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An article by Adam Sherwin for The Independent detailing the British TV invasion of Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular reference to Luther

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Sherlock and Luther are leading a British television invasion of Sub-Saharan Africa with the region becoming one of the fastest growing buyers of UK-produced television programmes.

Research from the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact) showed that exports to South Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa grew by over a third (35%) in the past year.

The UK Television Exports Survey 2014/15, using figures from BBC Worldwide and ITV Studios Global Entertainment, includes DVD sales, digital and format rights. Sales of programmes alone grew by 21% from £8.4million to £10.2million.

A large number of new cable and satellite channels have launched in Sub-Saharan Africa in the past few years, boosted by an upgrade to its electricity grid, contributing to the sales rise.

High-end drama, including the BBC's detective duo of Sherlock and Luther perform well with African audiences. Natural history, including David Attenborough's Africa series, is proving popular along with the children's shows Charlie and Lola and 3rd and Bird.

Joel Churcher, Vice President for Africa, BBC Worldwide, said: "Having a strong, black lead character in a drama like Luther helps appeal to African audiences. The CBeebies educational output is very popular with families. There is a strong nostalgia pull for BBC comedies like Absolutely Fabulous and My Family. Africa is also the only continent to take the British Strictly show, they know our celebrities and dancers."

Mr Churcher said the rise in UK programme sales was partly due to new web-based platforms launching in Africa. ITV recently launched its first pan-African drama and entertainment channel, ITV Choice, on the DStv digital satellite service.

Mexico saw the largest increase in UK sales year-on-year with a 46% increase but the value of sales was smaller than the African contribution.

British television sales to Russia crashed by 49%. Pact ascribed this to recent sanctions on advertising on cable and satellite channels.

Overall, the estimated total revenue from the international sales of UK TV programmes and associated activities in 2014/15 was £1,207m, a 0.6% decrease on the previous year.

Dawn McCarthy-Simpson, Director of International at Pact, said: "Africa has been a key focus for Pact in the past year and it's good to see that UK producers are taking advantage of the improved infrastructure across the continent. The world still loves UK TV programmes but it remains a competitive market. Emerging countries and digital rights could be key to future growth."

The hits

Africa: Sir David Attenborough's 2013 BBC series crossing the Kalahari desert and the Congo basin to investigate Africa's wild habitats is an education even for a local audience.

Luther: Idris Elba's maverick detective is bringing gritty British crime stories and high production values to African viewers.

Charlie and Lola: From CBeebies to Senegal, the global appeal of the animated series based on the popular children's picture books about two siblings knows no bounds.

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Sherlock and Luther are leading a British TV invasion of Sub-Saharan Africa

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Sherlock and Luther are leading a British television invasion of Sub-Saharan Africa with the region becoming one of the fastest growing buyers of UK-produced television programmes. Research from the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact) showed that exports to South Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa grew by over a third (35%) in the past year.

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An  article by Ross Garner for Jomec.co.uk discussing the genre conventions and themes of Luther.

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Posted by Dr Ross Garner

Trust has been a key theme running throughout this series of Luther (BBC 2010- ). These issues have been framed most explicitly through the generic conventions of romance fiction and the emerging relationship between DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) and Mary Day (Sienna Guillory) as Mary has been forced to question Luther's suitability as a partner. Questions of trust have also been raised in different ways throughout series three: the internal investigation narrative, where DSU George Stark (David O'Hara) and DCI Erin Grey (Nikki Amuka-Bird) have ruthlessly pursued Luther over his methods, restages queries that have been raised in previous series concerning whether Luther's means are justifiable despite achieving results.

On a wider scale, episodes 3.3 and 3.4 have asked viewers to question the capabilities of the UK's present Criminal Justice system. Tom Marwood's (Elliot Cowan) motivation for his vigilante killings of 'deserving' victims such as hooded attackers and known paedophiles is that his wife was let down by this system (she was killed by an early-release prisoner who had been classified as low-risk by the Probation Service). Even as episode 3.4 develops, and our perception of Marwood shifts from 'avenging angel' to 'desperate killer' as his vendettas become more personal, first towards Luther and then accessing his wife's killer, questions remain as to the whether his actions are in some capacity 'right'; the approval raised by ancillary characters for Marwood's killings at multiple points in the previous episode certainly suggests some level of public support for his actions and so questions the adequacy of contemporary legislation.

