Low Winter Sun

Series one, episode three
Lennie James’s Joe Geddes is at a crossroads: will he choose the road to redemption or the path to damnation? You wouldn’t bet even a dime on the outcome, so finely nuanced is James’s embodiment of the dirty cop, this week trying to clean up the messy murder of Anton. He and Mark Strong continue to excel, but cracks are emerging in a show that clearly wants to emulate James Ellroy in its complexity and dark depths, but is more Elmore Leonard in its terse dialogue and limited characterisation of the drug-dealing bad guys, who are given short shrift this episode in a few unconvincing scenes.

The cop bad guys, meanwhile, are finding that the ongoing investigation into McCann’s murder is pulling them into deeper and deeper water… particular when a terrifyingly observant witness comes to them. Given its very slow plot development and a back story that clearly has much yet to reveal, ‘Low Winter Sun’ is clearly in it for the long game. But unless it starts to make us care about the big picture, it’s in danger of losing viewers well before the long game plays out.