Not a Racial Slur, Really

There's always a bit of trouble when your domestic titles don't match up well overseas.

Take, for instance, Cracker.

Immediately upon pronunciation of this title, American audiences are either offended or expecting to see some kind of "whitey in the 'hood" kind of show, in which most of the humor is painfully unfunny and aimed at the cheapest laugh to be gotten from a "fish out of water" story, but that also shallowly reaffirms our cherished belief that everyone is, deep down, really the same.

You'd be way off if you thought this, however. Cracker is actually a phenomenal British crime drama--the title refers to one who "cracks" cases, if you will. Robbie Coltrane (probably best known to American audiences as one half of the cross-dressing duo in Nuns on the Run, or as a much made-over Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films) stars as Dr. Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, a psychologist retained by the police to help them in investigating violent crime.

Coltrane as Fitz is a delight to watch. If you can possibly imagine a much less pleasant Hugh Laurie as Dr. House on House who deals with fantastic mental illnesses the way Dr. House deals with physical ones, you'd be on the right track. Bitter, acerbic, and petty, Coltrane still has you rooting for Fitz all the way. Coltrane is a phenomenal actor in any case, if you give him room and keep him out of nun's habits or beards "bushy enough to catch a badger in" (thanks, Blackadder!).

The supporting cast is also terrific, and the writing is fantastic. I am much pleased to see a show willing to carry out the failings and sins of its characters to their logical conclusions. Fitz is brilliant and funny, but he's also incredibly abrasive, socially immature, a smoker, an alcholic, and a gambling addict. In the episodes we've seen (just a few, from everyone's favorite: Netflix), he's spent nearly as much time trying to get his wife to come back (she left after a particularly bad gambling binge) and figure out how to communicate with his teenage son as he has digging into the mental state of psychopaths. And while the cases Fitz tackles are the far-out ones (the first episode involves a homicidal maniac who attacks young women on moving trains), they play out as grounded and believable. I think this is helped by the very realistic, human reactions the cast has to these difficult events.

So it's good, is what I'm saying. You should check it out. I'm posting this late from staying up to watch the three episodes on the latest disc this very night. I'd have written about something else, perhaps, but this is all my brain is capable of processing at the moment.

Okay, that's enough for now. Off with you!