1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 47: Cracker
I may as well begin with IMDb’s description:
(House is Holmes.)
“Fitz” – Robbie Coltrane, Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies – is greater than either of them. Greater in greatness, and in girth. He’s the Sir John Falstaff of police TV. He gambles and drinks and smokes and constantly needles people because he’s often bored; and he’s bored because he’s so, so smart. He’s also breathtakingly humane. He is, as they say, a “well-rounded” character in more senses than one.
The police are numbskulls, except for D.S. Jane Penhaligon (Geraldine Somerville). “Panhandle,” “Fitz” calls her. Penhaligon is smart and humane, too, and she loves “Fitz” despite his enormities.
One other young woman loves “Fitz.” She ends up committing a series of murders to capture his attention.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Fitz’s” wife, Judith (Barbara Flynn), isn’t much better. She also loves “Fitz,” but then, understandably enough, she leaves him; and comes back, and leaves him, and comes back, and leverages her woes to gain advantage (although “Fitz” is mostly immune to manipulation, which frustrates Judith to no end).
I wonder if today’s cop shows are trying to follow Cracker’s lead. Many policing dramas double as domestic ones, and Cracker is hands-down the best in this respect.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
So, I guess the show’s premise is:
What if Sherlock Holmes were – like Sir John Falstaff – fat, witty, and empathetic, but still outrageous; and what if this hero had, instead of bachelor acolytes, a wife and kids?
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
There is no “Watson” figure. The closest analog would be D.S. Penhaligon, but she is very much a force herself. I’ve sometimes thought, As great as “Fitz” is, this is the Penhaligon show.
“Fitz’s” is a hiltarity of excess. Penhaligon’s mode is lean, restrained, acerbic, grim.
Then tragedy afflicts her, and even her humor goes away. It’s not altogether a bad development. It allows her to free herself from “Fitz.”
The Shakespearean parallel would be with Prince Hal: Penhaligon is made for better things.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Then there are the murderers.
Not many policing shows bestow so much time or sympathy upon these people. Almost all are wounded little birds – “grotesques,” to recall Winesburg, Ohio. Cracker arguably made some of these acting careers (Robert Carlyle’s, Susan Lynch’s). One actor who didn’t become so famous, but who is perhaps the most affecting, is Andrew Tiernan, who plays a stutterer caught up in a Bonnie-and-Clyde relationship with Lynch’s chilling character. Broken though he is, he is allowed a great measure of self-determination and dignity until the very end of his story.
Almost all the “grotesques” are complex. This show is a whydunnit, not a whodunnit; often the murderers don’t know their own motives. But “Fitz” knows, and by the end of each story, he is sympathetically explaining to them what has driven them to do their crimes. Each motive is understandable; sometimes, in a very sad way, it is even laudable. Some murderers lash out at “Fitz.” Others surrender to his insight. The woman I mentioned earlier, the one who murders to gain “Fitz’s” attention – to earn a diagnosis from him – is the clearest example of this. Would you like me to explain to you? he asks, tenderly, in the interrogation room. Yes, she begs. It is a moment charged with eroticism and humanity, because it’s about the possibility of finally being seen and understood.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Fitz” himself is converted, within many of the stories, from bully to empath. It’s not so much that he can run hot or cold at will; it’s that he has one tap, one irrepressible, gushing stream of intelligence, and it has to run a while before it’s fully warmed up, before self-gratifying banter can become clever guesswork and then intimate certitude. Each murderer, each colleague, each family relation, is a different, evolving person, and so “Fitz” undergoes this process again and again.
In this scene, he is in the middle of the process.
(I like Penhaligon’s smirk.)
The show ran from 1993 to 1996 and had an encore in 2006: “Fitz” returns to Manchester after several years in Australia.
Dr Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald is a criminal psychologist. He is rather anti-social and obnoxious but he has a gift for solving crimes. Thus he is employed as a consultant by the Manchester Police.Stock character? Too much like Sherlock Holmes? Or Doctor Gregory House?
(House is Holmes.)
“Fitz” – Robbie Coltrane, Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies – is greater than either of them. Greater in greatness, and in girth. He’s the Sir John Falstaff of police TV. He gambles and drinks and smokes and constantly needles people because he’s often bored; and he’s bored because he’s so, so smart. He’s also breathtakingly humane. He is, as they say, a “well-rounded” character in more senses than one.
The police are numbskulls, except for D.S. Jane Penhaligon (Geraldine Somerville). “Panhandle,” “Fitz” calls her. Penhaligon is smart and humane, too, and she loves “Fitz” despite his enormities.
One other young woman loves “Fitz.” She ends up committing a series of murders to capture his attention.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Fitz’s” wife, Judith (Barbara Flynn), isn’t much better. She also loves “Fitz,” but then, understandably enough, she leaves him; and comes back, and leaves him, and comes back, and leverages her woes to gain advantage (although “Fitz” is mostly immune to manipulation, which frustrates Judith to no end).
I wonder if today’s cop shows are trying to follow Cracker’s lead. Many policing dramas double as domestic ones, and Cracker is hands-down the best in this respect.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
So, I guess the show’s premise is:
What if Sherlock Holmes were – like Sir John Falstaff – fat, witty, and empathetic, but still outrageous; and what if this hero had, instead of bachelor acolytes, a wife and kids?
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
There is no “Watson” figure. The closest analog would be D.S. Penhaligon, but she is very much a force herself. I’ve sometimes thought, As great as “Fitz” is, this is the Penhaligon show.
“Fitz’s” is a hiltarity of excess. Penhaligon’s mode is lean, restrained, acerbic, grim.
Then tragedy afflicts her, and even her humor goes away. It’s not altogether a bad development. It allows her to free herself from “Fitz.”
The Shakespearean parallel would be with Prince Hal: Penhaligon is made for better things.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Then there are the murderers.
Not many policing shows bestow so much time or sympathy upon these people. Almost all are wounded little birds – “grotesques,” to recall Winesburg, Ohio. Cracker arguably made some of these acting careers (Robert Carlyle’s, Susan Lynch’s). One actor who didn’t become so famous, but who is perhaps the most affecting, is Andrew Tiernan, who plays a stutterer caught up in a Bonnie-and-Clyde relationship with Lynch’s chilling character. Broken though he is, he is allowed a great measure of self-determination and dignity until the very end of his story.
Almost all the “grotesques” are complex. This show is a whydunnit, not a whodunnit; often the murderers don’t know their own motives. But “Fitz” knows, and by the end of each story, he is sympathetically explaining to them what has driven them to do their crimes. Each motive is understandable; sometimes, in a very sad way, it is even laudable. Some murderers lash out at “Fitz.” Others surrender to his insight. The woman I mentioned earlier, the one who murders to gain “Fitz’s” attention – to earn a diagnosis from him – is the clearest example of this. Would you like me to explain to you? he asks, tenderly, in the interrogation room. Yes, she begs. It is a moment charged with eroticism and humanity, because it’s about the possibility of finally being seen and understood.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Fitz” himself is converted, within many of the stories, from bully to empath. It’s not so much that he can run hot or cold at will; it’s that he has one tap, one irrepressible, gushing stream of intelligence, and it has to run a while before it’s fully warmed up, before self-gratifying banter can become clever guesswork and then intimate certitude. Each murderer, each colleague, each family relation, is a different, evolving person, and so “Fitz” undergoes this process again and again.
In this scene, he is in the middle of the process.
(I like Penhaligon’s smirk.)
The show ran from 1993 to 1996 and had an encore in 2006: “Fitz” returns to Manchester after several years in Australia.
