‘There’s been a murrrder!’ spluttered Inspector Taggart in the famous television series created by ‘The Lamplighters’ director Glenn Chandler in 1983. Thirty years on and the writer has found a new take on the macabre: in the vein of Alecky Blythe’s ‘London Road’, an attempt is made to portray the lesser heard victims of atrocity.
Chandler’s script is strong, but its vehicle – a cluster of murders on the Cumbrian moors – feels time-worn against his admittedly nifty concept: a behind-the-scenes peek at how the police deal with the perils of conviction.
The leads, coppers John, Frank and Alan, are settling into an annual trip to the remote Cumbrian countryside, bent on solving an unsolved crime still dogging them ten years on. As they chat, a cocktail of masculine traits are bared across three opposing but pleasantly believable characters: the aged smartypants, the bulldog and the one who went all Bell’s whisky on us. Eventually, these three serve to portray a Richter scale of grief that is usually hushed.
Emotions intensify when two young characters appear, but sadly their attributes are largely borrowed from the vaults; as are the textbook whodunit plot moves, which only complicate what could be a simple character-based play. Mayhem then occurs on the moors, and final doses of revenge are served, very cold. But all this action and convolution lacks oomph and edge-of-seat terror.
Chandler’s an old-timer dealing with fresh, meaty concerns. It’s a shame these are barraged into corners by the repressive boundaries of ‘Mousetrap’-style murder mystery writing. But at its best, ‘The Lamplighters’ is a well-acted psycho thriller. It succeeds in exposing the difficulties of the condemnation process and its effects on those rarely represented: the enforcers. Adam Bloodworth