Resnick (1992-'93)

British TV has always been awash with TV detectives, but they fall into two distinctive categories; there's the made-for-TV cops, and then there's those adapted from pre-existing bestselling crime and thriller literature. In the '80s and '90s it's fair to say that the BBC dominated the former category with a gold run of populist fare that featured the likes of Shoestring, Bergerac, and Spender. Whilst adaptations were principally ITV's domain, the jewels in the crown consisting of  David Suchet's Poirot, Jeremy Brett's definitive Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Morse and A Touch of Frost. 

The BBC's only real popular foray into adaptation was Lovejoy, but that genial, comfortable Sunday night offering was so far removed from the grubby, cutthroat violent and X rated nature of Jonathan Gash's original novels, and the programme only adapted a couple of the books in the first series anyway, so that need not detain us further.

So at some point in the '90s the BBC woke up to the sobering fact that ITV had the monopoly and thus they attempted to produce adaptations of other popular literary detective series for themselves. Perhaps the most successful (in terms of long-running at least) of these was Dalziel and Pascoe, the chalk-and-cheese sleuthing duo created by Reginald Hill. That series got off to a very strong start thanks to fabulously droll adaptations from Alan Plater and Malcolm Bradbury no less, and ran for eleven years - though they abandoned the source material provided by Hill very early on, offering us the law of diminishing returns. 

But on a par with those early Dalziel and Pascoe adaptations is a mini-series from four years earlier - the BBC's attempts to bring John Harvey's sandwich eating, multiple cat owning and jazz loving Nottingham based cop DI Charlie Resnick to the screen. The channel made just two adaptations of the Resnick novels - Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment - starring Tom Wilkinson and, having watched them for the first time just a couple of years ago, I've been scratching my head to think why they didn't go on to adapt every single one of them because, quite simply, this would have given ITV's Morse and Frost a good run for their money.

It helps of course that the author himself, John Harvey, adapted the novels for TV. But crucially the director of Lonely Hearts, Bruce MacDonald, understands the material beautifully and gives us something unique that still stands out as a distinctive piece of drama some twenty-four years later. Crucially MacDonald's style, combined with his knowledge and understanding of Harvey occasionally somewhat fragmentary writing style, works in close harmony to deliver an deeply atmospheric piece. Like the jazz beloved of our central character, Harvey's writing often strays from the narrative through line to provide quirky and unusual flourishes or glimpses of other themes. This is best exemplified in the way that we see the team at Nottingham CID (which includes a youngish David Neilsen before he headed to the cobbles of Coronation Street, looking rather different with short hair and a military moustache, and actor/writer William Ivory as a scene-stealing leery, neanderthal cop who despite his blunt methods gets the job done in a way we cannot help but admire) involve themselves in other secondary cases or how we catch references to their home lives. All of these instances help lend a sense of multi-dimensionality and authenticity to the proceedings.

That said, MacDonald's directorial style isn't going to be to everyone's tastes and it is not without its flaws. In creating such a distinctive atmosphere it often runs the risk of being a touch too oblique, with sections of footage done, POV style, from the perspective of our protagonists, often lingering on minor details and abstract items. And there are a lot of moments set at night were everything is just so damn dark - but that might actually be down to the quality of the off-air recording from 1992 (sadly these adaptations have never been officially released and only bootlegs are available) that I watched, I don't know.

The world of Resnick as created by John Harvey is both a well-written and addictive one, and I've enjoyed reading a few novels in recent years. Tom Wilkinson inhabits the character depicted upon the page rather well (though I perhaps expected and would have liked a more native Notts accent) and accurately captures that kind of melancholic detective who seems to have a black cloud perpetually hovering above his head and feels a little too much really well. It's a cliche now I guess, the over-empathetic policeman, but I don't imagine it was at the time. 

The second adaptation, Rough Treatment, arrived a year later in 1993. It was another classy production but, with a different director (Peter Smith) at the helm it felt a little lacking with little to lift the proceedings above watchable, despite Jim Carter and Tom Georgeson as a good pair of chalk and cheese crooks and Sheila Gish having fun as the bored and frustrated wife of a TV director. However, I don't believe for a minute that this slighter offering sealed the fate of any further adaptations - ultimately I can only presume the ascent Wilkinson's career enjoyed round about the mid '90s with The Full Monty ultimately taking him to Hollywood was the real reason Resnick was so short-lived.

DI Charlie Resnick has been on my mind this week because I'm reading another novel and am tempted to revisit these adaptations this evening. In looking over my review (which originally appeared on Letterboxd) I came across John Harvey's blog and saw that the great man himself actually referenced my review here - to have a celebrated author you personally respect single out your writing and describe it as 'really interesting' has made my day!

