TV Catch Up 1

I am so far behind with reviews that there are entire seasons of TV I haven't posted yet. Here's nine loosely linked by the theme of "crime".

1. SWAT Season 6

The season opens with a two parter where some of the team are on a trip to Thailand to train with Thai SWAT. Obviously they get caught up in some gang business, which links back to Los Angeles. Back there they go back to their dealing-with-violent-crimes of the week.

SWAT is family, apparently, and several characters get family stories. Tan, having got married, finds his marriage in trouble. He gets into a fight and is suspended. This impacts his career, closing off some things he planned to do, training and leadership roles. Deacon’s had money troubles, but now is a partner is a private security firm. On top of this his family was targeted, and there’s still fall out from that; with this, his wife going back to law school, they have some arguments and problems. Luca learns some family history, family secrets and has to deal with them.

Meanwhile Hondo’s girlfriend is pregnant. He’s not precisely struggling with the danger and violence and racism and bringing a child into the world, but it is giving him some perspective. Not on the job, obviously. He's already the perfect SWAT cop. But in the other scenes.

His girlfriend, Nichelle, finds that her project with the community centre to have non-police volunteers respond to non-violent calls, is being taken over by the police. (It’s either that or they lose their funding). This leads to her being offered a job with the inspector of police, where ironically she’s suspected of being in the tank for the cops because her boyfriend is one.

Lina Esco, who played Chris, the girl-SWAT in previous seasons quit, and it’s Rochelle Aytes, playing Nichelle, who takes her spot in the credits. But not to worry! SWAT academy passed two female SWAT officers. These are Cabera (Brigette Kali Canales) and Powell (Anna Enger Ritch). Both make appearances with the team in the early part of the season, then they seem to settle on Powell. She’s a hothead who won’t follow the rules, and both Deacon and Street attempt to mentor her. Street eventually realises that her breaking protocol is based in caring too much (someone died while they were waiting, according to the rules) rather than his own early arrogance. They also threaten to send her to Rocker’s team (the other SWAT team they bring in when they need more people for a big scene). Eventually she calms down a little and accepts them accepting her, and it’s all a big family.

They’ve brought a new member onto the squad and several of them are seeing new parts of their life. Yet this is not exactly invigorating or changing the show. It seems to have said what it has to say and is now approaching the same problems in slightly different ways, finding no new conclusions. And it appears that the next season will be the last. Perhaps as well, though, to be clear, the fantasy of police who can kick down doors and tackle people, know when to save and when to fight, that’s still pretty cool stuff.

Watch This: Still great action with some thoughtful moments
Don’t Watch This: “Policing, well, it had problems but what you gonna do,” continues to be the final message of the show, incremental reform from within

2. History’s Greatest Heists With Pierce Brosnan

A documentary series about robberies. In summing up Brosnan makes the case for each one being one of “History’s Greatest,” – mostly being amount stolen, though elaborate security and the notoriety of the crime also come in to the decision. Not stated is that the show has taken into account how straightforward it is to research what occurred; almost inevitably one or more the criminals was arrested, charged and convicted, details coming out in court.

The show has the fast-cutting American style where they tell you what’s happened so far and what’s going to happen after every ad-break. We see various interviewees explaining one thing for ten to thirty seconds, then cut to another, or the recreation, or occasionally actual footage. Amongst the true crime podcasters and authors most of the crimes have someone on screen who was involved; a retired policeman or security guard usually, though in a couple of cases they have people who took part in the robbery. They get more screen time and longer sections, but still get cut up amongst other parts.

Perhaps the best part is the recreations. Exactly how much liberty has been taken is difficult to say, but the rooms match the pictures and plans of the real places shown fairly well*. The most enjoyable bit is where the robbers storm a hotel lobby, or are sitting in a bar making plans, and then the camera turns and focusses and there’s Pierce Brosnan, dressed as a sneak thief, explaining exactly what might be about to go wrong.

It's good on technical details, the what happened when, and how they overcame security obstacles. It’s a little less into the characters, one or two get their backstory fleshed out but the others get summed up in one or two word descriptions. The Mechanic, The Fixer etc. The one I’m most familiar with, The Antwerp Diamond Heist, did a few things that clarified the physical set up, but avoided some of the more lurid conspiracy theories that came out of the interview(s) with the robber who got caught.