These questions of trust that Luther raises arguably permit the programme to be discussed in terms of 'quality' television. This is because prominent TV Studies scholar Robin Nelson writes in his book State of Play (2007) that 'quality' television dramas are those that generate feelings of 'ontological insecurity' for viewers. 'Ontological insecurity', as a concept, is adapted from sociologist Anthony Giddens' (1991) ideas concerning how issues of trust have been redefined within our modern globalised society. To manage the uncertainties that arise from the dispersed nature of how people, money and/or information flows around the world, Giddens argues that people gain a sense of ('ontological') security about the capabilities of the world they inhabit through either integrating new information into established frameworks of meaning or, alternatively, adapting their understanding of the world.

Returning these ideas to the discussion of Luther and 'quality' television, Nelson argues that most TV dramas, especially those on a 'mainstream' broadcaster such as BBC One, provide viewers with 'ontological security' through reaffirming commonly-held beliefs about the world. In the case of the crime drama series, such feelings would be achieved by reassuring audiences about the capabilities of the police to protect innocent citizens and catch criminals lawfully. 'Quality' police dramas would, by contrast, move away from these positions: criminals might evade capture, dubious policing methods may be employed, and issues concerning what is morally and ethically 'right' or loopholes in the law may become foregrounded.

From this perspective, it should be obvious that Luther frequently moves towards generating 'ontological insecurity' because, despite criminals always being caught, a number of questions remain unanswered about the overall security of the programme's narrative world. Returning to points raised in my previous blog post, Luther's frequent defamiliarisation of 'everyday' locations is indicative of one strategy used by the series to generate feelings of ontological insecurity as potentially anyone can be a victim of violent crime at any moment. Moreover, the perpetrators look just like you and me. This means that Luther 's entire narrative world doesn't provide reassurance. Instead, the programme suggests that things could kick off at any moment.

Just look at what happens to DS Justin Ripley (Warren Brown) for further evidence of this. What's more, though, Luther raises questions concerning policing methods. Yes, Luther is firmly rooted in the long-standing generic convention of the police crime series that necessitates that its central character is a 'maverick' who bends the law to his will to achieve results. John Luther is certainly this as he dangles suspects over the side of high-rise buildings and uses victims of crime to attempt to change the stakes of a case (see the appearance of Kiera Mills (Michelle Duncan) in episode 3.3). However, as a scene between the deliciously psychotic Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) and Luther's superiors in last night's episode indicated, the lines between 'right' and 'wrong' mobilisations of the law, and 'innocence' and 'guilt', are frequently blurred in the world of Luther. As the episode ultimately demonstrates known killers can be employed to help catch other criminals and then evade prosecution for their own crimes. In multiple ways, then, Luther offers viewers little security about the world they inhabit and the forces that are in place to protect us in our day-to-day lives.

However, as I teach undergraduate students on my 'Debating 'Quality' Television' module, the method used here for making Luther's case as a 'quality' drama series needs further refinement and reflection. This is because asking questions such as 'is <Programme X> 'quality' television? If so, for what reasons?' equates to a limited understanding of how and why certain TV shows are valued (or, conversely, devalued). Instead, it needs to be recognised that the criteria that I've used above for discussing Luther are those that a specific group of people (or interpretive community) - in this case, media scholars - have used for reading and celebrating certain programmes. This should not be taken as constituting an 'anything goes' attitude towards assessments of 'quality' TV where programmes can be valued according to purely 'personal taste'. As Pierre Bourdieu's (1984) work on distinction tells us, tastes are always socially-structured and arise out of the set of socio-historical circumstances (or 'habitus') into which we are born. Instead, we need to think about and examine the interpretive contexts where claims to 'quality' programming are made or denied.