Rapid Reviews: Cutting Edge by John Harvey

I'd previously read just one novel by John Harvey and that was 2014's Darkness, Darkness - the final novel in the 13-book series featuring his hero Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick. That novel concerned a cold case mystery left unresolved from the days of the miners strike of 1984/'85. It was OK, a readable affair, but I felt I needed to have experienced Resnick before to have perhaps fully appreciated it. 

So I went back to 1991 and book 3 in the series, Cutting Edge which I recommend. 

A savage assault with a scalpel leaves Dr Tim Fletcher's body badly slashed in a deserted hospital walkway - the first victim in a series of brutal assaults on NHS staff in Nottingham. As panic grips the city, it's up to DI Resnick to find the killer. His chief suspect appears to be an over confident, sexually abusive medical student who had previously dated Fletcher's girlfriend - but is he and his team letting their dislike for the man clouding their judgement? Faced with a mass of clues that lead nowhere, Resnick is confronted by a face from his own past as he finds himself pushed to breaking point.

I really enjoyed this one and have come to like Resnick, the sandwich eating, multiple cat owning and jazz loving troubled 'tec. So much so that I went on to ioffer and bought a DVD of the BBC's sole attempts at adapting Harvey's novels (Lonely Hearts and Rough Treatment, books 1 and 2 in the series) starring Tom Wilkinson in the role and dating back to the early '90s.

Cutting Edge is an engrossing read full of lovely little details that play out on the periphery of the main crime; there's a handful of other investigations Resnick's team are currently looking into, and then there's their home lives too with one of his detective constable's struggling with a wife suffering from post natal depression, and Resnick himself finding himself putting up a drunken down and out acquaintance based on their mutual love for jazz. In tackling these various strands Harvey's style is quite fragmentary at times but it's never alienating or difficult in its approach. Without giving anything away, a turning point of the plot concerns a medical phenomena that is rarely spoken of and quite terrifying to consider!

But if reading Cutting Edge isn't appealing to you, you could always try listening to this enjoyable full-cast adaptation for Radio 4 dating back to 1996 and starring Tom Georgeson as Resnick, a young John Simm as Tim Fletcher and  Gillian Bevan who plays staff nurse Sarah Leonard and also provides the chanteuse torch song style vocals to the play's theme tune.

The Ghost (2010)

There's little original in The Ghost - also known in some territories as The Ghost Writer - especially when its big reveal harks back to the work of Frederick Forsyth (specifically the stuff about then leader of the GLC Ken Livingstone in his novel The Fourth Protocol) and the paranoid delusions of Peter 'Spycatcher' Wright - albeit with a 21st Century, Post Cold War twist, but regardless of its familiarity this remains a strong outing for director Roman Polanski in the twilight of his career.

In Robert Harris' novel (which he co-adapted with the director for the big screen), Polanski finds themes much in keeping with his previous work; the intrusion into troubled domestic relationships, the likeable and intelligent innocent being caught in a web of lies and murky mysteries, and the flexible nature of identity. All are present and correct in this story of an unnamed writer (Ewan McGregor, on fine form) who is hired to ghost write the memoirs of Adam Lang, a Blair-like charming yet highly controversial former British PM, played by Pierce Brosnan, after the previous writer has died in mysterious circumstances. Travelling to a wintry, off season Martha's Vineyard, where Lang lives in a forbidding looking bunker like structure in self imposed exile, 'the Ghost'  immediately finds himself in the eye of the storm when the former PM's decision to join the US in the war on terror comes back to bite him on the arse via a warrant for his arrest for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. 

And so the scene is set for a brisk and efficient thriller with a good deal of suspense and logic which sees the Ghost trying to piece together the exact nature of his predecessor's death and exactly how and why Lang rose to power and prominence so swiftly when he appeared anything but a political animal. 

I've never been a great fan of Pierce Brosnan's work but I must admit to finding him more satisfying when he plays slimy little shits - which is why I will always prefer his turn as a spy in John le Carre's Tailor of Panama to his extremely poor depiction of Ian Fleming's James Bond. He's on similar odious form here playing a thinly disguised Tony Blair, but it's worth mentioning that whilst he displays many of Blair's characteristics, the film goes to great pains to make Adam Lang a figure in his own right. As a result he manages to come across as both arrogant and pathetic. 

