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.
The season-four miniseries never exceeds the brazen hilarity of previous seasons, but it continues apace, and for a show so full of intense action, keen performances, and self-aware humor, that’s plenty.
[The] one-night movie comeback is as psychologically intense and disturbingly nerve-racking as fans could hope for (or dread).... taut urban thriller. [7-20 Dec 2015, p.17]
Luther feels just a bit more ordinary than usual this season, though it serves as another reminder of how magnificently, expressively physical Elba is as a performer.
Luther: Outlaw clearly wants to be a hard reset for the direction of the show, but it can’t seem to shake the clichés of its main story, which follows a serial killer whose tics are lifted directly from various incarnations of Hannibal Lecter, with a bit of Kevin Spacey’s Se7en killer for additional seasoning.
By the end, I was wrung out from disappointment, from the awareness that Cross’s script was woefully underdeveloped, more like a double episode of a “Criminal Minds”-like procedural than part of an outstanding franchise.