Luther

London - a pulsating metropolis, boasting luxurious streets, temples of consumerism, universities, banks, and museums. However, this series does not revolve around these aspects, and its stories typically do not take place within their interiors. The hero of the series is a police officer specializing in the most serious crimes, and his task is not to be in pleasant residential neighborhoods among honest taxpayers led by the noblest intentions and carrying out the noblest deeds. His destiny is to dig through the dirt, uncover filth, and thwart the intentions of psychopaths and criminals driven by hatred, revenge, and greed. Among other similar series, Luther stands out. Luther is obsessed with his work and sacrifices his family life for it. His dedication and intuition make him an extremely dangerous opponent of the underworld, but his adversaries are no pushovers and can strike at the most sensitive spots. Luther is not a series about pickpockets or swindlers but about the great nightmares of modern societies and big cities. It is about terrorists, blackmailers, and serial killers. The crimes are sometimes too monstrous, Luther's intuition exaggerated, and the plots or relationships between the characters somewhat contrived, but over time I have learned to perceive Luther as a more realistic and less plastic version of an entertaining series like Dexter. Luther emanates genuine emotions; the series reeks of both earthly and heroic humanity. I consider his decisions regarding the lives and deaths of two women who were of fundamental importance to him and represented a value pole constantly at odds within each of us one of the most powerful scenes in a series I have ever seen. Furthermore, the character of the intelligent and unpredictable Alice Morgan is one of the most charismatic villains who have ever had the pleasure of entertaining an audience on television screens, and her mutual relationship with Luther is perhaps the most twisted and, at the same time, the most gratifying for viewers that any scriptwriter has ever created between a detective and a criminal. I don't think we have ever had such a likable psychopath before... Overall impression: 95%. (2014.09.04)

As a little kid, I adored pudding, but more than eating from a full plate, I enjoyed hunting for scraps from the pot, those remnants that stuck to the bottom and walls of the container. I took perverse delight in it, and only because of that do I (hopefully) give the last season of Luther three stars - that way, I become immune to the visible effort to extract the last grains of commodity from the drying reservoir of minerals. Long ago, it lost the feeling of precision and cleverness, and now it just dutifully repeats the schemes that once excelled with the viewers. Even the return of Ruth Wilson no longer creates the same chemistry between John and his femme fatale. It's simply a mess in all aspects. But I will give it 50% because I really did like the stubborn black detective and his dangerous opponent. (2020.03.31)