Watch This: Some fun recreations of daring crimes
Don’t Watch This: It’s just theft, the details cut up into annoying soundbites

* Of course they do, they show us the plans and pictures that they used for the set dressing

3. The Equalizer

At the end of Season 2 Robin McCall had to reveal both her former profession (CIA super-spy) and current one (vigilante for those with nowhere to turn) to her family (daughter and aunt). She also had her team meet her police contact/associate/friend Detective Dante. And her mentor, former CIA handler, now private security company chief Bishop, who maintained her arms-length relationship with the CIA was killed.

Having seen Robin kidnapped, her daughter Delilah wants to be trained, which initially Robin refuses. Her friend Mel does though, but obviously gets in backwards, leading to D doing a (Judo?) throw on a boy who is hassling her friend. They go back to basics – observation and situational awareness. Also D is enrolled in a boxing gym.

The boxing gym is one that Dante went to when he was young. On the verge of closing – rents keep going up and no one has any more money – Dante uses some of his settlement money from when cops kidnapped and tried to kill him to save it. As it saved him in turn when he was a kid. Getting involved with it, one of the leading fighters is a low level runner for a drug dealer, which spirals out of control when the gym owner tries to stop it.

Vi and D go back to “the old neighbourhood” (is it Harlem? Some other majority black area of New York they’ve left for the suburbs?) looking for gumbo. They find it’s changed, but get caught up in some low stakes stuff there and Robin does to. I think this is also where the gym is, or nearby. Meanwhile Mel and Harry also get back in touch with their roots a bit.

The CIA have not finished with McCall. Legendary mysterious agent Colton Fisk, a former associate of Bishop, gets hold of her. He’s more blunt about the relationship – Bishop was an intermediary, softening the CIA’s threat to… well basically expose her as a vigilante though worse is possible. Fisk not only puts it plainly, he’s also rude, calling her “mall cop.” He uses her because the CIA is full of leaks and traitors, and in his first episode he uses her to flush a mole, which proves she’s trustworthy.

He's also a bit more James Bond zany, appearing and disappearing, and at one point learning that there’s an ambush he turns up, not with a SWAT team or a gun, but a flamethrower, which seems a bit flamboyant and unnecessary. McCall later refers back to this and he refuses to explain how he just turned up in a building in Manhattan with a flamethrower, saying that he saved her didn’t he. Well yes he did. It's an interesting addition; things are still fairly gritty but the stakes and scale are less low level and the violence becomes huge without warning.

The heart of it is still the mystery of the week bits, the show doesn’t have to work so hard to tie so many episodes to one or more characters. McCall has a modus vivandi with the New York Police/District Attorney and with the CIA to avoid Federal scrutiny; the online message “Odds Against you? Need Help? The Equalizer” brings in problems for her to solve. If anything the high concept CIA-terror ones are a distraction; someone is already on the case there. The show and McCall are all about who doesn’t get official help. The people at the bottom of detective Dante’s to do list (until McCall brings in a solid lead or bigger crime). The understated look at class, the overlooked (and less understated) aspects of race, gender and ethnicity is where it makes its mark.

Plus kicking in doors, investigating weird places and settings of course.

Watch This: A cool crime show, mostly grounded and gritty, sometimes zany and unlikely
Don’t Watch This: There’s violence on violence and the critique of policing is very lukewarm
In An Unexpected Twist: The previous, movie reboot of The Equalizer, staring Denzel Washington as Robert McCall, has had a third entry to the series, presumably independent of this production

4. Perry Mason

After his efforts in season one let Emily Dodson go free, Perry decides not to do criminal law any more and is discovered working for a ruthless supermarket chain owner. He’s suing a former employee who has set up his own supermarket; anyway Perry absolutely crushes him in court, and feels bad about it, but not as bad as the criminal law bit.

Then Brooks McCutcheon, son of an oil tycoon, known for his philanthropy and soup kitchens and his plans to bring a major league baseball team to Los Angeles, is murdered. He has a darker side too, he has a gambling ship anchored offshore (outside territorial waters) and has got men to firebomb rival ships, also he likes to strangle women during sex.

The Gallardo brothers, poor Chicanos from a Hooverville, are arrested for it. Mason tries to find evidence to absolve them. But this is difficult. McCutcheon had rivals and was an arrogant, ruthless and violent man; still everything points to the Gallardos having actually done it.

The DA (formerly assistant DA, until the events of season one) keeps pushing, refusing even to consider a deal. Della, Perry’s associate, tries to find out why. They’re friends, and sometimes appear at events together, to hide the fact that they’re both gay. (Perry politely ignores this until it is forced to his attention, after which his opinion is basically, hey I’ve seen all kinds of weird things, what’s one more). Both Della and Perry pursue relationships throughout, which end up tangling a little in the case – in part because the case goes from top to bottom of society.

