Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Holliday Granger, Andrew Brooke, Ben Crompton, Jessica Gunning, Matt King, Kerr Logan, Killian Scott, Neil Maskell, Kierston Wareing, Fern Deacon, Antonia Kinlay, Nicholas Agnew, Mollie Peacock, Cosima Shaw, Ann Akin, Suzanne Burden, Kirsty Dillon, Ella James, Emmanuella Cole, Archie Wrightman, Paul Butterworth, Joe Johnsey, Michelle Bonnard.
The human mind is such a complex organism that nobody quite understands, despite mountains of published papers and theories, why anyone would contemplate, let alone endeavour to make a career out of doing despicable acts, a vocation of evil.
It is the age old question, is someone born bad or do they become so by circumstances, by what has happened to them in childhood or a long string of seemingly rotten luck in which their mind snaps or bends away from the sense of moral duty we all hopefully share; yes we make mistakes, yes we even may revel in the punishment we feel due to those who sleight us, make us feel less what we actually are, but to continue to do harm, that is something that seems as alien to us as it does enticing to those who seek the darkness.
It is a conundrum which J.K. Rowling succeeds in exploring as her male alter-ego Robert Galbraith in the novel and now on screen in Strike: Career of Evil.
A path taken in revenge is perhaps understandable, it is a human emotion and one that does neither side any good at all, it serves no purpose, except for the perceived redressing of a kind of justice. When revenge is sought because you were sent to prison because you were actually guilty in the first place, that is a very special kind of madness in which the career criminal seeks out, it is not about justice, it is about destruction, a symbol perhaps best imagined in the graphic novels of old when The Joker continually conceived new and clever ways to destroy Bat Man; revenge in this manner is for the seriously damaged and perhaps most wicked in our society.
It is a dark path undertaken by Galbraith/J.K. Rowling, a sense of literary malevolence all writers of crime take to their hearts when portraying the more shocking avenues of life, of those who commit the same crime, over and over again. Strike: Career of Evil justifies the prime time slot required because of this darkness and it is one that Neil Maskell, Tom Burke and Holliday Granger revel in superbly in this particular story-line.
Who would make a career out of evil, perhaps only a crime writer can truly answer that.
Ian D. Hall