I’ve enjoyed all three seasons of Luther, but like all such things I am never sure if some aspects are a cultural misunderstanding on my part or just as weird to the native audience.
From an American perspective, John Luther is a typical gruff, hardass cop who doesn’t let every little rule get in his way; in a US series, he’d be somewhere between the good guy and the too-good cop smirked at for being too rule-abiding.
The perception of him within the series is that he’s an out-of-control lunatic - a House, an Andy Sipowicz, a Vic Mackey - who is dangerous, goes to extremes and has to be protected by his colleagues. Protected, both from public and internal-affairs scrutiny, and from his own tendency to go full batshit on perpetrators.
So how is he seen by UK viewers? Is he a realistic portrayal of a tough cop who goes over the lines in a culture where most cops really do follow the rules and have more respect for procedure? Or is the whole show a bit of a put-on, a backlash against American-style Rambo cop shows?
Well I’m not British so I can’t answer the OP as asked.
One thing bothered me about the last season (which I have only seen the first two episodes I think).
[spoiler] The thing that drove Ripley over the edge to work against him was when he “warned” the suspect which allowed him to mangle his hands to ruin any fingerprints. From my American cop eyes he did absolutely nothing wrong. As I saw it these were the points that Ripley had a problem with.
[ol]
[li]Instead of bringing the father down to the station to get fingerprinted he called him and asked him to come down the next day.[/li][li]He seemed to not be putting much effort into the case. [/li][/ol]
But to me:
[ol]
[li]There was no proof the father was the killer. It was a hunch based on motive alone. The only option he had was to ask for cooperation. Even getting a warrant would be questionable with what they had. This might differ from British law. Maybe there he could have forced the father to gives prints. Not here.[/li][li]He had two cases. An active serial killer and a one off murder of an asshole. It’s obvious the active serial killer should have been the priority. Due to the circumstances the asshole’s murderer probably isn’t striking again. [/li][/ol]
The fact that Ripley went completely nuts over the fact that Luther didn’t drag (Mr Barnaby?) down to the station and force him to provide prints felt really wrong.
To me Elba’s acting is first rate. He has charisma that can’t be taught. But the situations are very contrived. [/spoiler]
As a US citizen and occasional watcher of cop shows, that isn’t my perception at all.
One of the reasons I never watched the show after the premiere was that it was unbelievable that Luther could get away with the stuff he pulled. To be fair, I had much the same reaction to House, and my wife loved that show. But it looked to me like any tort lawyer worth his legal pad would fall to his knees weeping “As God is my witness I shall never be hungry again” if he found a client that Luther pulled half that shit on.
Overlooking irregularities because he gets results is one thing - Luther was more like a magic ATM that dispenses unlimited settlements and “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards to everybody he ever investigated. And any supervisor who overlooked his stuff would be risking [list=A][li]her career, and [*]serious jail time.[/list]No idea how it came across in the UK, but that’s how it came across to me.[/li]
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t have an answer to the OP’s question, but I hate to see a neglected thread. (I have two dogs and three cats for the same reason.)
I wanted to like this program. I think Idris Elba is really attractive and I even DREAMED about him last week. But Luther is so completely out of control that I couldn’t watch more than one episode. You never know what he’s going to do. I don’t like to sit braced for the unexpected atrocity to splash across the screen and sear itself into my brain. I like my heroes to operate within some set of (even self-imposed) rules. I’ll just have to wait for this actor to turn up in another series–or in my dreams again.
Maybe I watched a different Luther. Or maybe I’ve watched too many outta-control cop shows. But John Luther doesn’t strike me as a particularly violent or out of control cop. Like Loach (albeit from a different perspective) I find the other character’s reactions to him absurd and contrived.
Huh.
But yes, we just finished watching House beginning to end and he didn’t get arrested, lose his license or go to jail a tenth as much as he should have. Although there were references, especially later, to the endless stream of malpractice and other cases he generated for the hospital lawyers. Small sop to reality at best.
I wanted to respond previously, but I have no helpful input in regards to the question raised in the OP as mine is also an American perspective. Still, post-bump, I figure I can chime in.
Personally, I think the show is very good, and (pretty tame spoilers to follow so I’ll box them just to be safe)…
…Luther’s interactions with Alice give the show a lot of its appeal for me. The way she responds to John, and is fascinated by him, the way he’s resigned to who and what she is and still comes to rely on her as a valuable resource, well, it’s why I kept coming back.
I did feel that, as mentioned, Luther just wasn’t all that out-of-control. I always took that to be the result of a lot of pressure from the powers-that-be to toe the line. He seemed to struggle with it, and definitely crossed that line from time to time, though.
