Grim up West (Yorkshire)

In the week that saw an end to the longest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, the televised Red Riding saga drew to a close. It chronicled murder and deep-level corruption in the West Yorkshire police and in the wider community in the 1970s and early 1980s. Its central argument was that some of the biggest crims are those in the cop shop and running it. The number of unexplained deaths in police custody in metropolitan centres (where most newcomers i.e. outsiders to an area congregate) that continued into the 1990s, showed the trend of police brutality has only recently been brought to an end as acceptable, unspoken conduct. The Dark Side of (Life on) Mars. Jack Slipper, the detective in charge of investigating The Great Train Robbery, bemoaned before his death that the police force had become too politically correct. Red Riding , graphically if extravagantly, demonstrates that is a price worth paying. The police in these stories, based around facts, believe justice is achieving a socially acceptable outcome, even if it involves fitting up innocent people.
Red Riding was written as a quartet but Channel 4, finding the sceond instalment too bizarre as a narrative, filmed it as a trilogy - 1974, 1980, 1983. 1974 was compelling a drama. You could say that it was overblown but then you would have to apply the same distinction to LA Confidential. 1980 was more of a slow burner, but the twist of betrayal at the end was a shattering denouement and as the credits rolled, I staggered from my chair, still struck by the changes the film had held up against what it had previously led us to believe.
1983 was for long stretches just as good, but fell at the final furlong, not because it was a comparatively happy ending but rather for its lapse into obvious cliches. To be sure, cliches abounded in the previous two episodes, but they were more to do with the scenery than the narrative and so being background were less obstrusive. The pervy, sinister priest is one of two episcopal staples for the liberal intelligentsia, the other being the benign but ineffectual pastor. The same charcter was both, the latter in 1980, the former in 1983. Also, a tragic hero rising up out of physical and metaphorical misery, underground or otherwise, delivering a sweet child to safety in thier arms has been done in countless Hollywood fodder and enjoined one to grind teeth at the familiarity of the scahharine sentimentality. The rescue could have been done better and less flashy. Further, utter bastards as these policemen were, importing directly a facet of Room 101 seemed both implausible (they din't seem the literary types, meaning it was symbolic coincidence) and unoriginal. The acting was consummate in all three, the period detail grand and the story-telling effective (with the slight dip at the end on 1983). Red Riding restores some credibility to Channel 4's battered reputation over the last two years while dragging that of the police at the time through it.