8/11/13
Subject Review: Low Winter Sun UK
In preparation for AMC's remake of Low Winter Sun, I've decided to take a look at the original UK miniseries. The series stars Mark Strong and Brian McCardie as two detectives who enact a revenge killing on one of their own. The victim, a drunk dirty cop named Brendan McCann, is notorious for his dealings with the criminal underworld and use of excessive force. As the series goes along, Strong and McCardie's characters do their best to cover up their crime while they find themselves slowly get dragged into McCann's past.
Low Winter Sun reminds me a lot of the UK espionage classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. They are both an incredibly low-key and extremely unromanticized portrayal of a life that is a common subject material for heightened thrillers that we've come to associate with mainstream entertainment. But while Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has a very sharp and intimidating intelligence to the material, Low Winter Sun seems to meander and stew with it's characters. Which is very strange considering that this show is barely longer than a film. The issue comes with how McCann's violent history is unraveled. So much attention is devoted to the who and what when the plot twist isn't really all that complicated. The result makes the plot feel very undercooked and I'm just left with no impressions of the fiction I just consumed.
I understand the realist principles of boiling things down to as simple as possible to create a very believable and realistic world. It's the opposite mindset of dramatic fiction where reality is heightened and situations are simplified. Honestly, I've always personally prefer the realist treatment of fiction over the dramatic. But Low Winter Sun is a good example of how you can under develop a story so much that you end up with a sequence of events that's barely compelling. The issue is how much attention the show puts on it's plot when the specifics of the corruption really doesn't matter. If you contrast this show to, again, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or AMC's award winning Mad Men, you see that the reason why those two shows are much more of a compelling experience is because of how much they focus on exploring the characters. In essence, the characters are "too big" for a plot. Which is something that can work incredibly well on TV. HBO's In Treatment is very similar as well to this where there is literally no plot and just dialogue. Seriously, in most episodes of In Treatment the camera doesn't leave the therapist's room. Which sounds boring, but the characters are explored enough for that to work.
Mark Strong and Brian McCardie really hold up this show. The performances of the entire cast are great all around but both Strong and McCardie really explore their character's regret thoroughly. If anything, this show's best moments are ones where it tests how low a character's psyche can fall without reaching insanity. Scenes of Strong and McCardie dealing with their anguish (sometimes with each other) are so powerful that it kept me wishing for more scenes with these two. Unfortunately, the show spends too much time away from the character's personal struggles for me to really recommend the entire viewing. Realistic storytelling is fine. Very slow storytelling is fine. But there's just not enough character development to have this thin of a plot, and there's just not enough plot to hold your attention.
Rating:
Amazing performances by Strong and McCardie aren't enough to hold this show together. Ultimately the show makes the mistake of spending too much time on the plot when this is the type of story where the plot doesn't really matter. So the result is just an overall undercooked experience and a missed opportunity to be the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy of noir crime fiction.
