Crime Fiction, from Z Cars and Miss Marple to Barbara Vine and Breaking Bad

 It’s taken years to get me into crime fiction, I think because I couldn't relate to so much of it. There were Agatha Christie's unbelievable and dated set pieces with dislikeable characters murdering each other in country mansions. I’ve had more pleasure playing Cluedo. Also Raymond Chandler style private dicks being sexist dicks, set in an America I couldn’t identify with.

                          Z cars - a Ford Zephyr if you want to know

Then on telly were the violent TV cop shows like Kojak and The Professionals. I never got on with Inspector Morse (too Oxfordy) or other dull shows like Bergerac and the preposterous premise of Midsomer Murders. Various versions of clever clogs Sherlock Holmes hardly engaged me either, all were largely incomprehensible Victorian. They all just put me off. 

The only crime show I remember favourably was from much earlier, in my childhood, that was Z-Cars, which seemed to my young mind to portray real people. Later came The Bill which was similarly more real, but was never on at a time when I could settle down to watch more than the odd episode. No box sets in the 80's and 90's.

So for years I didn’t really read or watch crime drama apart from silly but entertaining heist movies like the original Italian Job, or parodies like the Pink Panther. All the macho men being macho cops and macho crooks had very little appeal. I didn’t get it.

Then along came TV's Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes with their different, parodic take on the classic UK cop dramas. Things were looking up. Then Sherlock and Peaky Blinders blew everything else out of the water. 

As for books, In the last decade or two, a couple of friends began writing and publishing, ‘cosy’ crime fiction with elderly Miss Marple types which I felt obliged to read, and were better than I expected. Having read more books in this bracket, I find them relaxing and I can get through one in an evening. They’re easy to read and easy to forget. I do prefer grittier writing styles though, 

                                    the vile Walter White
Now I’m much more into TV crime shows, this began during lockdown, when I dove in the deep end with Braking Bad. I saw most of it but didn’t watch the whole of the final series, I just hated Walter White with such a vengeance I decided I wanted that odious, arrogant, deluded man out of my head! I enjoy a variety of crime TV now, from Killing Eve and Endeavor to Vera and the Shetland series. It's good characterisation and acting which makes them all work, real people again. 

As for reading, I have become a huge Ian Rankin fan and have every single Rebus novel on my bookshelf, including several signed hardbacks. Also enjoy Kate Mosse, Shelley Burbank, PD James and Barbara Vine. It’s currently Ann Cleeves. 

Will I start writing crime fiction soon? I think I already have.

BBC's Hollow Crown; Wars of the Roses; Richard III

Just watched BBC's Richard III with Benedict Cumberbatch. Not impressed with the overall production, it lacked any subtlety. I know it's not Old Will's most subtle play, but the character of Richard is capable of huge interpretation which Cumberbatch didn't bother with. He played the character as just a crazed grotesque. I've seen several far better portrayals on stage, including by Anton Lesser and Robert Lindsay in 1998; also Ian McKellan's film of Richard III set as if in World War One. I don't include Laurence Olivier's 1955 film which I also dislike. 

The play was part of the 'Wars of the Roses,' the culmination of 'The Hollow Crown' series with 4 plays, effectively crammed into 3 so something was bound to be lost in transition. I saw the first and last, it began with Richard II, one of Shakespeare's least known plays so that was interesting, even if I got a bit lost in the convolutions and samey characters - the latter problem is one which the later Richard III play also suffers from. 

At least with this latest BBC production the importance of three of the four women's roles in the play were spectacularly upheld with powerful performances from Sophie Okonedo as the long-lived and much wronged Queen Margaret and dignified fury from Judi Dench as the Duchess of York and Richard's despairing mother. Keeley Hawes as Elizabeth Woodville (the mother of the little princes in the tower) held the threads of the plot together. Phoebe Fox played Anne, Richard's traumatised wife and wasn't really given enough to do, but then Shakespeare often failed to give his female characters much to work with. 

Of course the plays have little to do with the real events and characters in history, which is always written by the victors. Richard III, with only a 3 year reign, was less successful a monarch than his predecessor Richard II who was monarch for 33 years, and both were destroyed by their enemies. There has been no King Richard in Britain since. Shame, Richard is a better name than many. King Benedict? Probably not!