The Books of My Life: Cracker

I have been watching British television since the 1960s. One of my favourite British TV genres has long been the crime or detective genre, a genre that British TV seems to have perfected over the years. Some of my favourite British crime shows include ITV's Inspector Morse, ITV's Prime Suspect, ITV's Lewis, and ITV's Cracker, all of which number among my favourite TV shows of all time.

Cracker, the subject of Mark Duguid's excellent monograph in the BFI TV Classics series Cracker (London: BFI, 2000), whose three series ran on ITV between 1993 and 1995, and which had specials broadcast in 1996 and 2007, starred Robbie Coltrane as Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald, a psychologist who helps the Greater Manchester Police investigate and solve a series of difficult and heinous murders in that city. "Fitz" is not only a gifted psychologist, as Duguid notes, but is also an arrogant, self-centred, and selfish gambling and alcohol addict, who, because of his narcissism and addictions, is not only a genius of Holmesian proportions, but is also someone who has sometimes difficult and disastrous personal relations his wife Judith (Barbara Flynn), his two children Mark and Katie, and the other cops he works with.

As Duguid notes Cracker was created by producer Gub Neal and Liverpudlian writer Jimmy McGovern, both of whom were interviewed by Duguid for his book. During its run McGovern wrote six of Cracker's 9 episodes and two specials. Paul Abbot, later the creator of Clocking Off (BBC), State of Play (BBC), Shameless (C4), and Hit and Miss (Sky), who became a producer on Cracker in series two, wrote three episodes of Cracker including the "White Ghost" special. Thematically, argues Duguid, Cracker is centred around the themes of justice and injustice, Catholicism--"Fitz" like McGovern is a lapsed Catholic--moral choices, the impossibility of pure motives, and confession, in both the criminal and Catholic senses. In Cracker, as Duguid notes, ordinary people are often driven by circumstances, by hopelessness, despair, poverty, grief, and resentment, to commit  heinous crimes that reveal the dark recesses of their souls, dark souls that only "Fitz" seems to comprehend and understand.

Cracker proved popular during its run on ITV not only with viewers but with critics. The show rose from almost ten million viewers during its first episode to a high of 15 million in later episodes. Newspaper critics on the left, in the middle, and on the right, praised the show when it was first broadcast though its occasional explicit violence, its occasional political incorrectness, its sometime lack of realism, and its emphasis on social issues, including the Hillsborough tragedy as seen through the eyes of a grieving and angry working class Liverpudlian socialist (someone a bit like McGovern himself), were condemned by some groups, some critics, the police, and the punditocracy at the Daily Mail. Over its initial run Cracker was nominated for 14 BAFTAs winning seven including BAFTAs for best drama and three consecutive best actor BAFTAs for Coltrane.

I highly recommend not only Duguid's book but the television show itself. If you haven't seen it watch it as soon as you can. In my opinion, it is one of the great English language TV shows ever.