The Responder, BBC 1, Monday and Tuesday
There won’t be any police forces in Britain or Ireland using The Responder as a recruitment tool.
This astonishingly good drama puts the edge back into a crime genre that’s been as engaging as discussing the finer points of lockdown rules with a pedant.
There is way too much cop drama on television and very little of it does what quality fiction is supposed to do – make the viewer think about life.
The Responder is full of complexity and layered characters and that feeling you get when you just know that you’re watching a representation of the truth.
Martin Freeman plays Chris Carson, a police officer in Liverpool whose life is slowly falling apart.
He’s angry and depressed. He’s a good cop who wants to help people but he’s a bit corrupt as well. His best friend is a drug dealer whom he’s “helped out a few times.”
He loves his wife and his daughter but he’s drifting away from them.
Working nights isn’t helping. Dealing with the mess of Liverpool’s underclass; “bag heads”, homeless people and “mentalists” is definitely not helping.
Responding to his police appointed therapist’s suggestion that cops are out there doing good, Chris shakes his head, suppressed rage in his eyes. “Nah, I think it’s whack-a-mole. Except the moles wear trackies.”
“I can’t remember the last time I did something good,” he adds.
That changes a couple of nights later when he rationalises a decision as a good deed.
Chris is under pressure from best mate Carl, the drug dealer, to find Casey, a drug addict “bag head”.
Casey has stolen a serious quantity of cocaine from Carl and he wants to get his stash back and/or smash her head in.
Torn between saving his own skin and presenting a teenage girl to a violent drug dealer, Carson opts to give Casey some money to get a train to Leeds.
But not before Chris eviscerates the multi-generational excuse, when Casey refuses to take responsibility for her actions.
“Whose fault is it, then?” asks Chris. “F***ing Thatcher’s?”
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Casey was lying when she said the cocaine was stolen from her and doesn’t get on the train to Leeds.
The Responder was written by former police officer Tony Schumacher, a Liverpudlian who said serving as a cop nearly destroyed him.
Schumacher proves the old adage that it’s best to write about what you know. We have yet to learn if the skills of this first-time script writer are transferable to other areas, but he is certainly a creative name to watch.
Some of his characters are as compelling as anything on television in a long time.
Macro is the low-level criminal with a heart and a conscience. But he still trades in friend Casey for a grand knowing she may be going to her death.
Then there’s Rachel the police rookie, filled with training school idealism who asks Carson for a statement after he saves her from a mauling by repeatedly punching a guy in the face who was assaulting her.
Later Rachel refuses to get in the car with Carson after he refused to let her arrest two party goers for taking drugs and you couldn’t but agree with her … and also him.
But it’s Freeman that carries this work. He is outstanding as the marauding Carson who represents the dark and the light in all of us.
If you only know him from The Office, The Hobbit and Love Actually you’ll be amazed that we haven’t seen this depth from him before.
It’s surely the performance of his career.
