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In most cop/crime/forensic shows — CSI:wherever, Law & Order, Bones, Cold Case, etc, etc, etc — murder is a game of chess, murder is something that one side tries to get away with, and the other tries to catch them. The point is not the death, but the game.
The murderer is somehow cool. Sometimes simply by apposition to their opponents, sometimes because they are real rebels: they break the final taboo. They are unlucky bastards, poor shmucks who try to stave off the inevitable. They are romantic.
Wire in the Blood is not like that.
These murderers are not heroes, or antiheroes, or rebels, or romantics, or shlubs bucking against bad luck.
They are sick, sad, insane fucks, who kill because they are, fundamentally, broken, because they had to choose between changing who they are and being monsters, and decided that change was too hard. They don't kill because it's cool, or rebellious, or romantic, or because they could get away with it, or for the money, or out of mercy, or by accident, but because they couldn't not do it.
And while the concept is there in other shows, the broken insane murderer is a well-worn trope, the other shows, other movies — Se7en, Kiss The Girls, The Bone Collecter, Silence of the Lambs et seq. — all treat him (almost always ‘him’) as a different sort of monster: the Gothic monster, the romantic monster. He is Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, a Werewolf: he is what he is, and what he is is romantic. He is something else, other, alien to and in many ways superior to the rest of humanity, except for the demi-god sent to catch him (Frankenstein, Van Helsing, the Ronin with the silver bullet, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Detective Logan). It is a game between two great powers.
In Wire in the Blood, the actual murderer is not the opponent of Dr Tony Hill: it is the murderer's insanity. The game is not the usual one of chess or poker, but of Solitaire, the Cryptic Crossword, Sudoku with interlocking grids of 144 symbols.
And, as I keep returning to, the murderer is not cool, or playing a game, or being a rebel.
He is doing what he must.
And he does not do so because he has decided to, but because he is broken, and would be, were he less dangerous, a sad pitiful creature. He is at the same time a monster, and a pathetic specimen.
It is not the concept per se which sets Wire in the Blood apart from its peers, it is the presentation. And that presentation is itself a powerful concept.
And now I'm going to bed.
The murderer is somehow cool. Sometimes simply by apposition to their opponents, sometimes because they are real rebels: they break the final taboo. They are unlucky bastards, poor shmucks who try to stave off the inevitable. They are romantic.
Wire in the Blood is not like that.
These murderers are not heroes, or antiheroes, or rebels, or romantics, or shlubs bucking against bad luck.
They are sick, sad, insane fucks, who kill because they are, fundamentally, broken, because they had to choose between changing who they are and being monsters, and decided that change was too hard. They don't kill because it's cool, or rebellious, or romantic, or because they could get away with it, or for the money, or out of mercy, or by accident, but because they couldn't not do it.
And while the concept is there in other shows, the broken insane murderer is a well-worn trope, the other shows, other movies — Se7en, Kiss The Girls, The Bone Collecter, Silence of the Lambs et seq. — all treat him (almost always ‘him’) as a different sort of monster: the Gothic monster, the romantic monster. He is Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, a Werewolf: he is what he is, and what he is is romantic. He is something else, other, alien to and in many ways superior to the rest of humanity, except for the demi-god sent to catch him (Frankenstein, Van Helsing, the Ronin with the silver bullet, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Detective Logan). It is a game between two great powers.
In Wire in the Blood, the actual murderer is not the opponent of Dr Tony Hill: it is the murderer's insanity. The game is not the usual one of chess or poker, but of Solitaire, the Cryptic Crossword, Sudoku with interlocking grids of 144 symbols.
And, as I keep returning to, the murderer is not cool, or playing a game, or being a rebel.
He is doing what he must.
And he does not do so because he has decided to, but because he is broken, and would be, were he less dangerous, a sad pitiful creature. He is at the same time a monster, and a pathetic specimen.
It is not the concept per se which sets Wire in the Blood apart from its peers, it is the presentation. And that presentation is itself a powerful concept.
And now I'm going to bed.