Luther, for example, is strongly positioned for interpretation as 'quality' TV in the UK by a range of publicity material. Early announcements of the third series mobilised 'artistic' discourses of the individually-formed work to generate expectations for the series. These assertions were then supported in press interviews and publicity for Luther's third series as concepts such as creative freedom - a key set of ideas also drawn upon by producers of TV drama for premium-rate subscription services like HBO - have also been employed. Whilst these interviews construct Elba's star-image as a down-to-earth working actor, they also suggest that, unlike other TV dramas that return year-on-year in familiar seasons, Luther is something different and is therefore distinct and 'valuable'. This point is further reinforced if the frequency with which Luther is discussed in relation to cinema - whether this be the programme's muted movements to the silver screen or Elba's (and Wilson's) Hollywood associations - work to suggest the series is not everyday television.

Assessing Luther in this manner is arguably crucial as it allows us to consider how programmes are constructed as 'quality' at different moments and in different contexts (e.g. in official publicity, press interviews, by media academics) rather than simply containing attributes that make them unobjectionably 'quality'. It'll therefore be interesting, should Luther make the transition to cinema from television, to consider how it is positioned, publicised and received in this context and how its TV lineage is handled.

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Questions of Trust: Luther as Quality TV?

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Posted by Dr Ross Garner Trust has been a key theme running throughout this series of Luther (BBC 2010- ). These issues have been framed most explicitly through the generic conventions of romance fiction and the emerging relationship between DCI John Luther (Idris Elba) and Mary Day (Sienna Guillory) as Mary has been forced to question Luther's suitability as a partner.

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An article by Adrian Lobb for thequietus.com about the competition between Luther and a new similar American series Brigade

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When the Quietus visited the set of BBC1's latest detective drama earlier this year, one subject was off limits. Five years after leaving his role as drug-dealing would-be business tycoon Stringer Bell in The Wire, it appears that actor Idris Elba has tired of answering questions about The Greatest TV Show Ever Made®. Does he really think we had a whole barrage of questions about Stringer lined up?

After hastily crossing out such hard-hitting journalistic nuggets as "What is Bunk like in real life?" and, erm, "What is Omar like in real life?" it was time to watch him in action.

First impression, gained from witnessing his new alter ego punch a suspect square in the chops and leave with an inadmissible DNA sample - all within easy view of anyone on the 43 bus - was that the Hackney-born actor's overdue return to British TV (a minor role in the Beeb's The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency notwithstanding) marks a gear shift from previous generations of detective series. Morse, Frost, Bergerac and Lewis it ain't.

But, with Elba in the title role as DI John Luther, the series must compete with more than the gentle charms of TV 'tecs Endeavour, Jack, Jim and Robert. Luther will be compared to the finest dramas from the US. For, the suspicion remains that British television is unable to match the quality, intensity and ambition of the best US dramas.

What Luther lacks, in common with almost all British dramas, is time. Telling this story in six parts, rather than 13 episodes and many seasons means there is little scope for a slow build a la Mad Men and The Wire, both of which spent time bedding in characters before the dominant story arcs began to emerge. Still, State of Play shows the possibilities offered by the six-parter, even on a BBC, rather than HBO budget.

Pre-credits we see Luther refuse to help a serial killer he has chased into a warehouse (what is it with murderers and deserted warehouses?) - choosing to let him fall to his near-death even after he's given up the location of his latest victim. So far, so generic cop show: Luther is a maverick.

What else can we glean from the opening moves? A chess game: Yup, he's a cop of unusual intelligence and perception. The return from suspension and jokey pep talk from his boss: He plays by his own rules but those on his team respect him. The separation from his wife? Surely his personal issues couldn't be affected by his dedication to taking down killers, could they? Even an over-keen junior police partner who worships him seems to be plucked from the how-to-write-a-cop-show manual.

But, with Luther, the devil is in the detail. Elba displays a vulnerability that defies his imposing physique, Luther's barely suppressed rage totally believable, his performance shot through with the subtlety that made Stringer Bell so compelling. The unspoken intimacy with his police colleagues and a stammering phone call to his estranged wife Zoe, played by Rome's Indira Varma, testify to a welcome lack of slickness.