Perry, Della and Paul Drake, his investigator, all find themselves working through changes. Perry had to sell the family farm, now lives in an apartment. He and his wife are on speaking terms, and he sees his son a bit. Della and her partner move through the difficulty of romance when both have to be closeted. And Drake, having quit as a cop in the last season, has had to move in with his brother in law, and between investigation jobs for Perry does some work that turns out to be bad; as a black man the DA has him watch members of the black community, but lie to him about who is the target.

All of this is good, layering in texture to the period and characters. This is noir, so holding the right people to account, or even figuring out exactly which crimes who has done becomes tricky. Perry himself breaks the law and, for once, gets caught. Good 30s crime and legal thriller.

Watch This: Excellent period drama with action, suspense and lots of characters getting room to breath and do their thing
Don’t Watch This: It’s all very grim, no one is clean, and everyone has to hide something
This Show: Outlasted Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels that I suggested as a companion piece to the first season, but it turns out only by the one season

5. The Rookie

Season 5 of the Rookie. Thanks to the ongoing drama of the characters they all stopped being rookies and even training officers. Fortunately thanks to the big gang bust at the end of the last season John Nolan gets a Golden Ticket – any posting in the LAPD he wants. Helicopter Pilot, K9 Dog Handler, SWAT, Assistant Deputy Chief, FBI Liaison, anything he wants. He chooses training officer, they give him a special chance to take the exam (which he missed thanks to union political shenanigans) and after a brief timelapse he gets a new “boot” (rookie).

She’s Celina Juarez, enthusiastic, believes in magic and auras, and motivated to become a cop after the disappearance of her sister as a child. She lies to her mother about what she does (claims it’s a desk job). Also there’s a remix of all the usual rookie problems (trying to do too much etc) while Nolan has to firm up his pleasant approach.

Did I say FBI Liaison? Spin-off show The Rookie: Feds (see below) is quite tightly bound to this. When previously there would be “the feds have told us this,” or “here’s guest star FBI Agent Whatever,” now members of the cast of The Rookie: Feds turn up. Sometimes one character for one scene, sometimes they’re with them for the whole episode. One early storyline is an explicit crossover, to encourage you to watch the new show. More often they’re like slightly-more-than recurring characters. It’s those guys again! See my write up of The Rookie Feds for more maybe.

That early crossover is the ending of serial killer Rosalind Dyer’s (played by the late Annie Wersching) story and her hounding of various members of the cast. The Rookie’s attempts to be all things (from one scene traffic stops to city-wide terrorist threats) inevitably had them bring in a Hannibal Lecter type character, the serial killer who manipulates events from behind bars. She was always good and interesting, but also dominated every episode she was in. Which made it a little odd when they went back to solving the mystery of the missing bike or whatever in the next episode.

Lucy dumps her boyfriend, who was previously targeted by Dyer. She starts dating Tim, once her training officer, now a sergeant, after they go undercover together as boyfriend/girlfriend as some lookalike petty criminals. This is a problem as Tim is in her chain of command. Initially they deal with this by Tim taking on a court liaison slot, but he’s the most macho action character and is clearly not feeling it (though he’s good at it). The gang do a bit of research, look for a sergeant who might want to leave the LAPD and then shuffle them around to give Tim a more suitable job (their liaison with Metro, the central tactical reserve of the LAPD, of which I believe SWAT is part, but Tim’s not SWAT. They don’t do SWAT much in this show, the patrol officers and detectives have to get in there because drama, and resolving your own story).

Our ongoing villains are now organised crime bosses, drug lords. There’s Elijah Stone, who forced lawyer Wesley to work for him after helping rescue his detective wife Angela. They got him last season, but he manages to wiggle out, and now he’s threatening their family. Oh and they have a kid and have to juggle parenting, the law and all the other stuff going on.

They try to get Stone to expose himself when Abril Rodas tries to take over the drug business her former boss ran from Guatemala. This starts some gang war, which is bad, but worse they’re too smart and Stone and Rodas team up. That plotline goes Federal and into The Rookie Feds (again).

Has The Rookie got too caught up in its own soap opera style drama? Several characters have paired up, and two have had children. Bringing in one more rookie makes the extended cast quite large, but on the other hand this does let them concentrate on the lighter b-, c- and even d-plots when one group are following a big crime and others have some personal storyline to work through. The crossovers with The Rookie: Feds are generally fun, though I think it helps The Rookie: Feds more than this show, for reasons I get into in my write up The Rookie: Feds.

