The Shadow Line – Episode 7

And so we’ve followed The Shadow Line all the way to its vanishing point. But did all the pieces of Hugo Blick’s puzzle fit together into a satisfying big picture? Or was all the build up ultimately a disappointment?

Well depending on where you stand, the big reveal that the whole mess was about pensions might be a letdown. There are few less exciting words in the English language. If pensions were a colour they would be grey. They are grey pounds collected from grey post offices in dreary grey villages by grey haired foot soldiers of the drab and grey retirement brigade. All the talk of far reaching Cold War and government conspiracies on internet forums seems rather laughable now. But wouldn’t it have been more interesting and satisfying to find out that it was all more significant than a pension fund? Doesn’t all that killing seem rather OTT for a secure retirement?

A part of me was certainly a little underwhelmed by the explanation of it all, delivered by the retired Commander Penney on his yacht before he blew his own brains out. He explains to Gabriel, who refuses to let the case drop even after the really bad copper at the top has been found out and given the boot because Petra was hired by him to take out Gatehouse, that Counterpoint was official at first. But then after amassing £70 million through drug deals the authorities ordered it to stop, as its activities were entrapment and therefore useless to prosecutors in the courts. Counterpoint carried on, below the radar and unofficially. It laundered money through its deals in order to fund the pensions for the entire police force.

My initial reaction was; seriously? But by the end of the episode I liked the idea and I was sold on it as a good explanation. The way Blick ties things up again emphasises what this series was about; the lives of both sides of the line, cops and crims, and the overlap in between. Police corruption was vital to the entire series and it was fitting that the solution to most of the questions raised throughout was one of complete self interest on behalf of the boys in blue. More than anything though I liked the Britishness of the pensions answer, in keeping with earlier lines like “typical fucking British car chase”. Blick could have tried too hard for a grand an all important finale. But right until the end this series remained original despite emulating the production standards and story arcs of popular American shows.

So what about Gatehouse? Were the shadows around him illuminated with a little light? Yes, a little. We find out that he’s a MI5 agent and in charge of the operations of Counterpoint in the field. He set up Glickman and Harvey Wratten long ago, and by the end of this episode he’s found replacements for them in Jay Wratten and rent boy Rattalack.

Incidentally Jay, who was completely absent last week, has been cunningly manoeuvring behind the scenes. He put the cops onto his uncle in the first place. As Gatehouse says, he has “hidden depths”. Jay gets some of his best lines in a climactic scene with Babur; “It’s never nice to watch an old man refuse to leave a disco…someone had to bundle him off the dance floor”. For all his camp menace, I think most of us who followed The Shadow Line to the end came to love Jay as a character, slimy pantomime villainy and all.

For Gatehouse the whole thing was about control, as Glickman hinted in previous weeks. The head honchos of Counterpoint thought he might have gone rouge to pocket the money for himself, hence the UV tags, but he was only ever trying to restore the stability of the system. With replacements in place, by the end it’s like he’s hit the reset button on the whole series.

Our two principal characters on either side of The Shadow Line, Christopher Eccleston’s Joseph Bede and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Jonah Gabriel, are both extinguished. Bede is shot in a car in exactly the same way Harvey Wratten was and then officers examine the carnage as they did in the very first scene of the series. Bede knew he was going to his death, he’d been warned and had his own suspicions about Jay, but in a powerful piece of understated acting from Eccleston, he leaves his gun on the kitchen table. His plan to save his wife had failed; she attempted suicide twice and was put into care.

As for Gabriel, it seemed like he could do no more. He might just have to accept the promotion that his corrupt superior Patterson, but perhaps slightly less corrupt in that he only follows Counterpoint rather than pocketing the cash for himself, had given him. But then Gatehouse phoned him. They arrange a meet and Honey accompanies him, after repeatedly assuring him throughout the episode of her loyalty to him.

Yeah it was fairly obvious. Honey has her gun trained on Gatehouse but after some final tying off of loose ends and some chit chat about shadows, Gatehouse flicks his lighter and Honey shoots Gabriel dead. So Gatehouse always wins, Counterpoint is back to normal. Honey seems to feel a bit remorseful but Gatehouse assures her she’ll get over it, presumably in retirement with a nice fat pension.

At times The Shadow Line was atrociously bad, usually in a funny way. At times it tried far too hard to be stylish, with one example of this being a fetish during the last two episodes in particular for a close up of cigarette tips as they were lit. However overall it was ambitious and absorbing TV. I haven’t seen anything like this on the BBC or anywhere else. Hugo Blick should be applauded and I hope he gets the chance to make more things in the mould of The Shadow Line. I shall miss both watching and blogging about such twisty, exciting and quality television.

What were your thoughts on the answers, the pensions and the series as a whole? Did you want more? Would you welcome a second series or a spin-off for a particular character?

The Shadow Line – Episode 6

This penultimate episode started to bring things closer to the big reveal and end of series climax. However rather than my usual attempt to sort out the threads of the plot, I am driven by a minor detail to starting this week’s summary with a rant about realism and the suspension of disbelief.

Gatehouse, played with quiet menace by Stephen Rea, has been the most mysterious figure in a story arc stuffed full of secrets and deceit. In this episode he finally appeared to meet his match. Anthony Sher’s Glickman, who had that thrilling standoff with Gatehouse last week, uses Chiwetel Ejiofor’s confused Detective Jonah Gabriel, the one with the bullet in his brain, to set the perfect trap for Gatehouse. Both men lie in wait for Gatehouse in the home of Gabriel’s secret family.

