April TV Update

4 TV Shows I watched in 2024, bringing to an end my notes on TV watching for last year.

****

1. Cross (2024)

Alex Cross is a police detective in Washington DC. In the prologue, a year before the main part of the story starts, his wife is killed and he is obsessed with finding out who did it. He’s also a forensic psychologist (with a doctorate) and is shown outsmarting a smug racist suspect. He’s trying to find balance in his life, bringing up his two children with the help of his grandmother, Nana Mama.

He's famous for solving a kidnapping case, with the help of FBI agent Kayla Craig. His detecting partner is John Sampson, who is also his best friend, his sparring partner and calls him Sugar for some reason. Sampson, having seen him go off the rails, wants him to seek counselling. He won’t.

A well known Black Lives Matter activist is found dead in his car, apparently from an overdose. His family, friends, and fellow activists are dissatisfied with this so the Chief of Police puts Cross, who is black, local, known and respected, on the case to clear it up. He finds several discrepancies and pursues it to the frustration of the Chief.

The killer, as we the audience swiftly learn though it takes Cross several episodes to home in on, is Ed Ramsey, a wealthy well-connected Washington power broker. Cross meets him through Elle Monteiro, a executive for a kid-helping non-profit; Cross and Elle are awkwardly starting a romantic relationship. Ramsey has also kidnapped a woman. He’s transforming her into a lookalike of a serial killer. Ramsey also has the assistance of Bobby Trey, a former policeman now private security who uses his police contacts to stay one step ahead; despite this Cross and his team manage to get hold of Ramsey’s book in which he details the previous people he has transformed into serial killer alikes, then killed.

There’s another plot line; someone is targeting Cross, sending flowers, leaving his wife’s clothes, hacking into his security system and his karaoke machine. With Cross paranoid and on edge, and Ramsey connected to the Washington DC elite (some through patronage, some through blackmail, some followers of the weird death mystery cult thing he has going on) Cross’s problem is the classic police one; he knows who did it, but he can’t prove it, and he keeps making mistakes.

Aldis Hodge is Cross says the credits (with the Cross logo with his silhouette inside the O). Well there’s no need to be. This is a solid crime drama, a police procedural unafraid to ask questions about policing and corruption. In the first episode a Defund The Police supporter challenges Cross on the racist, violent nature of policing and Cross makes a very bad and violent response. The show itself is, perhaps, the rejoinder, and it’s revealed this particular criticism hits home on Cross. Later when the sister of the murdered activist comments on the different way the police handle a black man’s murder and a white woman’s disappearance, Cross is unable to answer that two cases are related.

This is based on the James Patterson Alex Cross novels, that I read several of back in the 90s before dropping off. Were there too many esoteric highly organised, highly intelligent and well-resourced serial killers? Too many coincidences? Cross a bit too much of a cypher, brilliant intuitive detective who is also a master psychologist?

Indeed perhaps one problem with the books was their immense popularity, leading to the Hannibal Lecter-isation of the serial killer. They’re all brilliant obsessives and one step ahead and have interesting monologues and games of wits etc. Which this series has in spades, and feels a little old-fashioned.  The interior sets are all dark, even when there are lights on – several times people turn the lights on and I couldn’t see more. Yet on top of that we get Alex Cross, a particular man, trying and failing to get by in the wake of his wife’s death. In a particular time and place, Washington DC in the winter, a place where the local concerns of the city are subservient to the political machinery of America that exists there. Trying to bring up his children while surrounded by murder, conspiracy and betrayal. And a man embedded in a Washington DC whose inhabitants have a deep distrust of policing, with racial tension and class tension. One that Cross finds himself in the middle of and, unlike some films and TV shows, not one he can easily get himself out of. The epilogue where he tries to make amends publicly, and it’s shown how insufficient that is and yet also an actual start is bolder than I thought they’d get with it.

Insufficient yet a start.

