Sometimes the boundary between film and television series is blurred. And I’m not just saying it by titles like League of Justice, by Zack Snyder, who they are going to let play in peace and they will see if they cut their four hours into episodes or let the user decide where to pause.
The acclaimed series Sherlock, created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, came with a first “season” (note the quotes) of three episodes, each lasting an hour and a half. To make matters worse, at least for me, these feature length stories played with television rhythms, making the exercise of watching them exhausting. Perhaps the only episode that achieved a perfect combination of rhythms and timing was the wedding, which combined several small cases into a single story.
The example that brings us together on this occasion has several similarities. These are detective cases, which are solved in 90 minutes, although each one of them seems to be counted taking into account this last detail. Why not call them telefilms, considering that they actually tell the story of a handful of characters in two different instances? I do not have an answer for this question. I only have one series to recommend. A series of two episodes, one and a half hours each.
This Film & Arts product, which can be seen (for example) in the NS Now staple, follows an odd couple related to law and order. Tala Gouveia is Lauren McDonald, a chief inspector recently arrived from London in the seemingly peaceful city of Bath. She is immediately paired with Dodds, played by Jason Watkins, a desk bug with enviable deductive abilities. Yes, the duo that must overcome their differences and join forces to solve the mystery, where one of them also combines social difficulties with detective superpowers. And yet the McDonald & Dodds duo (for something they name the fiction) makes everything work.
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The plot thickens
The two murders our protagonists work on have one element in common. The plot (by creator Robert Murphy) usually makes it clear who is responsible for the crime, although it is not necessarily the person who pulled the trigger. What the public, along with researchers, must find is why. Well, and in the case of the two of them, also the who.
These two stories have less bang than a movie, but more than an average episode of CSI. There is time for the typical dismissal of suspects, for new theories to emerge, and for the turbulent relationship between the sweeping newbie and the serene veteran to develop. There are two or three secondary characters that repeat themselves, contributing their own without remaining in our memories.
The first begins with a very strange death: an ex-convict is killed inside the house of a millionaire, who is about to leave control of his company in the hands of one of his three daughters. The first difficulty will be to annoy the wealthy of the neighborhood with requests as offensive as a statement or the images of a security camera.
The second revolves around members of group therapy, after one member wanted to stop participating and was conveniently found dead a while later. Plenty of addictive personalities will be under suspicion, while poor Dodds must not only help solve the case, but prevent him from being interned.
The pace is right, the performances are right, Bath’s setting adds to the story. If we had to point out a detail that works against it, it is that the resolutions are usually too complicated (not complex). Like wanting to tie up too many loose ends during the previous 89 minutes. But one is left with the shaky relationship between McDonald and Dodds, in addition to the good twists of the genre.
These two episodes aired in the United Kingdom in March last year, and the success led to the green light for a second season, with three more cases. It still does not have a release date, but I deduce that there will be many who will be waiting.
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