After a tense conversation between Gatehouse and Gabriel, Glickman pounces from the little boy’s room (the son’s bedroom not the toilet). He fires several times with his silenced weapon, hitting Gatehouse decisively at least twice. The action slides into dramatic slow-mo as Gabriel’s son runs from his room, getting caught in the crossfire. Glickman shoots Gatehouse to make sure before stumbling from the horrific and tragic scene his trap has inadvertently created. Even in death Gatehouse finds and hurts the weak points of those in his way.

Except Gatehouse isn’t dead. He’ s taken to hospital and Gabriel says the doctors insist he has the heart rate of a twenty year old. I said last week that Glickman seemed to be far more human than Gatehouse despite his similar efficiency, and I was right. Distraught after accidentally killing an innocent boy, Glickman rings Petra, his jilted girlfriend. She meets him in an alleyway to console him. And then she stabs him several times, leaving him to die in a heap.

That was certainly a surprise I didn’t see coming. I had assumed Glickman’s abandoned love was simply to give his character weight and also give Christopher Eccleston’s Joseph Bede a forbidden love interest to spice up his inner battle with his wife’s dementia. But no, it turns out she’s an assassin. Who is she working for? With Gatehouse taken out, we assume he has powerful friends or subordinates seeking swift revenge.

However then she turns up, right at the end of the episode, at Gatehouse’s private hospital room. His only security is a nurse with a fondness for Dairy Milk and an unfortunate knack of dropping her precious snack to the floor as killers lurk outside looking to sneak past. Petra is clearly a cunning and formidable opponent to deceive so easily and completely someone as wary and careful as Glickman. Here she unzips her top to reveal an ample cleavage and a mass of wires clinging to her chest. She proceeds to hook herself up to the immobile Gatehouse, seemingly doing something complicated to swap heart beat readings. She has a lethal injection ready and waiting. As she says aloud “bleep bleep” to make sure she gets the timing of the switch right, Gatehouse rolls over, says “bleep” and kills her like he was just having a power nap.

And so, finally, to my big gripe. Gatehouse has not a single sign of being shot on his body. Blood could be seen spreading around his head and trademark black coat after Glickman fired. He must have been substantially wounded, taking bullets somewhere on the torso. I am quite willing to accept that Gatehouse turns out to be the unbeatable top dog, as he has been all along. I wouldn’t have minded Gatehouse summoning the strength to kill his would be killer, if there had simply been a bandage or stitch or something to indicate the earlier ordeal. We get that Gatehouse is stronger than normal men. But such inconsistency and laziness of detail when shooting a pivotal scene, severely limits the audience’s ability to inhabit the increasingly sensational story.

Most of you are probably thinking I’ve blown such a tiny detail out of proportion. I may have done. But for me things like that have always been important. It is often a trait of men to pick fault in the believability of a story. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the excitement of the scene and all that went before it. And it’s not that I wish everything to be so plausible that it becomes mundane.

Such mistakes leave me with a feeling of annoyance though. This is a huge shame because The Shadow Line has been largely consistent and quality in terms of such details. And all I really wanted to do was commend this episode. Of course, it might be revealed next week that Gatehouse knew Glickman was planning a trap and had taken precautions. In which case this was an even more pointless rant.

What about the rest of the episode then? Well finally we got some satisfying focus on Gabriel’s character. For most of the episode he was the narrative focal point, right up until Glickman’s trap was sprung, adding to the drama, emotion and awfulness of the death of his son. We start by watching him get a brain scan; it seems he’s getting his memory back. His wife nearly loses the baby but then things turn out to be fine. Glickman tells him to follow the money, not the drugs as he said last time. Would have helped if he hadn’t mucked us about wouldn’t it? He tells Gabriel to harass the retired police commander about Counterpoint, which will bring Gatehouse out of the shadows to hunt down his weak point. We learn that the journalist, otherwise known as M’s assistant in Casino Royale, met his maker because he pestered the commander too much.

The police corruption goes higher and deeper than anyone could have imagined. A senior civil servant seems to be pulling the strings as he issues instructions to our crooked inspector at a funeral. He orders the convincing suicide and murder of Gabriel and his family. Does this mean Gatehouse is working for people within the law and government (as he killed Andy Dixon in the same way)? Meanwhile Gabriel finds out he’s a good cop. He didn’t log the operation the night he was shot because he knew there were rotten elements on the police side. And the police were buying the drugs as well as selling them. Baffling.

Other asides: rent boy Rattalack is getting his money from Gatehouse to buy Bede’s drugs. But with Gatehouse almost dead, everyone gets panicky when the money doesn’t turn up. And Bede’s right hand man is going to sell details of the deal. We still don’t know what Counterpoint is or who Glickman’s ex was working for, seeking to tidy up the situation with some slick murders. Gabriel’s wife gets a lecture from his ex, the mother of his dead child, at the boy’s funeral. She basically tells her to get Gabriel out of the mess and that the truth isn’t always worth it. Will he be able to keep a family together even if all the mysteries are solved?

Next week, light will illuminate the shadows. Will everything fit together? Supposedly Hugo Blick plotted the whole series with massive interconnecting mind maps, so it should. And will Jay Wratten, absent this week, go out with a whimper or a bang?