Crackerjack Cracker

Cracker

by Matthew Clark, www.cinemonkey.com

efore his appearances, in From Hell, Harry Potter, and a couple of James Bond movies, Scottish actor Robbie Coltraine had received acclaimed for his portrayal of a forensic psychologist attached to the Manchester Police on the excellent British Crime Series, Cracker. A clever updating of the classic amateur detective working with the police format, written by Jimmy McGovern and first produced by Granada Television, in 1993, the series ran for three season's worth of about seven one-hour installments consisting of two and three part stories. As is the practice in Britain, where the BBC resists running a good show into the ground, Cracker finished with a feature length special in the fall of 1996.

Dr. Edward Fitzgerald, or Fitz, as played by Coltraine, is a brilliant, eccentric man who passionately believes in uncovering the truth. He has the capacity to be able to talk to someone for five minutes and be able to see right into his or her inner most secrets. Unfortunately this makes him impossible to get along with.

s the series starts, we find Fitz bored with his life and heading toward rock bottom through indulging his vices to fill the void. Having given up teaching, he is now aimlessly pissing his life away drinking, smoking, and gambling. Unable to succeed in a private practice because he tells people the truth more often then what they want to hear, he mostly takes pick up work as a consultant or a guest speaker. But even his appearances on a local call-in television talk show fail to engage him. Of course, saying that everything in life bores him certainly doesn't sit well with his wife. She is already fed up with him emptying their bank account behind her back, and then losing all their money at the racetrack or the casino.

Then a young man is arrested in connection with a series of murders of young women, killed while riding trains. The man says he can't remember who he is or what brought him to be near the body of the most recent victim. But things get more complicated when the police find no record of his fingerprints and have no way of finding out his identity.

Now, the most recent victim had been a favorite student of Fitz's. And once he sees how poorly the police are handling things, he goes to the girl's parents and offers to help get to the bottom of things. Not only has he studied criminal behavior, he also knows the self-torture a grieving family can put themselves through when the murder of a loved one goes unresolved. He convinces them that he could find out if the man is lying, or help to get his memory back, because it appears he does know something about the murder and the murderer.

Of course, the police are convinced that the man is faking it, and that it's just a matter of time until they wear him down and learn the truth. Of course, they don't need some outsider to do their job for him. But, because of the public interest in this case, the parents are able to pressure the city government into telling the investigating officers to let Fitz have a go at the young mystery man.

Once involved, Fitz discovers that he likes working with the police. Now he can get paid to turn his x-ray vision on someone and not worry about having to apologize later. Unlike his regular life, sifting through the clues and confronting suspected murderers and rapists, seems to make him feel that he's really doing something, really helping people, and it gives him something to live for. "I'm 45 years old," he says to his wife, "and I've finally figured out what I want to do with myself, when I grow up."

Which is, of course, the setup for the rest of the series, about half of the which has been released by A&E on video. About the same number of episodes have been novelized by St. Martins press.

efore the show had finished its run in Britain, the entire series began airing over here on A&E, along with some other good British crime shows such as Touch of Frost and Body of Evidence. PBS had already shown Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren, on Mystery, and CBS had launched a copycat show, the short-lived Under Suspicion.

So it came as no surprise when ABC premiered it's own version of Cracker' in the fall of 1997. Robert Pasttorlli, from Murphy Brown, starred as the forensic psychologist, now attached to the LAPD. Sixteen episodes were produced, almost half of which were adapted straight from the original scripts.

This American version premiered against NBC's Seinfeld on Thursday nights. Needless to say, it was not a successful spot for the show. And soon, the network began moving it to different nights. So, what audience it could have built up was unable to find it. After 10 weeks, a two-part story, which featured Robbie Coltraine guest starring as the murderer, was its final show, closing down in January of 1998, and leaving five unused episodes, which had to wait a little over a year before finally being shown on A&E. None of the American series has turned up on VHS since those final airings in '99.

