crime
Adam Sweeting
With Magpie Murders currently airing on BBC One, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is another gem from the BritBox stable, where it made its debut last year. Its secret weapon is Hugh Laurie, who’s all over it as screenwriter, director and actor.Wisely, he has steered clear of the well-worked territory of Poirot and Miss Marple, and instead has adapted a Christie novel from 1934 which introduces us to a pair of amateur sleuths, Bobby Jones and Lady Francis Derwent (familiarly known as Frankie). However, Christie completists will doubtless already know that a previous ITV version of the story from Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Finding a fresh twist on the traditional detective mystery is virtually impossible, but Anthony Horowitz has made a bold stab at it with Magpie Murders. This TV adaptation (which appeared on the BritBox streaming platform last year) has been masterminded by Horowitz from his 2016 bestseller, which ingeniously features two interlocking stories, one set in the present day and one in the 1950s.Conleth Hill stars as bestselling crime novelist Alan Conway, a staggeringly wealthy but bitter and disappointed man. He struck it rich with his series of novels featuring the detective Atticus Pünd – Pünd Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Director Brandon Cronenberg has inherited his father David’s eye for the twisted and the sinister. After the creepy mind-meld dystopia of 2020’s Possessor, Infinity Pool finds Cronenberg turning his attention to horror-tourism. It’s like The White Lotus on bad acid.Infinity Pool is set in the fictional coastal nation of Li Tolqa – the film was shot in Croatia, but wherever it is, Li Tolqa is an impoverished police state with a draconian legal system which stipulates the death penalty for all crimes. Queasily inverted camera angles and shots of a menacing sunset and dark, roiling waves suggest Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The moral of this story is that if you’re going out to commit a robbery, don’t take your iPhone with you. This was the grave error committed by TJ (Anthony Turpel) and his friend Ross (Chris Lee), whose attempted heist was foiled by an angry shotgun-toting citizen. TJ managed to get away, but Ross – carrying the iPhone containing incriminating evidence of the pair’s guilt – was shot and left for dead.When a distraught TJ confessed all to his sister Chloe (Bailee Madison), he thought his goose was cooked. However, Chloe had other ideas. Unleashing the deductive powers that have made her an apt Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Junior (Alec Baldwin) peers through his airplane window at fluffy clouds with childish wonder, then a wolfish grin of opportunity. He turns to practising the signature from his latest mark’s stolen wallet, with Miami below for the taking.These opening seconds set out the mix of outlandish absurdity, fragile dreams and danger in George Armitage’s 1990 adaptation of Charles Willeford’s 1984 novel Miami Blues. This balancing act rests on Baldwin’s ambiguity in his first starring role as a goofy yet feral criminal. His piercing, Paul Newman-blue eyes light up a film-star handsome face, then dull Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The raid on the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at Heathrow in November 1983 has entered the folklore of British crime and criminology. The gang of six armed robbers had expected to find £3m in cash, but instead got away with £26m worth of gold bullion. The story of what happened to the loot, the thieves and their associates remains at least partially swathed in mystery to this day.There has been a variety of dramas and documentaries made about the case, but The Gold, a six-part drama authored by Neil Forsyth, uses the story to create a fascinating, interlocking mesh of characters and motivations. Top Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Quentin Tarantino’s is the first voice you hear in Reservoir Dogs (1992), riffing on Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. The gang of fellow robbers we see gathered round his character all talk like versions of the obsessive ex-video store clerk at times, rapping pop culture opinion and relishing pungent language.Soon Steven Wright’s doleful DJ is cueing a Seventies song, the gang leave their diner meeting in immediately iconic slow-motion and, after a fade to credits black, we hear Mr Orange (Tim Roth) scream before we see his shirt soaked in blood, supported by Mr White (Harvey Keitel) as they Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In this glittering era of global streaming, the viewer is constantly bombarded with the latest and most sensational TV drama from South Korea, Australia, Denmark, California etcetera. But Huddersfield’s own Sally Wainwright continues to show most of the competition a clean pair of heels.Scott & Bailey, Last Tango in Halifax and Gentleman Jack notwithstanding, it’s Happy Valley which is liable to be remembered as her crowning achievement, and this long-anticipated third and final series is steadily tightening its grip as it reaches the halfway mark. The BBC’s seemingly counter-intuitive Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Edgar Allan Poe fathered the detective genre as well as a school of Gothic horror, and Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Louis Bayard’s 1830-set novel acts as an origin story for the author and the whodunnit.Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is the prototype for the Rue Morgue murders’ deducer, Auguste Dupin. He’s a legendary, retired police detective, asked to solve a death at the West Point military academy in wintry upstate New York. The suicide verdict of Dr Marquis (Toby Jones) is swiftly altered to ritual murder then followed by a second, with hearts carved out of hanged bodies. Landor Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel is an even more brightly entertaining puzzle picture, revelling in the old-fashioned glamour of enviably sunny climes and another rogues’ gallery of piquantly deployed film stars. Self-styled world’s greatest detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is again on hand to pick up the inevitably murderous pieces.Filmed during lockdown, Glass Onion is a delayed pick-me-up for those restrictions, packed with cinematic endorphins. Blanc is in a rut in this caseless, Covid world, till he’s invited to the private Greek island of tech mogul Miles Bron (Edward Norton) for a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The last couple of series of Shetland (BBC One) brought the previously much-loved series alarmingly close to shark-jumping territory, converting the remote and thinly-populated Shetland archipelago into a war zone teeming with people-trafficking gangs, murderers and drug dealers. Can Series 7 restore some sanity?This opening episode slithered down the ramp for a promising start. Series 6 left the career of DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall, here making his last appearance in the role) hanging in the balance, in the aftermath of the death of Donna Killick and her attempt to implicate him in a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Connoisseurs of the Britbox streaming service may already have caught up with this three-part series, which has evidently been pressed into service on ITV to pad out TV’s annual summer slump. They could have called it Midsomer Murders Goes to the Côte d’Azur, as it details the adventures of Investigating Judge Antoine Verlaque (Roger Allam) and his partner Marine Bonnet, a criminal psychologist played by Nancy Carroll.Based on the novels by Canadian author ML Longworth, the show poses as an old-fashioned detective series, but is really a shamelessly sybaritic wallow in the glorious scenery, Read more ...