Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Iain Glen, Hazel Doupe, Michael Collins, Nora-Jane Noone, David O’Meara, Killian Scott, Garrett Keogh, Barbara Bergin, Martin Ward, Karl Shiels, Emmet Kirwin, Eamonn Hunt, Stephen Cromwell, Mark Butler, Ruth Magill, Rúaidhrí Conroy.
Running away is easy, especially when the alternative is facing up to those that have taken a bullet for you and watch them sink further into a coma. Such is the life of ex-Garda turned Private Detective Jack Taylor, but even he could not have foreseen the life he would find in perhaps the final ever case of the fine Irish thriller, Shot Down.
Jack Taylor has been one of those unmistakably good series that has been imported by Channel Five which really should have been snapped up so much earlier, after all Iain Glen has been a bankable asset for a long time, a dependable and compelling actor who is quite happy to let the story be the star and not have the action depend on him alone, a worthy and refined actor. In Jack Taylor, that moody, unpredictable presence has served him well over the course of two series and six feature length tales and has given a shining light onto a part of Ireland that many perhaps in England might not have thought about before.
In this the final episode, the action is taken out of Galway as Jack tries to outrun the nightmares and the destruction done against him and his friends in the final moments of the previous tale but the trouble he encounters in the form of a travelling community at odds with itself, the fate of a young girl and running into the notorious Irish drug lord Bridie, would have lesser men running back to Galway to confront their own ghosts rather than get into the middle of a mass free for all.
With a young girl’s life at stake, played by the superb Hazel Doupe, Jack Taylor offers to help the community solve the death of the girl’s mother and opens the biggest can of worms available that side of the Irish Sea. Whilst being as sensitively written as you would expect when dealing with a story involving a much discussed section of society, the pace of Shot Down never slowed for a minute nor waved in its conviction to show a public face that undermines the supposed glamour of gang warfare.
The scenes filmed between Iain Glen and Hazel Doupe were masterly and given the right tension between one of the greats of modern day television and a young girl making her way into the world of acting. Rarely do you see that type of tension found, or treated with respect, outside of a Hollywood film such as the remake of Cape Fear.
Due to commitments elsewhere it is unlikely that any more of this fine programme will be made, that is a shame as it has opened a big eye on a world rarely ventured into by U.K. television viewers.
In the end it has been a terrific series and one that further enhanced Iain Glen’s solid reputation.
Ian D. Hall