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MovieMail's Review
Channel 4's new drama is a bleak, brilliant must-see. Peter Wild investigates.
Riding on a wave of critical approval, the Red Riding Trilogy is one of those must-see televisual feasts guaranteed to be talked of in hushed breaths come award season.
Adapted from three of David Peace’s brutal Red Riding Quartet – 1974, 1980 and 1983 – the films tell stand-alone tales of police corruption, child murder and the Yorkshire Ripper against a bleak backdrop of life up North (at the end of the first instalment a whippet-thin demon of a policeman barks, ‘This is the North, we do what we want!’).
The trilogy works best, however, taken together as a cumulative roundhouse to your brain, with leap-off-the-screen performances (including a career best from Sean Bean and equally excellent turns from Paddy Considine, Warren Clarke and Rebecca Hall), sturdy use of the Anglo-Saxon and genuinely disturbing plotlines, images and ideas. If you like quality, challenging drama, Red Riding is just about as essential as it gets.
All three of the Channel 4 dramas -1974, 1980 and 1983 - based on the dark, disturbing novels by David Peace, which give a fictionalised account of the chilling events and police corruption surrounding the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.
After a failed attempt to crack Fleet Street, a cynical journalist returns to his homeland of Yorkshire and finds himself assigned to report on the case of a local girl who has gone missing. But after her bizarrely mutilated body is discovered, he is thrown into a sleazy, nightmarish world of corruption. As the killer's identity remains a mystery, events spiral out of control, spanning generations and leading to a shocking climax.
TV broadcasts emphasised the dark visuals of this much-acclaimed series of adaptations of David Peace’s scarifying Yorkshire-set crime novels; the DVD issues render de... more >
TV broadcasts emphasised the dark visuals of this much-acclaimed series of adaptations of David Peace’s scarifying Yorkshire-set crime novels; the DVD issues render detail far more clear and accessible. Scripted by Tony Grisoni and directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker, Red Riding is a grim but utterly compelling trilogy of films built around the six-year police investigation of the Yorkshire Ripper, folded in with other fictitious crimes. The re-working of the novels by David Pearce (1974, 1980 and 1983) are handled with immense assurance, though this is deeply uncomfortable viewing. It’s perhaps a legitimate point to make that the treatment of the West Yorkshire Police – while consummately acted and directed -- has something in common with Mel Gibson’s treatment of the British in such movies as The Patriot: they are presented as brutal Nazi storm troopers, utterly corrupt and beyond any law. But there is no gainsaying the skilfulness of the realisation here. The powerful, resolutely unconsoling dramas are bolstered with remarkable performances from a stellar cast including Sean Bean, Andrew Garfield, Paddy Considine, Warren Clarke, Peter Mullan, David Morrissey, Maxine Peake, Rebecca Hall and Mark Addy. < less