As Elba puts it, 'You see his home life in a very "shouldn't be looking" type of way. Seeing this man not coping very well with the failure of his marriage, it's kind of like how you don't want to see your dad cry.'

Key to the success of the series is the interplay between the two leads - Luther and child prodigy turned murderous physics genius, Alice Morgan. Played with theatrical relish by Ruth Wilson, who impressed on screen in Jane Eyre and Small Island, and on stage in A Streetcar Named Desire, Morgan looks set to be Luther's nemesis throughout the series. Other psychos may be brought to justice on a weekly basis, but the battle of wills between a detective with anger issues and a narcissistic brainiac killer entirely lacking in empathy is the holding narrative for the series.

Again, there's nothing new in this set up, but as Silence of the Lambs proved, when done well, these adversarial scenes of psychological combat can be captivating. Wilson's account hints at a reason for their freshness here. 'Idris doesn't really learn his lines, so he just makes it up,' she told the Quietus, adding: 'Those long scenes were very unusual. We played with them, we'd throw in different bits and pick up on each other's cues. He never goes that off beat, but he makes it his own.'

The supporting cast is strong (Varma, Steven Mackintosh, Paul McGann, Saskia Reeves, Warren Brown), the credits, soundtracked by Massive Attack, are the classiest for a British drama in years, which somehow feels important as a statement of intent. Judging by the opening two episodes, Luther might just succeed where recent attempts at intelligent British drama (Five Days, Collision, Criminal Justice) have failed.

A nagging fear remains that it could descend into just another formulaic detective series, but in terms of its ambition, not least in challenging the monopoly of white, middle-aged lead detectives, Luther might just buck the trend, last the distance and make us banish the box sets for a wee while...

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The Quietus | Features | Box Fresh | Can The BBC's Luther Challenge The American Crime Hegemony?

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When the Quietus visited the set of BBC1's latest detective drama earlier this year, one subject was off limits. Five years after leaving his role as drug-dealing would-be business tycoon Stringer Bell in The Wire, it appears that actor Idris Elba has tired of answering questions about The Greatest TV Show Ever Made®.

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Mixed American Film Buff article on the Golden age of Television crime drama during the 2010's

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Surely we are in the midst of aGolden Age of the episodic crime drama. Between Sherlock, True Detective, Luther, Broadchurch, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Top of the Lake, and a plethora of enormously successful CBS procedurals that I admit I have never seen but people seem to enjoy ( NCIS, Elementary, post-Petersen CSI). I have seen Criminal Minds several times (its a favorite of my parents) and have usually enjoyed it, but for a variety of reasons, traditional procedurals favored by the likes of CBS in particular and networks in general don't really fit into my main argument, which I'll present herein.

The most unique among these are the first three mentioned above: Sherlock, Luther, and True Detective (the latter otherwise known to me as the best eight hours I've spent since Season 4 of The Wire, which for me is hands down the best season of television I've seen). These three series are unique in their structure, character development, and deviation from formula and convention. Of course, what links them to the time-honored tropes of the genre as we know it are their eccentric, brooding, self-medicating protagonists. This last season, Sherlock himself even went so far as to admit that his case-solving functions as a way to avoid slipping back into a destructive drug habit fueled in part by his perpetual boredom in the times when, to paraphrase the Holmesian line, "the game is not on." To that point, the hilarious "bachelor party" sequence in "The Sign of Three" where Sherlock and John get shit-faced drunk offers us a comic glimpse into how Sherlock's gifts could be squandered if not properly exercised. Similarly, DCI John Luther's investigative genius is never more than a nose hair away from giving way to the more destructive sides of himself. And of course the almost tragic intersection of Rustin Cohle's pessimism, alcoholism, and investigative fervor were all on full display throughout True Detective.

Whereas Cohle and Sherlock's irreplaceable (narratively and literally) partners fill in the gaps in their antisocial personalities, Luther, even when paired with Ripley, always seems a man alone. Luther is much more a martyr figure than the other two: his struggle is his own and his inner torment seemingly untreatable. In this way Luther as a series is a bit of genre-bender combining the logic and deduction of Holmes, the unflinching fatalism of neo-noir, and the pitch dark psychodrama of what I simply call the Serial Killer genre, a space in which True Detective also owns some prime real estate. In the serial killer universe the emphasis is usually on the detectives' psychological relationship to the killer and the grim implications thereof, Sherlock is primarily concerned with Sherlock's relationship to John and vice versa.

