Luther

Luther (2010) Somewhere in London a little girl is sealed in an airtight box, and her oxygen is running out. The only man who knows where she is (the psychopath who put her there) is dangling by his fingertips over a three- or four-story drop. DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) is standing over him. The psycho pleads for Luther to pull him up, and Luther says tell me where the girl is first. The psycho spills it, Luther calls it in, and the girl is rescued in the nick of time. Now pull me up, says psycho. First, tell me about the three other children you killed this way, and if there were any more. No more, no more, just the three, the psycho babbles. Now pull me up. Luther just stands there, and the psycho slips and falls.

But he doesn’t die. He is in a coma, and seven months later when the inquiry finds that Luther did nothing wrong, the fuckhead is still alive, and hanging like a sword over Luther’s head. Everyone on the force seems to know that Luther let him die, and they view him with suspicion. Luther himself is tormented by his act, and worried that the killer will peach on him.

And I say … bullshit. I mean, Luther can be tormented to his heart’s content. (I would have stomped on his fingers.) But this story does not describe any police force in the world. I believe ninety-nine percent of cops anywhere would have stomped on his fingers. But more importantly, all cops, anywhere in the world, would have instantly known what to do. They would know how to tailor their testimony so that it was clear that Luther was entirely innocent of wrong-doing, and just about all of them would have been happy to stand him to a pint at the local for what he did. I would be proud to buy him one, too.

As for the killer’s potential “testimony” … good lord, the chances of him actually remembering anything, should he come awake after such head trauma and seven months in a coma, approach zero. And if he does, so fucking what? Would any jury in the world believe the testimony of a monster who suffocated three little children? Show them to me, if you think you can. Not even the judge who let that mass murderer, the “affluenza” kid walk (and as of this writing, flee!) would not accept that.

So what am I, just a lot worse than most people? I’ll cop to that, and it will never cause me a sleepless night. But I just didn’t believe any part of this first episode of the series that has received a lot of praise. And I’m afraid it only gets worse.

The first case Luther is called on to solve is the murder of a man, a woman, and their dog. He questions their super-genius distraught daughter, and quickly decides that she is a narcissistic sociopath who gets off on doing bad stuff and getting away with it. She pretty much admits it, smiles, and dares him to find any evidence that will put her away. And he can’t. Which I have no problem with. In fact, I like it in fiction when (every once in a while; let’s not make a habit of it) the bad guy or girl gets away. But soon she is threatening his ex-wife, holding a hatpin to her ear. And here is where, as soon as I learn about it, I grab my old cricket bat and put her down like a mad dog, and use my police skills to make sure her body is never found. She has proved she is capable of cold-blooded murder, she has threatened to kill someone dear to me. What more do you need to know? Again, I guess I’m just a rotten person compared to John Luther.

But now it gets really ridiculous. He seems fascinated by this bitch, and allows her to taunt him about the comatose psychopath and many other things. It looks like an actual friendship is developing, gods help us all. I checked ahead at Wiki, and sure enough, she continues to show up. They become a sort of team. It is to vomit.

As if this piece of shit couldn’t get any worse, in the second episode we find Luther and the whole namby-pamby London force trying to stop an insane ex-soldier who has already killed six cops! In the finale Luther finds him, goes in without backup or a gun. Naturally the killer gets the drop on him, and while being brutally rifle-whipped, Luther uses “psychology” to subdue him … by calling him a bed-wetter, a weakling, a daddy’s boy, and a ponce. I was trying hard not to laugh out loud, but my disgust with the whole stupid situation helped me a lot. There were many other scenes almost as bad as this one. What a hot mess this shit is. I can’t imagine why anyone likes it.