I know what you’re thinking. Another police drama?
It’s true over the last few years we’ve been inundated with police procedurals. From your Line of Duty’s to your Death in Paradise‘s, your Midsommer Murder’s to your Happy Valley’s (arguably the best), the UK loves a good crime show.
And so when BBC One/Dancing Ledge Productions announced it was releasing yet another show, titled The Responder and starring Sherlock alumni Martin Freeman, it could have been so easy to disengage from the project. To make matters worse, it would appear from the trailer that Freeman was doing a very questionable Liverpudlian accent.
It’s my absolute delight, therefore, to say that this isn’t just “another police drama”. This might be the police drama, possibly defining the genre for the decade.
Martin Freeman plays Chris Carson, a Merseyside police officer working instant response on nights, which means he has to deal with the violent, the volatile, and the vulnerable while being physically and mentally exhausted. Along the way, he gets partnered with inexperienced yet idealist trainee police officer Rachel Hargreeves (Adelayo Adedayo) as the two get thrown into a dangerous drug heist linked to one of Chris’ childhood friends.
The first thing you notice about this show is the pacing. From the very start, you’re thrown mid-way into Chris’ therapy session, struggling with PTSD and anxiety caused by the stress of the job, and are expected to catch up. There’s not a wasted moment, a superfluous line or off-point beat. The train keeps barreling forward at a breathtaking speed, throwing new challenges, new problems and new revelations, holding you tightly in its grasp until the very end.
But deeper than that, the reason it’s such an engaging show is there’s real substance to the drama. Writer Tony Schumacher worked as a police officer for twelve years and you can feel the authenticity of experience leaping off the page. Where shows like Line of Duty always felt too ‘clean’ (despite overly convoluted plotlines) for my liking, The Responder feels like it lives and breathes in the real world. There’s a messiness to the drama in a good way, a humanity in the way the police and the ‘civies’ interact and make digs at each other, a sense of shared history and lives beyond the show.
This messiness is baked deep into the morality of the characters. The Responder operates in those grey areas of the real world which make for the best drama writing. People in this show do bad things for good reasons and vice versa, showing a grounded look at modern policing, where sometimes the systems in place don’t support the complexity of situational context. Sometimes, the unflinching rules of right and wrong aren’t what people need when they’ve gone off the deep end.
Source: BBC
To date, this might be Freeman’s best performance. The accent complaint (if that could even be made) is soon forgotten because a) it blends in with the cacophony of scouse and b) his acting is just that good. The attention to detail portraying the different sides to Chris —the family man, the lawman and the emotionally-wrecked man — are inextricably intertwined and pull on each other to produce fascinating results. Mental health is a strong theme in this show, and how Freeman captures its effects on the day-to-day — with the tiniest moments causing him to have to control his breathing and take moments out to just cry — feels so true and empathetic. It’s powerful to see a male character be this openly vulnerable, shedding real tears in stressful situations and is something we, unfortunately, do not see enough of in mainstream media.
Not that any of this makes it completely heavy viewing. The character of Liverpool is prominent throughout the piece, with a strong sense of humour, morbid or otherwise. The people and the place have their own unique identity in this show and that sense of place often produces humorous outlooks on the world. One of the greatest moments is when a character moans about their situation, to which another responds, “Well whose fault is it then? Thatcher?” Talk about 40 years of sociological studies summarised in one witty line.
It would be so obvious for this show to play out in a dour tone as it addresses the dark places of policing, but that would risk the action becoming too similar. Instead, the show takes the far more human route of finding the light in the dark, making the shocking moments all the more impactful. Schumacher was mentored as part of ScreenSkills’ new writing programme under Cracker scribe Jimmy McGovern, and that fine-tuning in threading the needle between the tone that the former show does so well feels prominent in this production.
I wrote in a previous article that 2022 was looking like an exciting and engaging year for television drama. I wasn’t expecting within weeks to be proven so right. The Responder proves that when you allow someone with a specific and engaging point of view to tell their story, magic jumps up on the screen.
The Responder is now available to stream on BBC iPlayer
Words by Ed Foster
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