All notions of "shipping" aside, Sherlock is primarily a love story; Sherlock and John share a deep connection and a mutual need for an adrenaline fix. They subsequently fulfill each other's needs while simultaneously fulfilling their own, which of course also includes a role in supplying the fix for the other, as they are in a "committed relationship," sharing a bond beyond mere flatmates or investigative partners. Just as ideal romantic partners compliment and fulfill each other's sexual needs, so too do Sherlock and Holmes fulfill each other's need for the thrill of the chase and find a quiet, if not awkward solace in the company of each other when the chase has subsided, both in and out of the arena of their cases. One of the many things I really loved about this last batch of Sherlock episodes is how Mary and Sherlock both essentially accept and recognize their respective roles as sometimes-primary and sometimes-secondary partners for John. He loves and needs them both for different things and doesn't want (or have) to choose one and forgo the other. The three come to what amounts to a polyamorous understanding that benefits all involved. "The Sign of Three" wedding episode (my now co-favorite episode with "A Scandal In Belgravia") captures all this, showing Sherlock fully acknowledging and accepting his new, modified role, even at the price of confronting and in a way accepting his own loneliness, which will from now on risk gaining a larger prominence in his life because John's attentions will now be elsewhere some of the time.

Luther and Cohle both seem to devote and project a large portion of the virtuous side of their human nature on the victims of the crimes they investigate. Despite their investigative genius, they both fit more into the "hard boiled" mold of a detective than the traditional "deductive reasoning" type. They're both very in touch with the darker sides of their natures as well as those of the human species as a whole, which is of course what enables them to "get into the minds of the killers" for want of a more elegant term. They both view their job as a vocation, fully aware that the world needs " bad men " such as them to get down in the muck, psychic and otherwise, in order to bring down the perpetrator. They are both beyond willing to transgress multiple codes of ethics and behavior to get their man. Make no mistake, their goal is not to arrest or even apprehend the "suspect," but to put an end to the actions being committed by the individual they happen to be pursuing by any means, operating from a sense of transcendent justice whose mandate is far greater in their eyes than any human institution. Their "job" in the occupational sense is meaningless to them; they attained and pursued their positions to be better able to execute their mandate in terms of resources and in some sense, credibility.

I went into all this character analysis to highlight what I see as connections between these three remarkable series that remain, in my own research at least, largely unexplored by the usual sources. Between these three shows alone I see this present epoch in television as an undisputed golden age of the crime drama. Despite the connections between them these shows are also drastically different from one another, each one dark and darkly hilarious in its own way. I love all three of these shows with a passion, and the performances delivered by the five lead actors involved (Cumberbatch, Freeman, Elba, McConaughey, and Harrelson) are unparalleled not only in the crime genre, but arguably in television writ large. With their expert execution of flawless writing, these series are three of the crown media jewels of our time. I wouldn't trade any of them for anything and I frankly don't know what I would have done without them as a viewer these last few years. They've changed my mind as a viewer and writer both about a genre that's too easily subject to convention and mediocrity by a lack of invention on the part of its producers. The bar has been raised by these and other series and I sincerely hope we see some imitators upcoming.