Critics at TV Guide found the US version of Cracker to be "the best overlooked show" of that season, thanks to its flawed hero and attempts at realistic crimes. Compared to other American shows it was pretty good. But what people liked about this version were just those elements that came directly from the original series. Which they hadn't seen because they were too busy watching all the crappy American cop shows.

've gone into some of the details of the first episode of the original Cracker, entitled "The Mad Woman in the Attic," to demonstrate how poor the American version turned out to be by contrast. The whole idea of Fitz working for the police is brought about logically, where as the American version had him already working with the police as the train murders were going on, with no mention of any former student of Fitz's. Of course, the advantages of the British shows are that they take their time to develop a story, and here the show had to just jump right into the action. Also, British shows usually offer less than 10 hour-long episodes during their seasons. Americans expect to have over 30 weeks of new episodes per season (even though fewer episodes end up airing. In fact there are whole months where you see nothing but reruns from just a couple of months previous).

The American show was obviously a rush job. Where the original series could take two, sometimes three episodes, to tell one story, here everything had to be wrapped up in one hour ( there were a couple two parters). Unfortunately, there were also a lot of other poor or sloppy things the American producers did.

Cracker's translation to America was weak. The original didn't take place in London, but in the industrial city of Manchester, a place like Detroit or Pittsburgh. The American version took place in LA, so right from the beginning the tone was wrong. The series also immediately lost credibility or plausibility because few Angelenos use trains.

Worse, Robert Pastorelli is 10 years younger. With Fitz in his mid 40s, his mid life crisis and the breaking up of his marriage are more understandable. Also in the British show, it appeared he needed the job with the police almost more than they needed him. They were perfectly happy to put away the wrong man, as long as it wraps up the case to their satisfaction. Of course, mid-40s is out of the targeted age of the audience, as perceived by television's powers that be. And we may have shows about corrupt cops, or angry cops, but you don't see stupid or incompetent police forces in American shows.

n one scene in the American series, Fitz drives up to where the police have called him to view a body. He is listening to, I think, Mozart's Jupiter symphony. He's listening to a tape and practicing conducting as he drives to the body's location. Once there, the police come up to his car and wait for him to get out. But he keeps them waiting until the tape plays out, waving his hands like Toscanini. This establishes him both as a cultured, but also as an eccentric, intellectual, unintimidated by the police, showing them how important he is by keeping them waiting. This is neither realistic, or true to the character.

Again, in the original, Fitz wants to be part of the police investigations. As big a loner as he makes himself out to be, he finds acceptance in this group. Plus he is knowledgeable in the physical realities of death, having worked, in his student days, as an assistant in a coroner's office. He knows that the longer a body lies outside the harder it is to get results from it. I just don't see the character acting as unprofessional as his American counterpart does. Especially when it's just over a tape that he could rewind.

Unfortunately, instances like this happen a lot in American shows, where you get some piece of "business" that the actor, or the writer, or somebody, throws in because they think it works with the character. But I think it has more to do with the people who make the movies than the characters in the stories. An actor, or a producer, would make people who were expecting him wait while he finished listening to some music. Not a doctor of Forensic Psychology called to a murder scene. Of course, this is LA, and remember that the OJ case fell apart because of supposedly sloppy forensic practices.

Another problem comes in the episode "True Romance." Its source was the last British episode, aired in November of 1995, and became the fifth episode of the American version, broadcast on Oct. 16, 1997, with the title "Hell Hath no Fury."

"True Romance" concerns a young woman who murders young men she picks up at the bars near the school where she is a grad student and teacher's assistant. She has also developed a crush on Fitz, really a sort of father fixation on him. Eventually she picks up Fitz's son, who proves not to be as selfish as the others. She strings him up with a timer set to an electrocution device. She then gives herself up, declaring her love for Fitz. And if he doesn't comply she won't tell where she hidden his son.

Fitz has to break through her defenses to save his own son. The actress in the British version of the episode was very convincing. Changing her appearance to be sort of mousy, to blend into the background. Or, attractive, when she's out stocking her victims. Later, when she turns herself in, knowing that Fitz would interrogate her, she looks like a little girl playing dress up.

