Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Tom Burke, Holliday Grainger, Sophie Ward, Jonas Armstrong, Kenneth Cranham, Robin Askwith, Sutara Gayle, Abigail Lawrie, Jessica Impiazzi, Georgia Furlong, Tilly Walker, Carys Bowkett, Thomas Harper-Jones, Ian Redford, Linda Bassett, Syrus Lowe, Phil Langhorne, Kerr Logan, Sarah Sweeney, Genevieve Hulme Beaman, Artie Wilkinson-Hunt, Morgan Jones, Kate Speak, Kierston Wareing, Calvin Dean, Charlie Price, Samuel Oatley, Fionnula Flanagan, Mazz Murray, Giles Matthey, Toni Peach, Eliza Collings, Jack Morris, Ruth Sheen, Andy de la Tour, Jacob James Beswick, Lionelle Nsarhaza, Sam Woolf, Crispin Letts, James Corrigan, Celia Learmonth, Jack Greenlees, Carol MacReady, Anna Calder-Marshall, Madhav Sharma, Dayo Koleosho, Claire Dunbar, Simon Snashall, Ben Crompton, Flaminia Cinque, Cherie Lunghi, Edward Rowe, Michael Tully, Daniel Peacock, Michael Byrne, Mary Roscoe, Billy Boyle, Mollie Holder, Christina Cole, Charlotte Eaton, Henri Merriam, Phil Cornwell, Suzanne Burden, Joe Johnsey.
Murder is never simple, it is chaos, it is bedlam, it is the confusion in turmoil, and the instrument of anarchy, the one you suspect who is possible of such a frenzied attack is balanced out by the terror of the unknown who is quiet, the madness bubbling away the pleasant and dedicated façade; for the murderer is not just created by circumstance, in some cases they are truly born whole, fully formed, only effort is stopping them from being a representative of death on Earth.
Murder should never be accepted in any shape or form, but we have sympathy for those caught in the glare of damnation, pushed beyond reason to restore the scales of justice to one of perceived equal balance, we want them to be tried, and convicted to keep the idea of integrity of the system in place, but the one who seeks to take a life because they can, the ones who see murder as psychological game, who take a life because they can…for the contempt we feel is only equal to the threat, to the peril we are touched by when we are confronted by one of Troubled Blood.
Troubled Blood, a constant companion in the darkness in the fifth outing for Robert Galbraith/J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike as he and his partner Robin Ellacott find themselves embroiled in a case that has laid cold for several decades, and to which the agony of Time has not been kind on all who fell under the shadow of a murderer to whom persistence of the chase was one of the most unnerving captured in any detective series that the armchair detective could care to nominate.
The four-part series delves deeper into the psychosis of a soul bent on destruction, and at times finds itself teetering on the edge of just how far a television show can go without being damned for its realism.
There will be a selection of viewers that will be concerned on just how the murderer is revealed, how they were able to commit their crimes in the face of modern morality questions, but that is the point, there is no moral ground where serial killers are concerned, the truth becomes an island surrounded by a sea wrapped in the arms of an unforgiveable raging tempest…it is the blood of anger, of rage, of contempt, and of possession, and one that gives Tom Burke in the role of Cormoran Strike one of his most demanding moments, and when coupled with his own family issues, of death by nature and unwanted realisations, it could be argued that for Mr. Burke it is a television high.
Directed by Susan Tully, and adapted by Tom Edge, Strike’s Troubled Blood is necessary detective inspired television, a tale that shows that what is underneath the surface is often enough to destroy society completely, and without shame.
Ian D. Hall