Watch This: Clever, grounded, contemporary update of duel of wits between brilliant detective and brilliant criminal
Don’t Watch This: Grotesque murders for obscure reasons

2. The Penguin (2024)

In The Batman (2022) crime boss Carmine Falcone is killed; the seawall around some of Gotham City is breached causing a flood; it’s revealed that corruption via the Wayne Family Renewal Fund reaches from top to bottom of the city; and that Carmine collaborated with the cops and city officials to put rival crime boss Salvatore Moroni in prison. In the wake of this, Falcone family lieutenant Oswald Cobb aka Oz aka The Penguin (Colin Farrell) returns to the club that was Carmine’s headquarters to get hold of the blackmail material he keeps in his safe. There he encounters Carmine’s son Alberto, who is there for much the same reason; although the heir-presumptive to the family he has had addiction problems. He refers to his plans to shake up the drug business; when Oz mentions his own ambitions Alberto laughs at this and Oz shoots him.

Leaving, Oz encounters a street gang trying to steal his tire rims; catching one of them, Vic, he realises he needs help disposing of Alberto’s body and, hearing Vic’s stutter, recruits him. (Oz limps, wears a leg brace, hence Penguin, occasionally his sympathy for those with disabilities or the underdog comes through). Oz considers leaving town; his mother, suffering from dementia, instead encourages his ambition.

Oz discovers his drug operation is being taken away from him and moved out of the city. He also meets Sophia Falcone, newly released from Arkham Asylum thanks to Alberto.

Oz is being sidelined by the new leadership of the Falcones; Sophia was locked away for murders she didn’t commit (she’s believed to be notorious serial strangler The Hangman). Alberto was her only ally; her father had all the family members write letters accusing her of mental instability and his contacts kept her locked up without trial. She suspects Oz of killing Alberto; he manages to make it look like the Moroni family. Sophia and Oz make an alliance to use Alberto’s new drug plan, routing it through smaller crime gangs.

This then is the story of two members of a criminal family, one a spurned heir, the other an overlooked middle manager, taking advantage of disruption in both the leadership and the city to strike out for themselves, and even seize control. Sophia uncovers secrets, the horrors at the heart of her family (which, I should note, do not include the crime business, it’s their own personal stuff that does it). Oz has secrets, but he’s not actually all that interested in them. He’s a street criminal made good, everyone knows his past is sordid.

This is a comic book TV series in that things are dramatic, people make epic declarations, they have fun hideouts, their pasts have dark murders and betrayal. What it doesn’t have is masks and capes or superpowers. And a surprising absence of the Batman, no one even mentions him, asks what’s up with that. No one remembers, say, the weird hat guy or the plant lady who went crazy. I’m not saying get Robert Pattinson on, I’m just saying no one is asking why they haven’t heard from the Batman recently. Until the end when they give us a reminder.

It's a powerful crime drama, gritty and dark but with theatrical elements. Not needing to be held down by reality. And if I have quibbles, if it has to stick strictly within bounds to prevent it encroaching on The Batman 2 (now scheduled for 20267), then so what. Enjoy it for what it is, dark and bold, full of explosions and betrayals, reveals and glorious framing in a grimy city that’s going to be extraordinary, in all the worst ways.

Watch This: Excellently cast, acted and designed crime drama
Don’t Watch This: Our protagonist is a villain, the body count will be extraordinary

3. SEAL Team (Season 7)

At the end of Season 6 Jason Hayes (David Boreanz) the leader of SEAL Team Bravo used his medal ceremony to talk about how he’d hidden his brain injury from command to keep fighting; and how in an effort to protect him his team mate Clay Spencer had come back early from paternity leave. In the action that Hayes was getting his medal for, Clay was injured and subsequently lost his leg; later intervening with a veteran in crisis Clay was shot and killed by the police. Calling him in for disciplinary action, the officers were interrupted by all the SEALs, not just in Bravo Team, who all report their own injuries and difficulties.