American Television, adultery, Afganistan veterans, Alcoholism, Amanda Abbington, American Law Enforcement, American Television, atheism, BBC, BBC America, Benedict Cumberbatch, Blacks On Television, Breaking Bad, British Afghanistan veteran, British Law Enforcement, British Television, Broadchurch, brothers, Buddy Cops, Cary Fukunaga, Cary Joji Fukunaga, CBS, cop and criminal duality, crime, Crime Drama, Criminal Minds, CSI, Depression, detective partnerships, detective serials, Detective Stories, devil worship, Dexter, divorce, Dr. John Watson, drug abuse, Drug Addiction, duality, Elementary, Film stars on television, functional alcoholics, functional alcoholism, genius I.Q., genius level detectives, genre fiction, Genre Studies, grief, HBO, homoeroticism, human sacrifice, Idris Elba, Indira Varma, infidelity, insomnia, Isolation, London, loss, Louisiana State Criminal Investigative Division, Louisiana State Police, Luther, Mark Gatiss, Martin Freeman, Mary Marston, Masterpiece, Matthew McConaughey, military doctors, mourning, Mystery, NCIS, Neil Cross, Neo-noir, Netflix, New Scotland Yard, Nic Pizzolatto, occult, only children, paganism, PBS, pessimism, plural marriage, Police Procedurals, polyamory, Pop Culture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, private detectives, psychoanalytic theory, Psychological Crime Drama, Psychological Thriller, psychopathology, psychopaths, psychosomatic injury, PTSD, Ruth Wilson, Santeria, Self-Medicating, Serial Killers, series based on Victorian literature, Series Set In Louisiana, Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Adaptations, shipping, sibling rivalry, siblings, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Southern Gothic, Stephen Thompson, Steven Moffat, surrogate families, Television, Top of the Lake, True Detective, TV series set in London, voodoo, war veterans, Warren Brown, Woody Harrelson British Television, Pop Culture, Television

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'Sherlock,' 'Luther,' 'True Detective' & The Golden Age of Television Crime Drama

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Surely we are in the midst of a Golden Age of the episodic crime drama. Between Sherlock, True Detective, Luther, Broadchurch, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Top of the Lake, and a plethora of enormously successful CBS procedurals that I admit I have never seen but people seem to enjoy (NCIS, Elementary, post-Petersen CSI).

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Den of Geek review of Luther by Tom French on  the plot development and social impact the show has.

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This feature contains plot overviews but no real spoilers for Luther series one and two.

You might have seen the adverts on telly - the BBC's Luther is back. The cult series returns to our screens in July, but the first two series may well have passed many people by. Writer Neil Cross will have recently appeared on the geek radar of some people for the first time, having penned two episodes of the seventh series of Doctor Who - The Rings of Akhaten and Hide. He's been around a little while though.

He was lead scriptwriter for the BBC spy drama Spooks for two seasons, and in 2010 he was given the chance to create his own crime series, Luther. A psychological spin on the crime procedural, Luther is a dark show dealing with perverse crimes and broken minds.

Its ace in the hole is Idris Elba as the eponymous Detective Chief Inspector John Luther, a mercurial policemen described in the opening episode as 'nitro-glycerine'. Unstable, temperamental, and extremely talented, Luther is a fascinating main character. It is a role that Elba really sinks his teeth in to. Perhaps against the odds, the series returns for a third series this year. If you have yet to check it out, it is well worth catching up on DVD.

The series opens in bombastic fashion. The debut episode opens with a panicked man running through an abandoned factory, being stalked by a silhouetted man. Running parallel to this, police are at a suburban home, desperately hunting for a missing girl in a chase against time.

The scene unfolds to reveal Luther confront paedophile Henry Madsen high in the jaws of the factory. An intense, powerful opening, Luther extracts his own form of justice on Madsen. The show has set its tone wonderfully, all before the opening credits have even had chance to roll.

This opening episode is a true joy. Following a stint in a psychological unit after the Madsen incident, Luther returns to work. Thrust back in the deep end, Luther and his new protégé Detective Sergeant Justin Ripley (Warren Brown) investigate the murder of a middle-class couple with no obvious motive. The only suspect? The couple's daughter, Alice - played with great relish by Ruth Wilson.

Deranged, obsessive and oddly alluring, Alice Morgan is a wonderful creation. The first episode unravels as a game of wits between Luther and Alice, the detective desperate to pin the crime on her. A child prodigy, she subtly flaunts her guilt to Luther, but he has no way to conclusively prove it. Their relationship builds from these cat-and-mouse exchanges to become the spine of the first series, with the two brilliant minds compelled by one another. Luther obsesses over Alice's guilt - she obsesses over his brilliance.

