Try Detectives Across the Ocean

By ROB PATTERSON

Mark Twain suggested that travel is a broadening influence. Those of us who cannot immediately pick up and go right now can still experience the world via visual entertainment. Thanks to the Internet the world can indeed be our oyster.

And due to smart TV, I’ve recently spent some time in Galway, Ireland, and Ystad, Sweden. The locales are the settings for two excellent TV series. Both share similar origins, themes and protagonists, as well as another aspect that might be nice to see imported into American television.

Jack Taylor, streaming on Netflix, originated as a series of detective novels by writer Ken Bruen that became an Irish TV3 series, and stars Iain Glen, best known as Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones. He brings a certain delicious devil-may-care brio to his role as Taylor, a former officer with the Garda, Ireland’s national police, whose fondness for drink and low tolerance for bull ushered him out of the force and onto his own as an unlicensed private detective (or “finder” as he calls himself) in Galway.

The city itself, a port on Ireland’s “wild west coast,” is as much a “character” in the show as any persona. It’s a somewhat rough and tumble yet endearing locale, damp, often grey and somewhat windswept. And an interesting mix of old Irish and modernity. It provides a redolent setting.

Taylor steps into tough and sometimes brutal cases and situations unhindered by the strictures that govern police work and cuts through the thickets with a keen nose for the truth. And he’s classic lovable antihero: brash, rather cynical and a touch misanthropic, yet underneath the thick hide there’s a quite tender hide. And he’s driven by a strong sense of rightness and justice.

It’s a classic private eye type that runs back to Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. Glen brings an abundance of winning charm in the Irish manner to his character, and the stories make each episode, at 90 minutes long, into absorbing mini-movies.

The BBC series Wallander, available on Hulu, also sprung from a series of novels by author Henning Mankell about a police inspector named Kurt Wallander in the Swedish town of Ystad. He’s played by Kenneth Branagh, whose magnificent dramatic skills give the TV Wallander much depth and substance.

Where the Irish Taylor is a character at a low boil, Wallander is more at a simmer, a bit disaffected and dysfunctional. The setting, much like the Swedes compared with the Irish, plays a more restrained role. But the stories can be just as barbarous and of course compelling mysteries.

Both detectives are loners in the classic private eye mode. And moral actors in a world of everything from moral ambiguity to immoral violence in wickedness – the fission at the core of all great detective tales.

The episodes are also 90 minutes, I assume in both cases dictated in part by their book-length beginnings. I rather enjoy the length in dramatic series TV, and would be happy to see more US shows stretch beyond the strict hour timing. These days, most all rules are off.

And if you have a taste for mystery, police procedurals, flawed heroes and a hankering to see it all within uncommon cultural contexts, you’ll may well find both shows as binge-worthy as I did.

Populist Picks:

Documentary Film: Beside Bowie – Guitarist Mick Ronson was a major part of the late David Bowie’s music during his Ziggy Stardust era, but since his passing in 1993 he’s faded into the shadows of rock greatness. This somewhat messy yet informative film sometimes seems as much about Bowie (as the title implies), who does provide commentary throughout. But it brings back into the spotlight a truly great (if also quite humble) musical talent who helped Bowie create the music that made him a star.

Documentary Films: Everything or Noting and Becoming Bond – I’m a fan of James Bond movies from the beginning, even through some low points, and now delighted at how the most successful film franchise ever has regained its heat now in the Daniel Craig era. Everything or Nothing quite handily tells the interesting tale behind and around it. “Becoming Bond” amusingly recounts one of its fascinating ripples: How unknown George Lazenby came to briefly star as Bond. Both essential viewing for fans.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2018

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