Guardian Newspaper - "The Weekend's TV"

The fat, foul-mouthed antihero is back - and this time round, Cracker seems to have the war on terror in his sights (Sam Wollaston)

RADIO TIMES PREVIEW "DRAMA OF THE WEEK" 

A new episode of such a brilliantly iconic drama such as Cracker is always a hugely exciting prospect and on many levels this new story by Jimmy McGovern doesn't disappoint. Don't expect a whodunnit - this is a "whydunnit". Former soldier Kenny Archer (an astonishing compelling performance by Anthony Flanagan), is a lost and damaged soul, psychologically in pieces after serving in Northern Ireland. When George Bush declares his "war on terror", after the 11th September attacks, Archer spirals into a murderous decline, feeling that his dreadful experiences now count for nothing. Tormented by flashbacks, he becomes an avenging angel and wreaks a ghastly revenge on two hapless American strangers: one a Bill Hicks-type comedian, the other a philandering businessman. Of course Cracker is shot through with Robbie Coltrane's colossal (in every sense) presence, but this is really Flanagan's show. Coltrane, as Fitz, is temporarily returned to Manchester for his daughter's wedding and co-opted into the police investigation, is the piece's Greek chorus, declaiming from the sidelines. It's a tense and exciting drama, though some viewers will doubtless feel resentful at being beaten over the head by McGovern's politics, we are left in no doubt as to his feelings about Bush and Blair, and the remorseless anti-American sentiment begins to chafe. But this is still a beautifully constructed, tautly directed (by the gifted Antonia Bird) drama that, at the very least, provokes and in some ways, taunts. 

THE TIMES REVIEW - "McGovern Misses the Crackerjackpot" 

Weekend TV by Caitlin Moran

The return of Cracker (Sunday, ITV1) and, as a cultural event, it was mixed. Of course we love Cracker, and of course we miss Cracker, but this one-off special made it very clear why there hasn’t been any Cracker for the last ten years. While Robbie Coltrane was still more than up for donning the cigarette-and-sudden-alarming-insight thing that comes with Fitz, the writer Jimmy McGovern seems to have fallen out of love with the whole project. After two hours, it was apparent that there hadn’t been a ten-year- long backlog of hot Fitz material burning a hole in McGovern’s notebook. There was no real development to Fitz’s marriage to Judith. There were no revelations about what Fitz had been up to. And, pretty amazingly — not to say frustratingly — not a quack about Fitz’s relationship with Penhaligon.

Instead, Fitz was used as a cipher for McGovern to have his say about the war in Iraq, put the boot into American foreign policy, and then run through a nifty bit of philosophical footwork on terrorism. It was a good riff — the kind of thing that, if someone launched into it in the pub, you’d walk away thinking “Hmm, I’m glad I bought that guy those crisps” — but not really anything to do with the life of a genius criminal psychologist struggling with a series of gigantic character flaws. Of course, even with all this, Cracker wasn’t rubbish. This was still a prestige bit of ITV1 drama — let’s be honest, probably the only bit of prestige ITV1 drama this year, until Prime Suspect comes along, at least. The cast walked softly and carried a big stick: particularly Anthony Flanagan as Kenny, a man whose method of coping with a traumatic tour of duty in Northern Ireland was the intriguing notion of murdering every American in the world. And while McGovern wasn’t really writing an episode of Cracker, what he did write was an intriguing and lucid piece of political agit-prop, all the more bracing for its turning up in a primetime slot, and on the cover of Radio Times. So yes — Jane Eyre, over on BBC One, gave Cracker more than a run for it’s money, but this wasn’t, by any means, the worst comeback for an iconic TV series. Consider Only Fools and Horses, where the cast ended up winning the lottery and being on the run from the Mafia. Compared to this, Cracker wasn’t Crackers and cheese. But neither was it the Crackerjackpot.

BEFORE Sunday night, an entire generation's point of reference for Robbie Coltrane was Harry Potter. Idoubt much has changed. There was a frisson of excitement about the TV return of the legendary man-mountain, and I don't mean former Celtic keeper Peter Latchford on last night's Celtic v Liverpool charity clash on Five. The return of Fitz, the greatest criminal psychologist ever known to despairing ITV schedulers, would reassure us that, yes, they don't make them like this anymore. After hitting a rich vein of form in The Street earlier this year, hopes were high that writer Jimmy McGovern would deliver a one-off Cracker cracker. Maybe next time.Fitz returned from Down Under for his wee girl's wedding, an impotent lump who smokes, gambles and swallaes malt whisky like it's sugarallie water. He set the post-9/11 tone of the episode early on with a wedding-table whinge about the absence of any "sense of dramatic structure" to the Twin Towers attacks. Ah. So THAT'S what this is all about. Never mind al-Qaeda's sense of dramatic timing, didn't ITV notice the glut of 9/11 shows choking the schedules three weeks ago? Maybe if they'd rushed this one into the tail-end of the summer schedules rather than the start of the autumn ones, Fitz might have gone off with more of a fizz-bang. Instead, it played out like a 10-a-penny crime thriller masquerading as a party political broadcast on America's military presence in the Middle East, and every other mistake they've made short of Joey's spin-off from Friends.

