisfying conclusion at the end of it. Murderland has some good ideas, but despite superficially seeming to challenge conventions with its unusual structure, it's really just a bog standard crime thriller with an underwhelming central mystery.

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