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Trial & Retribution

Victoria Smurfit and David Hayman as Roisin Connor and Mike Walker in Trial and Retribution
  • Posted at 5:20pm
  • 15 January 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 5 comments

After watching Trial & Retribution (Fridays, 9:00pm, ITV1), I always feel that the world has become a little bit worse. There's no specific reason, it's just that T & R's world-view is so relentlessly bleak that it leaches into anyone who happens to be watching, inevitably colouring their outlook on life.

Thanks to this osmotic process, by the end of any given episode I feel washed out and miserable, and my already tottering faith in my fellow men and women is even more roundly dented.

Everyone in Trial & Retribution is horrible, particularly the police officers. Mean-spirited, mean-minded, petty, bullying, they shout, coerce, oppress and abuse. It's depressing.

The current story breaks T & R's usual pattern and doesn't involve the serial murder of prostitutes, a favourite topic of its writer/creator Lynda La Plante. Not that she's the only culprit - prostitutes are routinely used as expendable victims in crime dramas.

No, the story revolves around the dullest of all crime scenarios, drug smuggling. There is a death, of course, but it's fairly perfunctory and is disposed of quickly. Which leaves lots of time for us to focus on the investigation and detectives Roisin Connor and Mike Walker (Victoria Smurfit and David Hayman).

I think theirs is supposed to be a partnership, in the time-honoured manner of crime dramas, but it's hard to tell. Mike is the boss (and not a very good one) and Roisin is, notionally, his subordinate. But, even when they are involved in the same inquiry, I always feel they are working on two different investigations, so divergent are their paths.

But that's the template and it doesn't vary, right down to Roisin habitually behaving like a halfwit by becoming romantically involved with suspects (Amanda Burton's character in The Commander, another La Plante drama, does the same thing) or doing daft things that place her career in jeopardy.

In the two-part story running on 9 and 16 January, Roisin mucks up a colleague's investigation and then flirts with him in the most toe-curling manner, after she recklessly puts the life of his informant in danger.

After all of this nonsense, it's a relief to see a good police procedural drama for once. Hunter (Sunday 18 January, Monday 19 January, 9:00pm, BBC1, BBC HD) rings true, even if the story at its heart teeters on the brink of preposterous. But the actual day-to-day police stuff it represents, particularly the workings of a team of detectives, feels just about right.

Its two leads - Hugh Bonneville and Janet McTeer as detectives Barclay and Foster - are standouts. There's quite clearly no sexual tension (a good thing) so there are no tiresome romantic byways - it's all about the investigation into the disappearance of two young boys.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times - read her column in the latest issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale now.

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Comments

  • Posted on 22 January 2009
  • at 9:35am
  • by Phil

"Hunter" gave the lie as to the BBC's lack of success with modern police based dramas as did attributing ITV's "Trial and Retribution" to them. As to the f'ing it is like screen nudity. In context it is fine; overdone it is not and we need to be able to appreciate the difference otherwise our dramas will become very bland.

  • Posted on 21 January 2009
  • at 4:08pm
  • by watlingfen

'Hunter'(BBC1 Sunday 18th Monday 19th Jan) with two f'ings and a 'putting to sleep' of a child certainly reached a new low in what a (formerly) respected broadcaster today considers acceptable drama before or after 9pm; Though the acting was first class and production (camera work etc,) was faultless, in my opinion it proved why 'Shoestring' 'Poirot' and the original 'Taggart' have a cult status and guaranteed audience, why 'Pie In The Sky' is almost required viewing. They still deal with murder, violence and corruption but are screen plays designed to entertain - not sicken.

Of cause in "real life" a woman whose fearing for the life of her abducted son may tell the police to "f*** off" perhaps and an anti-abortionist kill a small child - though somehow both seem incongruous to me.

Some post 2000 detective series manage very well to stay the right side of acceptable "New Tricks" shines out - so why is it becoming a necessary point to include f'ing where a slightly lesser word would do and why bring the cold blooded killing of a child - by a Doctor - in? No Sir, this is simply not right.

Please God make the stupid new-age producers at ITV and especially BBC throw up in the toilet - not on our 21st century television screens. Keep these sick subjects and f'ing off British TV.

  • Posted on 19 January 2009
  • at 8:06pm
  • by Jerry

Ooops I wrongly attributed the show to BBC , my apologies on this point. However I have a feeling that the cap fits on this genre.

  • Posted on 18 January 2009
  • at 10:26am
  • by Jerry

The complete unprofessional approach of the two DCIs turned it more into a soap opera than a police drama. I very much doubt that modern day policing would be run along the lines of an episode of the Sweeney, with senior ranking officers acting like very junior officers. Even in the Sweeny one look or very brief word from the inspector or sergeant would have reinstalled discipline. I am sure territorial squabbles abound but I doubt if they are handled in the playground with the head teacher having to separate them.

I feel the script has the characters, all acting up a few ranks and not doing a very good job of it, pun intended, there seem to be more DCI's than inspectors. The implausible interaction of the main characters only detracted from the skimpy plot , I get the impression someone has entered La Plante plot outlines in a computer along with rough character sketches and out pops the scripts.

The BBC does not seem to have the success that other organizations do with modern police based drama's perhaps their program production or management team lack an understanding of modern day policing, they certainly seem to be stuck in a stereotypical pre 1980's time warp.

  • Posted on 16 January 2009
  • at 3:38pm
  • by Simon

Of course the women in Lynda La Plante's dramas do stupid things: this is almost invariably the way with her female characters. The point is that - in La Plante's world at least - men always get away with doing stupid things whereas women do not, all because of those horrible men (which the aforementioned writer appears to regard as a synonym for either 'chauvinists' or 'wimps')

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