Cracker (1993 - 1996)

INTRODUCTION

Brutal, innovative and utterly compelling, Cracker was the crime show of the early 1990s, an uncompromising delve into the complex mind of Dr Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, a chain smoking, overweight and alcoholic psychologist working freelance with the Manchester police as a profiler. Controversial for its unapologetic use of random violence, the general seediness of its 'hero' and the raw power of McGovern's dialogue, Cracker hung around for three belting seasons before packing its bags, hightailing it to Hong Kong for a one off special, then quitting while it was ahead.

Something of a thorn in the side of production company Granada (the public loved it, but the company were constantly troubled by the violence and some of the more confrontational attitudes), Cracker proved a worthy gamble, bagging a host of BAFTA awards, huge audiences and more critical kudos than anyone could have expected. Due in almost equal parts to the quality of the directors employed, the blunt brilliance of McGovern's writing and Coltrane's award winning performance, Cracker rose head and shoulders above what little competition it had in the British crime show stakes at the time. Grittier than Inspector Morse (1987 - 2000), funnier than Taggart (1983 - ), tighter than Prime Suspect (1991 - 2003) and a damn sight more believable than either Backup (1995) or the hugely popular police soap The Bill (1984 - ), it walked a tightrope between raw black humour and galvanising violence that was every bit as fascinating as the intricately worked out relationships between the socially dysfunctional Fitz and his family, friends and colleagues.

At the show's core was Robbie Coltrane, elevated from cult new wave comedian to give an unprecedented performance as one of the least likeable yet most watchable 'heroes' British TV ever produced. While repelled by his excesses and his appalling treatment of his long-suffering
wife (another great performance from Barbara Flynn), we marvelled at his deductive reasoning, stood in awe of his towering intellect and laughed guiltily along at his often sick braggadocio. The character - despite his flaws - is far more appealing than the rather cold Detective Jane Tennyson (Helen Mirren) from the over-rated Prime Suspect, the home-grown show most often compared to Cracker, much to McGovern's chagrin.

Cracker worked primarily because it refused to compromise and refused to treat its audience like idiots - it acknowledged that its subject matter was dirty, distasteful and often very bloody, and it assumed that its audience was adult enough to deal with that on their own. At a time when violence in the media was the ailing British government's scapegoat of choice, it was a brave and immensely controversial choice, one that split the popular press - on the one hand, they were obliged to tow the party line and join in the politically motivated trashing of all things violent and visual. Yet on the other hand, they recognised quality drama when they saw it and, hell, 15 million viewers (their readers, let us not forget...) couldn't be wrong. Of course, those same newspapers and their Tory puppet-masters all utterly failed to understand that the intelligent, thinking portion of the British public had had enough of being mollycoddled by the Big Brother media-guardians and were turning in their droves to Cracker for first rate entertainment that wasn't going to partonise them or insult their intelligence. Cracker's attitude was that if you didn't like it, you could stop watching at any time - it simply didn't care and certainly wasn't going to change its ways just you were a bit upset about what it was doing. The media came in for a critical drubbing at McGovern's hands in the galvanising To Be a Somebody when tabloid The Sun's notorious coverage of the Hillsborough football ground tragedy in April 1989 led the deranged killer to stalk a former Sun reporter.

But it wasn't just the violence that stuck in the craw of the more squeamish and easliy offended. Cracker pissed all over the bloated body of political correctness by tackling 'difficult' subjects in its characteristically harsh and confrontational manner - a black rapist preys on white women to avenge himself on a racist white society (Men Should Weep); a cop - one of the regulars no less - turns his pent-up rage and frustration on one of his colleagues who he violently rapes (Men Should Weep); homosexual lovers leave a trail of violence and murder in their wake as they come to terms with their relationship (Best Boys); and a racist thug who murders Asians and police alike is portrayed as just an ordinary Joe, and a rather sympathetic one at that despite the foulness of his rhetoric (To Be a Somebody). The latter rattled the most cages, with its depiction of a racist skinhead driven to murder over the lack of someone definite to blame for the Hillsborough football stadium tragedy, a subject that McGovern would return to with stunning results in the deeply affecting Hillsborough (1996)

McGovern - a hard-bitten veteran of that other gritty north west Britain-based drama Brookside (1982 - 2003) - is a rare beast in modern British television and is one that should be treasured. Committed, political, deeply involved with the issues he writes about and above all breathtakingly talented, he carved out a new face for British drama in the 90s, cannily tapping raw nerves in the general public
in his quest for ever-improving television. Cracker exposes the raw underbelly of post-Thatcherite Britain, a nation crippled by an uncaring regime, where the working class has been robbed of its dignity and where the social fabric is in danger of being torn apart at any moment.

This is all well and good, but does it really deserve a place here, in an encyclopedia of fantastic film and television? Certainly - if only for its detailed and defiantly unglamorous stare into the minds of serial killers and repeat rapists. Unlike the glut of supposedly "realistic" serial killer dramas that proliferated in the wake of the predictable and over-rated The Silence of the Lambs (1991) or the mindlessly mysognystic stalk and slash genre, Cracker took the more difficult and artistically dangerous route of basing its observations and sketches in the real world. The killers that stalk the streets of Northern England and Hong Kong are far more frightening than any number of Hannibal Lectors, simply because they are more believable, more real, less charicatured. If only for that reason, it more than deserves its place here.
KEVIN LYONS

Last Updated: 1 January, 2009