SummaryDetective Chief Inspector John Luther (Idris Elba) returns to work after being suspended in another case, but soon finds his personal and professional lives becoming precarious yet again.
SummaryDetective Chief Inspector John Luther (Idris Elba) returns to work after being suspended in another case, but soon finds his personal and professional lives becoming precarious yet again.
With the tormented Luther, it's sometimes tough even to identify who is the cat and who is the mouse. Writing and acting come together to produce characters, more than stories, who are powerful, surprising, ambiguous, and all that other stuff.
Luther avoids some genre cliches--we know the killer's identity from the get-go, which sidesteps the time-stamp predictability of a Law & Order episode--but plunges headfirst into others.
Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson), whose braininess extends to an expertise in physics and an acute ability to help Luther unravel the most advanced criminal minds. The two circle each other dangerously, their chemistry both bizarre and addicting.
Summon your patience and settle in for the long haul. By its end, the series' exploration of how ordinary human fallibility is transformed into shocking human depravity is compellingly inventive.
The series offers strong, striking cop stories to accompany the intense thrills of the Luther-Alice cat-and-mouse game. But it is that back-and-forth and the sexual tension that develops between the pair that makes Luther stand apart.
Luther, the story of an impulsive, very intelligent London cop, manages to be an excellent showcase for Idris Elba (The Wire) and an increasingly impressive character drama that goes to some dark and absorbing places.
So long as Elba's on the screen, I'm interested, and even more when he and Wilson are sharing it. But ultimately, Luther turned out to be more average than I thought at first, regardless of its country of origin.