The first four episodes play out with Luther and Ripley tackling a variety of sadistic crimes. From a Satanist with a penchant for kidnapping, to a former soldier methodically killing policemen, work is pretty busy for John Luther and co. With his estranged wife Zoe (Indira Varma) trying to move on with a new lover, and Alice dipping in and out of his life, Luther has a lot on his plate.

The show really kicks into gear in its fifth episode, the penultimate episode in its initial run. Luther's trusted colleague and loyal friend, DCI Ian Reed, knowingly allows a diamond robbery to go ahead. When the deal goes south and leads to kidnap and murder, the situation quickly gets out of his control.

The final two episodes of the first series are a masterclass in an escalation of tension. The score - restrained piano and strings - adds great atmosphere to the action. The finale demonstrates the series' great use of music at the conclusion of each episode. The powerful Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Nina Simone reflects the ending perfectly both lyrically and emotionally. Time and again, the production team choose the perfect song for each episode ending. Other tracks like Gun by Emiliana Torrini and Breathe Me by Sia are used to great effect. Massive Attack's Paradise Circus is also a great choice for the theme music.

The performances across the board are superb as Zoe, her lover Mark (Paul McGann), Alice and Luther all get dragged into Ian's destructive machinations. Ian's collapse into a nigh-on psychotic state is wonderfully realised by Steven Mackintosh. Elba, McGann and Wilson all tackle their parts in the chaos with great gusto, with Luther's instability mirroring that of Ian Reed's. Warren Brown is also fantastic throughout - not many actors can make the transition from Hollyoaks to a drama of this calibre with such ease. Without giving anything away, the final episode reaches a tense climax, and finishes with one of the most brutal cliffhangers in recent memory.

With that in mind, it is something of a shame that the second series opens so quietly. I was hoping for a smash-mouth opener following directly on from the series one finale. Instead, we meet our cast a few months after the previous series' events. It is sedate, and measured, but not quite what I was hoping for.

Luther is returning to work, Alice is... well that would be telling, Ripley is stuck working as uniform police, while former police complaints officer Martin Schenk (Dermot Crowley), so often a thorn in Luther's side in the first series, is assembling a new unit - the Serious and Serial unit.

The first episode throws him back into the firing line, taking on a masked murderer with a an eye for the theatrical, all the while trying to rescue a teenage sex worker, Jenny, from a perverse internet sex ring. Played by Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Jenny is sparky, and feisty, with an unusual turn of phrase.

Despite my personal dislike for the decision to move the plot several months after the events of the first series, the episode is quick to find its footing, and both the chase to find the masked killer and Jenny's story prove to be absorbing stuff. The second series ends up becoming as much Jenny's story as Luther's. Edwards' performance is accomplished for such a young actress, and she carries the weight of the story well.

The scope of a four-episode series comprised of two 'two-parters' works well, giving the macabre crimes time to be fleshed out and fully reflected upon. After the story of the masked killer winds up, Luther and the team are left to deal with a killer obsessed with role-playing games bringing savagery to the streets of London. The case pushes Luther to the brink, and provides another intense series finale.

While a thrilling and entertaining experience, the second series just falls short of the magic of the maiden run of episodes. Having said that, if you are looking for a thrilling, often unsettling crime drama, Luther is still about as good as it gets. The third series looks to follow the template laid out by the second, with four episodes divided as 'two-parters'. The trailer promises a fiery and action-packed set of episodes, and may be on course to match the brilliance of the first two series. If you have yet to watch, try and catch up before the third series premieres. It will be very much worth the effort.
Luther series three returns to the BBC in the first week of July. Come back later this week for our spoiler-free review of the first episode and watch the trailer below:
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This feature contains plot overviews but no real spoilers for Luther series one and two. You might have seen the adverts on telly - the BBC's Luther is back. The cult series returns to our screens in July, but the first two series may well have passed many people by.

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BBC TV Blog article from Neil Cross, the creator of Luther on his inspiration behind Luther as well as the genre connection he came up with when creating the show.

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The character that became Detective Chief Inspector John Luther was pinging round my head long before he had a name - or I had any idea how to use him.

He started as means to connect two ideas from different genres within the broad church of crime fiction. Luther has some of the Sherlock Holmes about him - some of that disinterested analytical genius.

