GOOD COP: Thursday 30th August, BBC1, 9pm
Now the summerâs over and weâve got the Olympics and the rain out of the way, we can settle down for the new TV season – and that means a fresh faced batch of new coppers ready to be put through the ringer of personal torment. And thereâs a lot of torment to be personal-ed in Good Cop.
John Paul âSavâ? Rocksavage (Warren Brown) is the eponymous copper and though he seems a decent enough egg, an estranged ex-girlfriend and a penchant for vengeance suggest a deeper irony to the programmeâs title. Savâs partner Andy (Tom Hopper) is just too likeable for this world. He buys the bacon butties and worries about his flirting. You know heâs not going to see the end of the first episode long before the telly comes down on his head.
Itâs bleak and itâs grim in the way weâve come to expect from crime drama, but thatâs fair enough. “New Tricks” was back on Monday and a mild case of cancer aside, it was its cheery old self. Somebody out there in the karmic TV multiverse has to pay for all that whimsy.
As Savâs father reminds him, âThe problem with being a copper is you see too much shite. The world is good. People are goodâ? Itâs the sort of gift that makes you wish “Good Cop” was worse than it is, just so you could make some cheap joke about a television reviewerâs job being very similar. But sadly for us, itâs actually quite decent. Ignore the moody publicity photos, this is a revenge thriller in the best exploitation mould. Give Sav a âtache and you couldâve cast Charles Bronson.
The villain of the piece, Noel Finch – played by Stephen Graham, who does a nice line in nasty shits – is more or less a cypher. Pending potential future revelations, heâs bad for the purposes of being bad; one of the many messed up masculine stereotypes the collective unconscious likes to populate its nightmares with. But then so are Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, and Iâm still scared theyâre going to come and get me.
None of this is intended as criticism. Thereâs an enduring and fantastical appeal to the revenge thriller, and the presumable future focus on the consequences of that act, along with Sam Millerâs direction, lend “Good Cop” an identity of its own.
Of course, you do realise Daily Mail readers think the world is actually like this, donât you?
