8/18/2023 0 Comments Cb strike cinemax castA Spy Among Friends review: ITVX’s big-budget adaptation is like a slug of hot mulled wine.Harry and Meghan, review: Intimate, self-aggrandising, and wildly entertaining.From the archive footage of news reports, home movies, and the flashback reconstructions, we learn that Margot was a kind, conscientious professional, a feminist of her day, but beset by predatory or unreliable men, including in her unhappy marriage, various flings and the thuggish, druggy blokes who hang around her surgery. Or, rather, too many possible suspects who are either dead, senile, disappeared, uncooperative or downright dangerous, including a serial killer around at the time. Old case files are assembled, including the notes of the original detective who went mad during the inquiry. Elderly surviving witnesses, workmates and relatives are tracked down, and… there’s really not much to go on. Strike takes the very cold case on, and starts to gather the evidence. Almost hopelessly, the anguished Anna (Sophie Ward) pleads with Strike to investigate the 1974 disappearance of her mother, Dr Margot Bamborough, (played in the flashbacks by Abigail Lawrie). In the opener of the new series, Strike, as a celebrated detective, is accosted by a woman as he emerges, refreshed, from a session in the boozer. So, yes, it’s all slightly miserabilist, but you can almost feel Burke revelling in it. The nightmare topping for the Strike backstory is that his stepmother has had a diagnosis of stage 4 ovarian cancer. He looks and sounds sardonic, if not depressed, but that’s always appropriate for a telly detective otherwise they’d all be breezy types like Michael Mcintyre or Alan Titchmarsh, and that would never do. Instead, Strike is permanently attuned to the depraved aspects of human nature, which he’s witnessed in war and peace. “Akin to”, that is, because Strike is the sort of bloke who seems never-ready for love, and certainly not dressed for it. And his affection and respect for his resourceful business partner, Robin Ellacott ( Holliday Grainger) always threatens, or promises, to evolve into something akin to love. Strike is an ex-soldier with a touch of PTSD, a bit of a drink problem, and a troubled childhood. Tom Burke is once again in the title role of Cormoran Strike, the gruff but clever private investigator. It’s the latest adaptation, by Tom Edge, of the Strike detective works of JK Rowling (under her pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and she is also executive producer), and probably the best. It starts brilliantly, but gets better, and there are some surprising and compelling star performances to come. And indeed watched, and I can unreservedly commend this four-parter as a highlight of your festive viewing (along with the latter stages of the World Cup, obviously). That is something rare and to be cherished. Strike: Troubled Blood really is an extraordinarily fine crime drama, where a range of exceptional talents come together to create something that is actually greater than the sum of its very formidable parts.
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