But he's also got the emotional complexity and moral ambiguity more commonly found in the psychological thriller. It seemed to me that combining these properties - deductive brilliance and moral passion - in one man could make for a powerful and damaged, deeply heroic character.

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As for the format of the show - I grew up loving Columbo, and still love it. But Columbo's format - the 'howcatchem', or inverted detective story - wasn't really played to accentuate the drama.

Lieutenant Columbo was rarely at any personal risk (because that's not we wanted to see) and we knew he'd always get his killer in the end.

What we didn't know was how - which played a big part in making that show so incomparably satisfying.

The inverted detective story format hadn't really been revisited since Columbo ended, not that I know of anyway. So I thought it might be exciting to portray it as a kind of psychological duel between this driven, half-mad cop and the depraved criminals he hunts.

So we know who Luther has to catch. What we don't know is how on earth he's going to do it.

The process of making the show, from writing the scripts to seeing it reach the screen, has been exhilarating and sometimes petrifying. As these things go, Luther moved very quickly indeed. At times it felt like I was strapped to the nose cone of a rocket.

In the weeks leading up to take-off, I could feel the constant, seismic rumble of all those barely reined-in pounds per square inch of thrust. And once it started to actually move, all I could do was hang on and hope the teeth wouldn't get rattled from my head.

In a situation like that, you don't get writer's block. Or sleep much, either. But I did get to work with people I like, admire and trust. We were a proper team and we were on a mission. I revel in that feeling of camaraderie.

The cast is so good I was terrified of meeting them as individuals, let alone as an ensemble - but that's essentially what happened. With the exception of Indira Varma (who couldn't be there) I met them all at the episode one table-read, a kind of first read-through rehearsal, where I was a gibbering wreck.

That night we went out for drinks.

The first hour or so, talking to Saskia Reeves, all I could think was: 'I'm talking to Saskia Reeves!'.

By 10pm, I was a few gin and tonics into the evening and Warren Brown - who plays Detective Sergeant Ripley - was doing his Lily Savage impression. I was able to relax somewhat and just revel in the fact that we'd brought together such an astonishing cast.

People often ask me what was the best moment, but to be honest it's hard to elect just one or two.

In the run-up to production and during production itself, I spent a lot of time laughing with my colleagues: in retrospect, given the time pressures involved, that seems remarkable. But a particular high point has to be casting Idris Elba.

We wanted the show to be special, so when it came to casting our leading man we'd decided to be ambitious, to set the bar high, thinking: don't ask, don't get.

Idris was on the list... because Idris is pretty much on everyone's list. But his name was waaaaaay up there, up above the cloud line. So when I got the phone call saying we'd got him - that was a good moment; as good as these moments get, I think.

Then there was watching the rushes at the end of the very first day's shooting. It had taken place outside episode one's "Morgan House" crime scene.

I saw Idris walk into shot, duck under the tape, and I thought: 'There he is, then. That's Luther.'.

I love John Luther, naturally. But I also love unreservedly the character of Alice Morgan. In fact, on that first night out with the cast I seem to recall telling Ruth Wilson (who plays her) that in many ways I considered Alice to be the perfect woman. She looked at me, it has to be said, with a degree of horror.

Alice was a formidable role - chilly and flirtatious, murderous and vulnerable, high-minded and caustic, sometimes in the same sentence. But Ruth makes her absolutely real, and utterly riveting. There's a moment in episode four where she truly frightens me.

I was on set when Idris and Ruth filmed their first scene together. It was a spine-tingling event - but I don't think it's good for me to hang round on set, because that's just not where a writer belongs. So I made myself scarce and let them get on with their jobs.

As for what you can expect from Luther and where he goes next ... well, if I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise. Let's just say, the pressure on him doesn't let up. Not for a second.
Neil Cross is the writer of Luther. Luther starts on BBC One at 9pm on Tuesday, 4 May

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Introducing Luther - with love to Detective Columbo

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The character that became Detective Chief Inspector John Luther was pinging round my head long before he had a name - or I had any idea how to use him. He started as means to connect two ideas from different genres within the broad church of crime fiction.