Praise and mystery of the British police officer

Aerial shot of London at night. A large black car moves along the ring road. It is hosted by Peter Capaldi. He has a couple in the back seat who make fun of his undertaker's face. Capaldi remains silent, ignores them and smiles without smiling, his eyes half-closed, attentive to everything and detached from the world at the same time. His memory of

is still fresh

: he occupied the Tardis between 2013 and 2017, being the twelfth actor to play the character. On British TV, being a Doctor is equivalent to being a James Bond in the movies. It marks character, like the priesthood, and is very similar to a pontificate. Once you've been a Doctor Who, you're a Doctor Who for life, all subsequent characters are stained. That is why it is audacious to have Capaldi wander around a London at night: the viewer expects him to head to the Tardis or face a space-time threat, but Capaldi only drives, smiles without smiling and watches without looking. Who is he, where is he going, what is he hiding and what is this about? Only a minute has passed, a dozen short shots have followed one another and nothing has happened, but I'm already inside and I don't want to leave. Capaldi hasn't said a word yet and I'm already certain that

is a great series.

How do they do that? As a viewer addicted to British police films, I sometimes think that they cross the border of sleight of hand and enter that of magic. Their biggest mystery is not the crimes they solve, but how they manage to make each new series of a genre so codified, manipulated, exploited, remasticated and with more commonplaces than there are flowers in April and May seem new and bold.

Every year, when this newspaper asks me for a list of my ten favorite series, four or five British police series always come up. The Americans sometimes bore me, and the Nordics, always so acclaimed, make me laugh. The French are good at siesta, and the Spanish, some snack and others don't, but the British flock to the bottom of the plate and repeat. Even the bad ones taste good to me. When I don't know which series to watch, I take refuge in some dumpy police station in the north of England or the suburbs of Belfast and absorb the adventures of a detective who doesn't know how to dress, lives in water up to his neck and doesn't have on the basis of personal displeasures.

Criminal History

will be on my list of the best series of 2024. It will be because of Capaldi's interpretation, who replicates Cush Jumbo, and because of the mastery with which the plot sustains ambiguity, playing at confusion in a world of racism and discriminations where few things are what they seem. And perhaps in these arguments lies part of the mystery of the eternal validity of the British police: scriptwriters and actors have found in it the masterful formula to get into all the puddles of today's world and bring to the public square, from fiction, the contemporary anxieties and dilemmas. They will say that this is what the noir genre has been doing for a long time, and they will say well, but it is rare to find it so well finished, with so many layers of reading and such an effective capacity to penetrate diverse audiences, from the drowsy one who just wants to know who killed her (the conventions of the genre mean that there are many more victims than

), to the intellectual who seeks the philosophical edges of each phrase.

From the police perspective, British society has meditated on the effects of Thatcher's neoliberal revolution (

is its summit; at a great distance,

), the open wounds of IRA terrorism and police corruption (

,

), the social and cultural decline of picturesque towns (

), the crisis of democratic institutions (

or, more politically,

, where we met Carey Mulligan), the geostrategic insignificance of the United Kingdom in a multipolar world (

) or the loneliness epidemic and the aging population (

). In many cases, they contribute more wisdom to the debate than journalistic forums and many essays by Oxford professors. The color palette ranges from the amphetamine and sometimes banal Jed Mercurio to the proletarian and elegiac poetry of Sally Wainwright, without forgetting the thousand perennial variations on the theme of Sherlock Holmes, patron saint on duty, invoked in elegant and flirtatious mass consumption series, such as

or

.

The degree of commitment and depth also varies greatly, but even the most banal and commercial of the series encourages a second reading and comes with a veneer of irony. The fascinating thing about the genre is that it looks with inquisition and almost always with discomfort. He disdains Manichaeism and shuns easy solutions and sermons. Conan Doyle may float on the surface, but Shakespeare almost always dives at the bottom. Today, Kings, Iagos, Hamlets, Falstaffs and Lady MacBeths wear the uniform of the Midlands or London Metropolitan Police and drive on single-lane country roads.

Paul Rutman's Criminal History

takes a direct shot at the racism and poverty of London's multicultural suburbs (it may not be a coincidence that Jim Loach, of the long-time proletarian Loach, directed four episodes), but there is no complacency or doctrine in its history, and that makes it worthy of the police tradition of British television. It is probably, along with

, the last great title, and both confirm that the genre is in a great moment. No matter how much I look for them, I can't find any signs of wear or decay. The BBC and the private ones continue to reign with their agents and detectives, and no police force in the world overshadows them.

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