In the American version, the actress cast to play the murderess looks just too pretty. She didn't look like the "smart but plain" gal of the British version. Instead, she was cast for her looks, and not her ability She's always made up to look pretty, and not mousy, following Hollywood conventions, i.e., the belief that viewers only want to see glamour.

n this case, the American version is just another crazy bitch story, whereas, in the original the chameleon look of the character supported the point of the story, that the young woman had grown up in an abusive house hold. But her father wouldn't rape her, like he did his sister, because he knows that she's too smart for him to intimidate like he does his sister. So he doesn't rape her, and she feels that there must be something wrong with her, because she doesn't get the same attention. Which leads to her killing men who want to leave her, and her becoming fixated on Fitz, to the point of attempting to murder his son. At least, she reasons, he will always think of her, even if it is with hate.

This is too much depth for American television, where stories tend to became "villain of the week" pieces, like Batman going after Catwoman this week, then The Riddler next week. The American version of Cracker even made a big deal about the police finding the son and rescuing him at the last second.

I really didn't watch many of the American Crackers, having seen how poor they had turned out when adapting the originals. I think the last straw came when the series redid a certain scene in which Fitz is giving a guest lecture at a university. He comes on stage with an armload of books: Physiology books, Freud, and Jung texts, and more. He reads off the titles and flings them into the audience. The novelization of the episode explained that Fitz did this to get the audience's attention, and his point is not to rely solely on what you learn from books. He points out how much he has studied and knows about the human heart, and still he was unprepared for his own father's death. The students must never forget they are as human as the people they will treat.

As he walks off, a woman professor, an old friend from when he was teaching at this school, says that she would have spent a week preparing for this lecture, and here he just comes up with something in the taxi on the ride over. Fitz admits that it was a bus ride over, and reminds her that she was going to pay him in cash.

In the Pastorelli version, he puts up a slide of Cindy Crawford, with a cut to a shot of some guy leering at the photo. Fitz starts going on about how pretty she is, in spite of this mole he points out that is on her lip. This shows that no matter who you are, we all have a chance at greatness. And to underline this point, he dances to the edge of the stage where we now see a crap table standing in front of the first row. He throws a pair of dice on to the green felt.

Is the American Fitz a professor of psychology or an inspirational speaker? Are the dice loaded so they will always come up the same thing, or does a different roll change his lecture? Whose crap table is that? His? Or does he just rent it for this one lecture?

Once again, this illustrates the shortcomings of a lot of American television dramas. The writers just type out scenes that get made, just because they can make them. Put a crap table in this scene? Sure, we can just get one from the prop department. Cops, lawyers, whatever, the people making this stuff just have a shallow understanding of what these professions do, or what it's like in the country outside of Los Angeles.

By now, the American version has been swept away to a dusty vault somewhere, probably sitting on a self next to Under Suspicion. But it's a shame that the original show couldn't have found a home on network television, up against NYPD Blue and the dumb lawyer shows. Sometimes, I get the feeling that television networks and the movie studios work against good drama, preferring to settle for sensationalism. Or are they just afraid to show a good imported show? Prime Suspect got a lot of praise, but by being on PBS it's not mainstream. The prevailing belief is that PBS is boring, unlike commercial television. Plus, other countries are incompetent at television, compared to us. And then you want a good British drama, showing up American shows on their own network?

Anyway, you can still see the Cracker with Coltraine, on VHS. As often as I've viewed these tapes, they never fail to hold my attention. "Mad Woman in the Attic" is the first. Other good ones to try are 'To Say I Love You" and 'To Be a Somebody," which stars Robert Carlyle, of The Full Monty, and The World is not Enough. as the murderer. He and Coltraine are going to appear in an up coming biography of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Also you can pick up one of the books adapted from the series, which are still coming out.

So, if you're tired of all those shows that just rehash the same old plot devices, with the same old two dimensional characters dressed up in new suits, and with all the critics making out that these shows are great drama that is taking television in a new direction when it is just playing it safe, try Cracker with its engaging, dramatic, insightful and realistic look at why crimes are committed. It can make you forget about the trash.

12/01

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