This accelerates action from command in dealing with injuries like these, but of course no one likes the squeaky wheel. Bravo get a trouble-some lone SEAL assigned to them and are sent to Sweden on a training mission. There they run into a terrorist attack and go into action, though Hayes freezes at an important moment.

Fortunately for Bravo Team, a team out of favour, there’s a job that command doesn’t want to do. With the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the ending of the war on terror, the Admiral wants to shift special forces to other tasks. Lieutenant Davis, the group’s intelligence officer, gets them assigned to drug interdiction in South East Asia; this has become a priority as it appears to be backed by a Chinese industrialist with the support of the Chinese government. Sending drugs that weakens America while getting money for black operations! Outrageous for an intelligence agency to do this.

The DEA introduces them to a contact, a former Green Beret who runs private security in the region, and so knows both legitimate and illegitimate goings on. When asked why he’s here rather than enjoying his retirement he claims that he’s seen and done too much; “war always wins”.

Does war always? Well perhaps it does, the show suggests, with multiple characters failing at non-military parts of their life, and showing increasing desperation to get results in the military parts. But you can make it work for you. You don’t have to become a mercenary. You don’t have to betray your country and help a Chinese-drug-backed coup in a Central American country.

SPOILERS for SEAL Team Season 7 there.

So what do we have coming to the end, after seven seasons of this? Some good stunts. Some meditation on the costs of war to American soldiers. The difficulty in re-adjusting to life at home after being at war. Other countries are places to fight, sometimes places for moral and ethical dilemmas. Sometimes you have to let things go. Sometimes you have to be the next man up and do what’s needed.

More to chew on than needed for a show about kicking in doors and blowing things up. Less thought than we might have hoped for.

Watch This: Our heroes hunt the bad guys, despite cost and constraints
Don’t Watch This: Violent men unable to consider anything beyond their own feelings

4.  Hightown (Season 2)

In Hightown Season 1 Jackie Quiñones was a fishery officer trying to work a drug-related murder case from the outside; Ray Abruzzo the state police sergeant on the task-force. Thanks to having sex with Renee Segna, a witness against her fiancé Frankie Cuevas, Ray is suspended then fired and now has to work the case from the outside. Jackie has meanwhile joined the taskforce part time.

More reversals; Frankie was in jail awaiting trial in season 1; now he and his cousin Jorge are out, setting up their drug ring and running it from Xavier’s strip club. Meanwhile Ositio, who was running the Cuevas drug ring on the outside, is now in jail, and cut loose by the Cuevas cousins due to them not trusting him.

It’s not a straight reversal. Everyone’s struggling with the new situation. Ray seeks help for his “sex addiction” but swiftly gives up on that. Jackie’s trying to stay clean from drugs and alcohol, fails, manages to alienate even her best friends and supporters. Jorge keeps needling Renee, keeps pimping the girls from Xavier’s when Renee’s trying to make it work and keep it clean (to launder the drug money). This leads to a confrontation in which Jorge is killed and Renee finds herself in an escalating situation as Frankie becomes increasingly paranoid.

An interesting aspect is that sometimes what changes things up is a people outsmarting, and sometimes people messing up. So for example Jackie is on stakeout outside Xaviers, are watching Jorge make out with his girlfriend, only for them to turn around and show they know they’re being watched. Jorge being killed has him miss his meeting with Charmaine, who brings the drugs onto the Cape; she stashes the drugs at home only for her sister to accidentally overdose when the fentanyl spills. This in turn gives the new sergeant, Saintille, taking over the job of his former partner Abruzzo, leverage over her, and starts to crack the drug ring open.

Things get a little grittier. Everyone gets a bit more desperate. everyone has to make choices they didn’t expect or want to, life or death. Everyone gets betrayed or outsmarted, and everyone also gets a moment of triumph. Both Jackie and Ray are messing up their love lives, one gay the other straight, both out of control.

Watch This: Convoluted crime drama with flawed and desperate people stumbling about
Don’t Watch This: Everyone’s leaving bodies in their wake and frankly not learning anything from it