How many scenes with a TV news report about Iraq do we need in the background? We get the message, Jimmy. Next time, can we have another decent drama about normal people, please? The early twist - the indiscriminate Yankkiller was a copper and ex-soldier suffering post-traumatic stress after his time in Northern Ireland - turned out, sadly, to be the one big "aha". And the coincidental overlapping of junkie witness and guilty cop came together with such a hamfisted soap-like judder, I'm still wearing a neckbrace. That said, I've confessed in the past to watching - and enjoying - Taggart for no other reason than the brain-numbing sense of familiarity. So on those grounds, it was good to see big Robbie back. But that can't change the fact that the return of the programme fans had waited aeons for turned out to be a well-acted edition of the Channel 4 news. "It's only until I put the police on the right track," Fitz told his wife who'd lost her holiday to her husband's workaholism. "It won't interfere with our plans."Harry Potter afficianados will rejoice, but the sad truth for Cracker fans is that, once again, their hero's probably right...

THE TIMES REVIEW - "A Cracker vs a load of Horrocks"

Jane Horrocks wants to be PM; Robbie Coltrane wants to get his man. 

Or is it all that simple, wonders Caitlin Moran 

It’s all about hidden agendas this week. In The Amazing Mrs Pritchard we have a drama that wishes to show its audience how very easy it would be for a normal, non-political but very practical woman to become the Prime Minister of Britain, running on an independent “no politics” ticket. Although this is obviously a premise of great dramatic promise — especially if you get Jane Horrocks in to play the title role — I do suspect a secondary motivation. For if this idea catches on — disseminated through an ultimately fluffy but nonetheless brisk piece of prime-time agitprop — some practical, non-affiliated woman might actually run for Parliament at the next election. And that, surely, would make the best reality TV series yet. And as the home of The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, the BBC would be the natural broadcasters of choice. Nice one, BBC. I admire your Machiavellian moves.

Meanwhile, things are, as you would expect, far more complex and concealed over at the big drama comeback of the year. He’s spent the last ten years in Australia, but he’s neither tanned, nor notably more laidback. He may well, however, have put a couple of snags on the barbie. Yes, Fitz “Fitz” Fitz is back in Cracker, a series so great that it took the most hateful programme premise in existence — a maverick solving crimes — and deservedly won six Baftas, and the status of TV legend, with it. In 9/11, a one-off, feature-length special, Fitz returns to the UK for the wedding of his daughter, Katy, and immediately gets embroiled in a crime (see interview, page 40). Someone — someone clever, with survival training — is going around Manchester murdering Americans. Although Fitz’s understandably vexed wife, Judith, knows exactly what’s going on — “You’d rather spend time with them (the police) than your own grandchild” — Fitz finds the lure of another violent nutter irresistible, and takes the whole thing over six ad-breaks.

This is the bit where I say whether it’s any good or not. Well, of course it’s good. It’s an episode of Cracker. It’s an episode of Cracker written by Jimmy McGovern — whom one could fairly non-controversially call the best screenwriter in Britain — and starring Robbie Coltrane — an extremely charismatic actor who knew the role of a lifetime when he saw it, and ran with it, albeit quite slowly, and with a fag in his hand. 9/11 makes at least four points more cleverly than the rest of this week’s television put together — could you spot the narrative, socio-political link between Northern Ireland and the invasion of Iraq? One that could involve the murder of a stand-up comedian? And sports several class turns, including Barbara Flynn as Judith, Nisha Nayar as DS Saleh, and Anthony Flanagan as the murderer, Kenny, who will surely catch Bafta’s eye. Flanagan has got an articulate, thin-lipped intensity thing going on — one that will interest the small, but doubtless existent, demographic who have dreamt of having their necks broken by John Lennon in a semi-erotic situation. But. But, ultimately, this Cracker doesn’t feel as if it had to exist. It doesn’t tie up any loose ends — there’s no mention of Fitz’s relationship with Jane Penhaligon, the ginger copper he was sleeping with — and it doesn’t take us any further down the road with Fitz. It dives in and out again, without ever stirring up the mud at the bottom. In one scene that’s very pertinent, Fitz has explained to him the way that police procedure has changed in the past ten years. “You can’t talk directly to a suspect, and you’re not allowed to smoke,” the copper says, pointing at a “No smoking” sign. Let’s face it — that’s goodnight, Vienna, for Cracker.

In all truth, it feels as though Jimmy McGovern had a lot of things that he wanted to say about terrorism, 9/11 and American imperialism — a lot of very inventive, valid and angry things — and he tried to find a way to massage them into Cracker. And I think he wanted to massage them into Cracker because that way ten million people — people who would normally read the Daily Mail, or give weight to the opinions of Jeremy Clarkson — would watch his comments on prime-time ITV1.This 9/11 is, then, rather fittingly, a small act of terrorism.

The Unofficial Guide To Cracker 1999-2006

(http://www.crackertv.co.uk)