His Cherie is Ruth Lang played by Olivia Williams, an actress whom I feel never gets enough credit for her work. She's brilliant here, delivering a performance of great complexity, cynicism and danger. Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall also pops up as Lang's aide and (it's alluded) mistress but she fails to make much of an impression, whilst Tom Wilkinson delivers an enjoyable cameo as a secretive American academic.

A recommended watch for fans of intelligent intelligence based thrillers and of Roman Polanski, who invests the piece with some delightful sly humour and that eerie sense of eavesdropping and being spied upon that he excels in. But it is also for those people - such as myself - who could never consider themselves a fan of Tony Blair, destroyer of the Labour Party movement and hypocrite.

Wetherby (1985)

"Turns out I was a subplot. The real story was happening elsewhere"

Wetherby, David Hare's haunting yet not altogether balanced 1985 film, is an attempt to create intelligent and poetic theatrical drama in the context of the cinema.

On the surface, Wetherby is about a stranger (Tim McInnerny) who comes to the titular Yorkshire town and inveigles his way into a private dinner party before returning the next day to commit suicide in front of his hostess (Vanessa Redgrave)

Much of the film concerns itself not only in the subsequent police investigation and Redgrave and her small social circle (which includes Judi Dench, Ian Holm and Tom Wilkinson) coming to terms with what happened, with each witness statement offering up a news glimpse into what happened at the dinner party, Rashomon style.  

This plot point poses some intriguing and thought provoking questions; not only that of why did he choose to kill himself in such a way but also why does the death of a stranger, someone seemingly unknown, affect people so greatly? Hare's film, with an elliptical grace, explores the introspective here and suggests a loneliness and a sense of stagnation within Redgrave's principal character which will steadily reveal itself before the resolution. Like a game of 'Find The Lady' you'd do well to not completely focus on what it seems you are expected to focus on, one needs to looks beyond the shocking suicide of McInnerny and the subsequent red herring of the girl he harassed and stalked showing up, played by the wonderful Suzanna Hamilton. 

Indeed there's far more than initially meets the eye here as exemplified in the Redgrave character's flashbacks to her youth (where she is played by Natasha Richardson, Redgrave's daughter) and her love affair with a pilot heading out to Malaya. 

There's also the latent political content to consider, namely Hare's attempt to examine and explore the culture of the impersonal, which he saw as a key aspect of Thatcher's Britain, a tone he tried to invoke within the film.

Overall Wetherby may be a little uneven, it may beguile and frustrate audiences in equal measure but it has to be applauded for offering something so deep and intelligent away from the theatre and into the cinema.

Cassandra's Dream (2007)

Cassandra's Dream is a Woody Allen film in the Match Point/Crimes and Misdemeanors mould. A thriller and an homage to the Greek tragedies, it's a London set dark drama about two brothers, played by Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, who require financial help from their rich uncle, a self made businessman played by Tom Wilkinson.  He agrees but wants some quid pro quo; they have to kill a business partner of his (Phil Davis) who could destroy his life and career.

Unfortunately the film itself is as ill advised as the brothers decision to help their uncle.

it's perhaps telling that Cassandra's Dream seems to have done quite well in America (where one New York critic hails it one of the best films of the 00s!) but bombed here in the UK. That's because it utterly fails at convincing a British audience of its setting. It doesn't help that the film stars a Scotsman and an Irishman doing rather hokey Mockney accents, but crucially it is written by a New Yorker who has no understanding of British, and specifically London, dialogue. Even if they'd got authentic Londoners to play the lead roles, every word in the script would still feel and sound totally false. It's a tin eared travesty that brings to the focus the film's potboiler nature. You can't invest in these characters because you know that in reality no one talks or acts like this. Maybe if it was an American movie, filmed in Woody's native New York, it wouldn't matter so much - we're all used to Woody's American movies and are perhaps a little predisposed to hearing an American accent deliver great chunks of exposition or pretentious statements in a decidedly confident and non self aware manner. We can believe in Woody in Woody-land, but less so when he sets foot outside of the US.

I'd heard some terrible things about this and so I've steered clear for some time. But being a fan of Woody and a few in the cast I decided to pick it up yesterday in Cex for just 50p. Well, I don't feel cheated out of 50p and it is better than I thought it would be...but not by much. There are moments where this morality tale of a film hints at something that could possibly impress and there is some fun to be had with the dark and inevitably doomed Hitchcock style plot, but they're few and far between. Of the cast it's largely the female performers, Sally Hawkins and Hayley Atwell, in the lesser roles who convince and impress alongside a specially written score for the film (a rarity in Woody's movies) by renowned composer Philip Glass.