Watch This: Trying to give a full spectrum of police work means that there’s always another story and we don’t know where it will go
Don’t Watch This: Not only another cop show but one caught up in it’s own soap opera nonsense

6. The Rookie: Feds

A spin-off of the show The Rookie. The Rookie began by charting the course of John Nolan, a divorced building contractor in his 40s from Pennsylvania who becomes the oldest rookie in the Los Angeles Police Department. There was a backdoor pilot of two episodes last year in The Rookie, in which FBI agent Matthew Garza discovered that a suspect in a terrorism case knew a trainee FBI agent Simone Clark. Simone, a black Angeleno, had been a high school counsellor until, in her 40s, decided to change careers and become an FBI agent.

Having now graduated the academy and got probationary status as special agents* (“Probies”) Clark and Brendon Acres are assigned to Los Angeles. Acres was an actor, the lead on popular genre show Vampire Cop (“Crime Sucks!”). This gives him a similar vibe The Rookie character Aaron Thorsen, who was wrongly accused of murder in France and has a rich media family whose campaigning got him out so has a high public profile, though that’s a very surface reading. Acres joins Garza’s squad the Special Investigative Unit, a team that get sent to bits and pieces other teams aren’t doing. Clark initially is assigned to doing background checks but forces herself onto Garza’s squad. The boss of the office isn’t keen on the team and is looking for Garza to fail, something that Clark’s career (as an older, black, outspoken woman) might not survive.

Like The Rookie, as trainees Clark and Acres get things explained to them, allowing them to be introduced to people, procedures, crimes etc. occasionally through them being asked questions by their training officers and them responding. Unlike The Rookie the FBI don’t really do “my neighbour is loud,” or “you’ve stopped in the street, step out the car ma’am,” minor crimes, and rarely do they get distracted by another case in the middle of one. These are some of The Rookie’s most charming aspects. They do make up for it a little with them often leaving Los Angeles (The Rookie has to work much harder to do this) and also by bringing in their own personal storylines. And guest appearances from The Rookie, in particular for a while in mid-season they kept having Smitty, the comic relief lazy veteran cop turn up to do things (or not do them).

I suppose the question is, is it any good? And I’m going to say yes. The crimes of the week of course, that’s the baseline, they range from fun high concept to gritty, difficult choices, to frankly egregious abuses of policing always excused by the fact that our heroes are right and the villains are appalling. That’s all generally competent even when occasionally there’s a coincidence or plan that stretches credulity. They only have forty three minutes to get through this!

It manages to include race and gender and sexuality without making too much of a fuss. In that FBI agents careers can be sunk on very minor things – or they can be made on them. When Clark breaks a kidnapping case someone from DC thinks she’d be good for publicity, bringing in candidates for agents from non-traditional backgrounds (which she is and is contributing). Clark of course puts forward her own point of view at the press conference.

In the end it’s another cop show, one that tries to balance the tension between being cops, and so having almost unlimited coercive and violent power, with doing the right thing and making things better. Garza’s team is supposed to do more actual police work, and less paperwork. And the show is ambivalent about paperwork and by extension oversight. The boss who doesn’t like Garza’s team (or at least their independence) tries to trip them up over paper work (offering Clark’s training officer the possibility of a promotion to New Orleans where his ex-wife and children are re-locating), but he’s a veteran and has covered himself. And Clark explicitly abandons her assignment in the background vetting team** to join Garza’s team, yet the paperwork guy in charge comes good when he turns out to have knowledge for a case.

Watch This: Cool crime solving with a charismatic cast
Don’t Watch This: Yet another crew of charismatic characters manage to both uphold the law and do good

* An agent is an investigator in various departments of the US Government. A special agent is a criminal investigator in the US Government, usually having arrest powers. So every FBI agent is a “special agent” as they are a police officer with arrest powers! This is actually more complicated but as an explanation for why they are Special Agents is good enough.

** The trainees have a book (folder) of things they have to do in their probationary period, and I don’t know how many you’d pass checking backgrounds. Anyway.

