Seasons 1 (6 episodes) and 2 (4 episodes) of Luther can be viewed on Netflix Watch Instant as of this writing.
LUTHER: Official Synopsis
Crime drama series starring Idris Elba as Luther, a near-genius murder detective whose brilliant mind can’t always save him from the dangerous violence of his passions.
I can be a bit of a movie snob, and I’m not all that ashamed to admit it. It isn’t that I genuinely think film is a superior format to television, it is just that I’m more inclined to commit to features than I am to the hours and hours that it usually takes to really invest in a TV show. I often find the sheer time commitment to be a deterrent from me taking in a lot more television.
So, what convinced me to check out Luther when I haven’t even caught up on Game Of Thrones or Walking Dead or even Breaking Bad? I’ve got two words for you: Idris Elba. After seeing Pacific Rim earlier this Summer (and shotgunning all 5 seasons of The Wire during my bout with the flu this past winter) I decided that Idris Elba is just one of the most exciting actors working today, and a BBC detective series anchored around him was exactly what I wanted to follow up my joyous Pacific Rim experience with. Elba doesn’t disappoint here, elevating John Luther to mythical status in just a few short episodes. Elba is a breathtakingly beautiful man and a brilliant actor to boot.
Right now the first two seasons of Luther are available on Netflix, and a third season appears to have been completed if IMDb is to be believed. But I’m just going to touch on the first two seasons since those are the only ones I have seen.
I am told that the BBC often structures shows in a similar fashion to Luther, which is to say the seasons are far shorter and punchier than American TV audiences are accustomed to. Each season is almost more like what we Yanks would consider a mini-series. And I have to tell you, I’m a really big fan of this format. It meets me right in the sweet spot regarding my feature vs. TV debate. Ten total episodes is all you need to commit to right now on Netflix, and that time commitment is just SO much less than say, Lost, which I believe had upwards of twenty episodes per season. At 10 episodes total, the series is able to be engrossing, while simultaneously being lean and mean. I think the BBC is doing something right with this type of formatting.
One reason I keep prattling on about the show’s format is that I genuinely think it adds to the quality of the product. The writers of Luther don’t have to worry about being written into a corner or maintaining a status quo. No character is safe in a format like this, and conventions have just enough time to be established before they are broken or upended.
Let me get back to Idris Elba, who is the anchor of this show and the element that elevates it above other police procedurals. There is almost no way to describe his character in a way that doesn’t sound cliché. As a matter of fact, his character is so familiar that his being British is maybe the only real twist on the time-honored tradition of the “tough but brilliant cop who does things his own way.” So yes, you’ve seen shows like Luther before. In each episode there will be a new murder case that will almost certainly be opened and closed all in one week. But what Luther does extremely well is to have several important through-lines in the midst of the “open and close” cases each week. And most of those have to do with Luther’s ongoing personal marital struggles and his warding off internal affairs left and right.
Elba’s John Luther is, to the audience, an unquestionably good man. We trust him as a force of good in a very dark world. But he’ll do anything to beat the bad guy, and in almost every episode you’ll catch him playing loose with the law. Sometimes you want to scream at him to stop making bad decisions, but the character is just so smart and so charming that you can’t help but be drawn to him. And his superiors don’t necessarily have the firm faith in his goodness that we audience members do.
One of the great through-lines of the show involves actress Ruth Wilson as Alice. She’s basically the show’s Hannibal Lecter character in that she is a psychotic murderer who will butt heads with Luther over and over, often outsmarting him, but will also come to respect him and even occasionally help him. The relationship between these two characters is dripping with drama and playfulness and who cares if it feels ripped off from Silence Of The Lambs?!
John’s relationship with his wife feels real, and genuinely troubled. And actress Indira Varma elevates the domestic strife significantly with her performance. His “sidekick” character, Justin Ripley (Warren Brown), is the audience surrogate, learning how to process Luther and work alongside him even as we in the audience are figuring him out as well. The cast is uniformly top notch, even if this Yank occasionally had a legitimately challenging time understanding every word spoken in thick and slang-filled British accents. But if you ask me, that only adds to the show’s charms.
The bottom line is: Luther is a much better than average police procedural with a riveting cast, quality writing from show creator Neil Cross (who also wrote the recent horror film Mama), and even excellent camera work and production value. I won’t say that Luther is any kind of “all time great” TV show. It is too familiar. And with a structure aimed squarely at thrilling you and keeping you guessing, the creative team will occasionally sacrifice logic or ask you to swallow quite a bit. But you will swallow it, and swallow it gladly, because things just go down smooth when Idris Elba is feeding them to you.
And I’m Out.