It’s not possible to know me.
BBC1, Sunday/Monday (Warning: spoilers)
Rating: 
Landscapers
Sky Atlantic, Tuesday
Rating:
Two crime dramas this week, neither of which featured minimalist houses with kitchen islands or small towns with dark secrets or Christopher Eccleston in a bad wig – see Close To Me, what were they thinking? – and for that we must be grateful.
It felt almost like Christmas arrived early in this cluttered and average house with no coffee maker.
The final episodes are the first and second. You Don’t Know Me, and that ending. (Did you feel cheated? Are you minded to march on the BBC, to demand a proper conclusion?) But it did make sense, sort of. Bear with, bear with.
Sophie Wilde and Samuel Adewunmi (above) star in It’s not possible to know me., which is different, makes you think and comes with strong performances
The novel of Imran Mahmood was used as the basis for this adaptation. Tom Edge (Vigil), who adapted it, starred Samuel Adewunmi convincingly as Hero.
The young man, a South London resident, is on trial for murder.
Personally, I felt most sorry for the jury. They may have harbored hope that they would return in time to A Place In The Sun. (No chance.)
Hero, who was being accused of murdering Jamil, a drug dealer (replayed in flashbacks with remarkable charisma and nuance as Roger Jean Nsengiyumva) is strongly favored. His flat was where the murder weapon was discovered.
Gun residue was found on his clothing. He had the victim’s blood under his fingernails. From the very beginning, it was narratively compelling. What could he do to rewrite such conclusive evidence.
It was back there that it began. This is when Hero falls for Kyra (Sophie Wilde), who he meets on a bus and stalks him with a blueberry muffin.
He next courts her with spaghetti carbonara, which would win me over, and they move in together, and it’s love. However, he wakes up one morning and she’s disappeared.
Hero, a former car salesman becomes a vigilante. We are now plunged into the world of drug-gangs and gun-toting pimps.
It was, quite frankly, absurd. Why weren’t the police all over that arson incident or the shoot-out on the estate? When Hero retrieves Kyra, and it’s the gang who are now searching for her, wouldn’t they first try her boyfriend’s place?
But it had enough unexpected twists and turns to keep us going even though I wondered, at various junctures, whether this might also have been called: He Doesn’t Know Her, Not Really.
He never consulted Kyra about the next steps. She’s expected to submit to his (often bad) choices? It’s not often that someone takes control of their lives so completely. This puts at risk mother, best friend and sister.
However, I’ve awarded it four stars because the conceit is different and makes you think – can someone be morally in the right while legally in the wrong? – and the performances were all so strong.
The ending? I think we were meant to be part of the jury, and so must make our own decisions. Is that really how it works? Given Hero’s conversation with his solicitor when he’s arrested, didn’t we know rather more than the jury?
I’ve confused myself now. Let’s just be simple and go to the BBC.
Continue reading LandscapersA true-crime dramatisation of crime, this is the best. It’s inventive enough that it may be key. Will Sharpe is the director and Ed Sinclair wrote it.
Deborah Ross (me) has never been emotionally invested. Landscapers has a unique script. The creators are Olivia Colman and David Thewlis, which is funny as well as sad.
This also starred Olivia Colman, who can summon up a whole world of feeling just by repeating ‘no comment’. It’s amazing.
Here she co-stars with David Thewlis – there could be no better cast, in fact – as Susan and Christopher Edwards, the married couple who were convicted in 2014 of murdering her parents, burying their bodies in the back garden and concealing their deaths for 15 years while claiming their benefits.
As seen here, they’re an odd but devoted couple. He is obsessive about Hollywood movies and Hollywood memorabilia. He pretends the letters they receive from Gérard Depardieu are actually from Depardieu (Susan writes them).
They may be initially on the run, but they must eventually give up.
The story continues with fantasy movie sequences and characters walking through sets. Police investigators enter flashbacks in order to answer questions.
This is a wonderful, but ultimately strangely disappointing, experience.
This wants us to be sympathetic to the pair, particularly Susan, whose father had sexually abused her with her mother’s collusion. Was the murder premeditated as Susan insists?
If you’ve watched all four episodes – they’re all available while this also plays weekly – you will wonder just how sympathetic we should be, even if the series never questions that. (I cannot tell you more.)
You will also find stylistic quirks become boring and ask yourself, “What can I trust?” What could have possibly happened? Perhaps that’s why I never felt emotionally invested.
However, it is original, and it is Colman and Thewlis, and the script is both funny and sad… oh, go on then. There are four stars.