7. Poker Face

Charlie Cale can tell when someone is lying to her. This is, as she says, not always useful. There’s a number of ways the show uses this. Firstly there are three ways she reacts when someone lies to her. She might say “bullshit.” She might have a slight twitch (this becomes a big twitch during her time working in a barber’s shop when no one seems to tell the truth at all and this begins to cause her pain, propelling her into that episode’s adventure). Or she might display no reaction at all. But we know the other person is lying, and Charlie knows the other person is lying. (Sometimes Charlie has told a person about her ability, and they phrase things carefully, which is fun).

How do we know they’re lying? Like Columbo, the opening section of each episode shows us how the crime is committed. (There is always a crime, usually murder). Then we return to the start and see where Charlie came in. Most often she has been just out of shot, working a low level cash-in-hand job. Ignored by everyone. Well, not quite, she makes friends easily, is quick on the uptake and willing to turn her hand to (almost) anything, so is generally popular.

Why is she working jobs like that if she’s popular and is a human lie detector? In the first episode she’s working as a waitress in a casino. Some years past Sterling Frost, the owner, discovered her working a poker game, realised she had the ability and rather than either run her out of town (or worse) or use her, he decided to keep her where he could keep an eye on her. Now some years later he has retired and his son has taken over the casino. He does want to use her, to get payback on a high stakes guest (a “whale”) who has been taking advantage of the hotel while running his own games.

This inevitably goes wrong and someone gets murdered, and Charlie brings all the son’s hopes down on his head, so he kills himself. Sterling Frost threatens revenge so she goes on the run. In the second episode a deadline is established – four hours from using an ATM (or appearing in a viral video in one hilarious series of events) and someone will turn up (amusingly always Cliff LeGrand, formerly Frost Casino head of security, his efforts to track down Charlie Cale make up an entertaining introduction to the season finale). Charlie can bring in the authorities, but she can’t afford to appear on a database, or at least if she does she has to get out of town immediately.

In general each episode stands alone, as it must by the nature of the story. Charlie is working somewhere, laying low. Then someone dies and something is off about it. Someone lies when they don’t have to, and she then has to track down the evidence. I mentioned the Columbo connection, in that there may be twists and secrets, but in the first section of the episode we have seen the events that led to the killing and also how they try to cover it up. But Charlie as a drifter with no connection between this week’s case or cast and last week’s or next week’s, that’s also an old fashioned 70s style show. Even if we’re solidly in the 21^st century, especially with surveillance, and Charlie’s attempts to avoid it.

Hence we have a fun new setting, cast of characters, set of motives and style of crime every episode. There’s a truckstop in the middle of nowhere, a country barbeque joint with an attached radio station, a retirement home, a metal band on tour twenty years after their big hit, dinner theatre, a ski resort and a film visual effects studio. And each one has at least one face you’ve seen before, and often several and a name that might more usually headline a show, or even a movie, Chloë Sevigny, Adrien Brody, Ron Perlman, Jameela Jamil, Nick Nolte, Jospeh Gordon-Levitt all pass through. And if sometimes the show is a little flip, a little quick to reach for the cliché or obvious joke, that’s part of the fun, and sometimes we’ll go back and take a second look to learn that it’s not quite what we thought.

Watch This: Excellent murder mystery of the week marrying old school structure to modern film making, looking at American life in small towns and cities from the bottom up
Don’t Watch This: People doing okay find themselves threatened, turn straight away to murder

8. Magnum PI

At the end of last Season Magnum and Higgins finally decided to start dating, then they cancelled the show. However some deal was struck and they renewed it, either for a 20 episode final season split into 10 episodes, or for two 10-episode seasons. So this is either Season 5 or Season 5 – Part 1.

Magnum and Higgins decide to keep their relationship private to begin with, while they’re still figuring stuff out. They bicker less (boo) and try and communicate more, and express concern when the other is going into danger rather than telling them they’re an idiot for taking risks. It’s a little bit sweet, which maybe isn’t all that good as the spikiness between them was something enjoyable.

They put a bit of spikiness back in with a running plot for the whole (half) season. Captain Buck Greene, formerly Magnum and pals' commanding officer goes missing, turning up dead. He’s been questioned to try and track the team down. Someone wants revenge for their special forces operations in Afghanistan and is using mercenaries to find them.

They have difficulty getting the authorities to take an interest as detective Katsumoto has been suspended after last season’s finale, when they broke a prisoner out of jail to rescue his (Katsumoto’s) ex-wife. Katsumoto spends some of the episodes trying to decide if he’s going back to the police, doing a bit of fathering to his son and also a little legwork and private security, some thanks to Magnum. Another detective takes on Katsumoto’s job; for about two and a half episodes he treats Magnum with the respect he deserves (none) before becoming the slightly spiky cop they go to.

