Sacrificing Instinct to Politics
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Five years on, the September 11, 2001’s legacy of war and political division continues to ignite almost as many television shows as it does arguments. On Monday, BBC America will bring us a two-hour, stand-alone episode of “Cracker,” a British crime series set in Manchester that was a cult hit on PBS in the 1990s, and it will annoy certain people very much.
If you’ve never heard of the series, it’s probably because “Cracker: A New Terror” is the first new episode to appear in a decade. Unfortunately, the lay-off appears to have made writer Jimmy McGovern — as important in Britain as Steven Bochco or Aaron Sorkin here — overly eager to produce a definitive statement about the post-September 11 world. (The British title was “Cracker: 9/11.”) Had Mr. McGovern chosen to write a film that was even faintly sympathetic to America, one might have accused him of being not only talented but also audacious and original. Instead, he has sacrificed his dramatic instincts to his politics, and a story marred by crude stereotypes and implausible motivations is the predictable result.
Still, there are reasons to raise a small cheer for the return of this show, and not just for the light it sheds on one small corner of the global anti-Bush/Blair agenda. As you’d expect from earlier installments and from the best of British TV in general, it has plenty to recommend it in terms of acting and pacing, along with a welcome absence of special effects, massive explosions, and detectives who look like off-duty supermodels.
Then there’s Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane, best known in America for his work in films like “Ocean’s Twelve” and the “Harry Potter” franchise, but eternally defined in Britain by his role as Dr. Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald, the corpulent, blunt-spoken, chain-smoking, alcoholic criminal psychologist dubbed “Cracker” for his ability to coax confessions from recalcitrant suspects without laying a finger on them.
Fitz, who has just spent seven years in Australia, seems to have passed the last three of them working himself into a lather over the war in Iraq. Back home to celebrate his daughter’s wedding, he confesses to a “tinge” of disappointment when suicide bombers only kill Iraqis, not Americans. He’s also developed a provocative critique of the “dramatic structure” of September 11. In his opinion, the hijackers got it all backward. The day’s events ought to have begun with United Airlines Flight 93 going down over Pennsylvania. Next up should have been the hit on the Pentagon. Then — and only then — as the world gathered around its television sets in an ecstasy of expectation, the grand and utterly satisfying finale: the destruction of the World Trade Center.
“Cracker: A New Terror” introduces us to a nation in which news of Iraq and Afghanistan is virtually inescapable. Reports of suicide bombings and dead British soldiers are trumpeted from every radio and television in Manchester. The effect of this endless tape-loop of voices and images is apocalyptic in quality and transparently defeatist in intent. It also suggests a weird reverse Orwellianism, as if Big Brother were on every screen in England tearing both himself and his government to pieces.
One person definitely going to pieces is Kenny Archer (Anthony Flanagan), a policeman who served in the British army fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland. Kenny, who has the military bearing of a trained killer, harbors a visceral loathing for America because of historic Irish-American support for the IRA. Friends of his were killed by American-bought bullets.
He also suffers from an improbable case of terrorism-envy. Al Qaeda has made the IRA look small-time, and the sacrifices of Kenny and his army mates have been forgotten. At a nightclub he watches an American comedian lampoon the war in Iraq while pouring scorn on President Bush and Tony Blair. The comedian also suggests that Americans learned the art of torture from the British in Ireland. Then he tells a joke — “Osama bin Laden to Gerry Adams: ‘You call that terrorism?'” — and Kenny, already consumed by a desire to kill a Yank, finally decides to act on it.
Minutes after leaving the stage, the American is dead, his neck broken with clinical precision in the men’s room. Police attempts to find the murderer come to nothing, and word gets out that Cracker is in town. Soon he’s brought in on the case, back at work — O Paradise! — at last.
News of the comedian’s death spreads quickly through the press, where a newscaster describes him as “a young American from George Bush’s home state of Texas.” When you hear a line like that, you know the man who wrote it is in the grip of an unhealthy political obsession. There’s absolutely nothing Mr. Bush can’t be dragged into.
The second murder of an American follows the arrival of the comedian’s mother, who is accompanied by a State Department type who talks about shooting “towelheads” and is so unpleasant he might as well have “Ugly American” branded on his forehead. There were hints of a post-orgasmic sigh when Kenny killed the comedian, but there’s no mistaking the shudder of pleasure that floods his body after snapping this guy’s cervix — nor of the script’s complicity in his enjoyment.
Kenny almost gets to dispatch the comedian’s mother as well, but an unexpected interruption foils the attempt. Perhaps Mr. McGovern worried that three broken Americans necks — not quite decapitation, but getting there — might lend his story the appearance of a minor Mancunian jihad, which is more or less what it is.
Despite the problems with this particular episode, one hopes Mr. McGovern will write another soon. Recently it was announced that the Greater Manchester Police Force was ordered not to arrest Muslim suspects during prayer times over Ramadan. In effect, five times a day for 30 days anyone from Manchester’s sizeable Muslim community could place himself beyond the law. Wouldn’t that provide an intriguing setting for this famously gritty series? I can see it already: “Cracker: A Touch of Shariah.”