BEST FRIENDS.

Strike – Troubled Blood, December 2022.

I do like a bit of Strike. In a swamped genre, where the glut of TV crime shows tend to blur into one, it’s refreshing to see such a distinctive, even hip take on the private detective genre.

On paper, specifically the paper in the novels by Robert Galbraith (pseudonym for one JK Rowling), the construction of the rumpled, crippled gumshoe’s world seems a bit contrived: Cormoran Strike is an Iraq war veteran who served in the Special Investigation Branch of the military police. He was invalided out after losing the lower half of his right leg, and subsequently used his SIB experience to set up as a private detective in a tatty office on London’s Denmark Street. (A nice jab of nostalgia for me, as I know the area well from when I lived in London).

 

If that wasn’t a rich enough contemporary template, Strike – the protagonist’s name alone is enough to provoke a smile because of its appropriateness – is the illegitimate son of aging rock star Jonny Rokeby and the volatile groupie, Leda Strike; needless to say, he’s estranged from his birth father. Add a ‘will they, won’t they’ relationship with his beautiful, equally emotionally fragile partner Robin Ellacott, and you’ve got an achingly contemporary set-up which ticks a variety of demographic boxes, from ‘disability’ to ‘BBC Radio 6 listener’.

 

Just as well, then, that the BBC cast two brilliant actors as Strike and Robin when they decided to adapt JK’s books. I was only aware of Tom Burke from the Channel 4 conspiracy thriller Utopia (2014) and the hale and hearty romp The Musketeers (2014-16), which is surprising because he’s had a long and varied TV career as far back as 1999. Holliday Granger’s TV credits go back almost as far, although I don’t recall seeing her in anything before Strike. (An indication of how good she is in it, though, was that between 2019 and 2022 she was given her own show, the mind bending deep-fake thriller The Capture).

 

In the hands of Burke and Granger, Strike and Robin are compulsively watchable. Outside their detective business, they both have dysfunctional relationships with ex-partners and partners, but fit so well together, professionally and as friends, that they’re nervous of putting their relationship on a romantic footing. Watching how this plays out as Strike has developed across five series is to witness a masterclass in understated acting. They’re both emotionally repressed people, giving away how they feel about each other through a clumsy hug, the nervous touch of a hand or a lingering look. Yes, it’s a set-up that’s as old as the hills, from Steed and Mrs Peel to Mulder and Scully, but it’s played out by Burke and Granger with such subtlety, warmth and humanity, that you can’t help but fall in love with their characters.

 

In short, the central duo are so good that if they spent 50 plus minutes looking for a lost cat I’d still be glued to the TV. Another plus is Robin’s talent for aliases and disguises. Across the series she uses her regular alias Venetia Hall to play a solicitor and a Sloane-ranging intern, as well as impersonating Goth girl Becca (favourite band The Cure, but “nothing after 1989”) and a bespectacled cockney girl in Troubled Blood. Granger can switch accents and personas so convincingly that Robin’s undercover outings are always a highlight.

 

The series’ narrative form is also appealingly fluid, ranging backwards along Strike and Robin’s lives to fill in important background – her rape at university, his career in SIB – and is taken a step further in Troubled Blood with long scenes set in 1974 that feature younger versions of people involved in the case. As of 2020’s Lethal White, the episode count went up from two to four, the extra screen time rewardingly allowing regular scriptwriter Tom Edge more scope to be inventive. Wrapped up in predominantly film noir cinematography (most of the scenes are set at night), the quality acting and storytelling make for an irresistible package.

 

In fact, the only bad thing about Strike is Beth Rowley’s mawkish theme song, ‘I Walk Beside You’. Something as clunky as that really is out of place in a series so smart and absorbing, particularly when the show has such an eclectic selection of music references, from Blue Oyster Cult via The Pogues to The Verve. There could also be a bit more humour; I’d like to hear more dialogue like Strike’s reaction to being sent a severed leg in Career of Evil: “It’s not good for my business being sent limbs in the post. I’m sure you appreciate that.”

 

At the end of Troubled Blood, Strike tells Robin that she’s his best friend. I can’t wait to see where these engaging misfits go next.