Both TC and Rick have family things going on. Rick’s now a father, though he’s not with the mother of his daughter; for once Magnum does him a favour by letting him stay with him (leading to him discovering Higgins and Magnum’s relationship). TC's mother, who abandoned him as a child, turns up on the island. Eventually he meets her. He’s also adopted a kid.

In fact they’re all mellowing and two of them have become fathers. And Magnum and Higgins respect that and are less likely to throw them into the middle of danger. But the plots do not respect that. It throws Rick into problems one episode, and the ongoing plot of someone killing Greene and trying to find the team insists on them being at risk.

Is the show getting anywhere? The single episode plots all seem relatively high concept, they go undercover as lifeguards, and in a mental hospital; they track high end stolen whiskey through social media; a murdered dog; a billionaire being tracked by a drone that they chase on horseback. There would be less of the heavily-armed mercenary group having gunfights with criminal gangs if it weren’t for the season plot. With an end in sight they’ve been willing to pull out the stops on the characters, but they’ve mostly been charming already. Softening them, making them more responsible, doesn’t make the show more interesting, doesn’t especially make them more likeable. Anyway there’s only ten episodes left to go so I guess I’m here to the bitter (sweet) end.

Watch This: Crime solving (and committing) hi-jinks with charming characters in an interesting and gorgeous setting
Don’t Watch This: It’s just more crime, fist-fights, car-chases, gun-fights, foot-chases and occasionally helicopter chases

9. Annika

At the end of the first season, after a life-threatening event, Annika was concerned about what would happen to her daughter if she died. She’s the head of Police Scotland’s Marine Homicide Unit so it could happen. And she has a fraught relationship with her parents, who are Norwegian and live on a glacier (?). Her daughter Morgan has been brought up in Scotland (Annika suggests that she doesn’t speak Norwegian but it becomes clear that she is over-stressing the difficulties).

Hence the ongoing plotline as they investigate six murders over the course of the season, is about Morgan’s father*. This uses dramatic irony before she lets him know, then the two of them find themselves in positions where the conversations are quite pointed. This is funny, though in a wry, nodding way rather than laugh out loud.

The use of literature to reflect on events on the episode seems a little murkier this time. Perhaps because the actual murder cases seem to take a back seat to other concerns. The first two episodes revolve around Annika trying to bring herself to tell Morgan’s father that he’s Morgan’s father. The last two revolve around Annika’s own father coming to visit. In between one member of the team leaves to get a promotion, and a new character arrives. Meanwhile Blair, the final member of the team, is pregnant and has to come to terms with that. There’s no room for “just a murder investigation” episodes with this much personal ground to cover.

There’s a good running joke where Annika’s car having been blown up at the end of season one and season two starting about ten minutes later, she’s lent her boss's car. It’s high tech and she talks to it, then it gets damaged and the boss is annoyed, though she already knew better so almost as much at herself.

So how are the murder mysteries? They’re fine. As the marine homicide unit there’s always a water connection. There are lots of lovely establishing shots of rivers, channels, bridges and of course boats racing about. They follow the usual format for a TV detective show; they’re called out to a body** which is in an unusual place (in a cage, in a shark tank, in a block of ice etc), then they meet a cast of weird and shifty people and try to unearth motives. There’s Scotland as magnificent wilderness (usually river or sea side) Scotland as innovative new business, Scotland as small towns with people getting by, Scotland as cities full of grim tower blocks and Scotland as literary hub. Also just a place people live and try to get on with their lives.

Perhaps in an effort to distinguish itself from other quirky detectives in gloomy, gorgeous police procedurals, Annika has chosen to concentrate on Annika’s complex family relationships. And with the short UK-style 6 episode seasons this has not impacted the actual murder mysteries, which are perhaps not first rate but make up for it with the stylish settings. We’re left with something of a cliffhanger, and a personal dilemma for Annika. Just like the first season then.

Watch This: A cop show that’s at least as interested in being a drama, a comedy and a commentary on all those
Don’t Watch This: People get killed, cops have family problems, also reference books

* As revealed in the last scene of season one and in the introduction of season two it’s Detective Sergeant Michael McAndrews, the team’s search diver, who lost out on promotion and leading the team to Annika. Also a family man who (after he and Annika were together) is married with children.

** Obviously Annika stumbles on one while staying with her father at the eco-tourism resort Morgan is doing work experience at, which everyone agrees is typical for her.