Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tim Roth, Genevieve O’Reilly, Abigail Lawrie, Christina Hendricks, Sarah Podemski, John Lynch, Jenessa Grant, Anamaria Marinca, Brendan Sunderland, Oliver Coopersmith, Ian Puleston-Davies, Ryan Kennedy, Lynda Boyd, Michelle Thrush, Matt Willis.
There was always, and will always be, a sizeable section of society that looks at a drama series, whether it is in the realm of the soap opera, quick turn- around scripts and Hollywood smiles and devil may care attitude, or in the arguably more serious vane to which the whole household gives there time to across a select number of episodes, and to which the conversation will inevitably turn, of just how much can actually happen to one person, that to a cross section of society an adventure is a one off, that the protagonist, the anti-hero, surely cannot have that type of complicated life.
Life is not a film, life isn’t even a series of episodes drawn together in the hope of winning ratings and garnering awards, but it can be one that, call it what you will, fortune, adventure, the seizing of the day, or just plain bad luck to be in the wrong place at the right time, is one that can be seen as one complication after another making up a voyage, an odyssey to which the modern age seeks out to engage us with, to teach, to destroy, for who the Gods seek to punish, first they show them Hell.
It was always going to be so for Rowan Joffe’s detective creation Jim Worth and his family, Hell after all welcomes those with a secret or two squirreled away in their closets, and as the second series of Tin Star progresses, those secrets would make even Dante blush and apologise for not having thought of a brand new realm in which the alcoholic former, recently immigrated Chief of Police in the Canadian Rockies would be comfortably suited to.
Scenes of bleakness and despair are a staple to such character inventions on screen, but they have their root in reality, those that complain that life is not complex, as knotted as Jim Worth’s is, are perhaps missing the point, you have to have done something incredibly wrong and be willing to see the dominos fall without ever trying to stop the flow for life to become so involved, dangerous, to become entangled and frighteningly powerful.
Whilst the second series of Tin Star perhaps doesn’t capture the enormity of the first series, and it arguably leaves a couple of loose ends that certainly don’t look like being tied up in Tin Star: Liverpool, the inclusion of a religious group who have managed to keep themselves apart from the rest of society is a touch of insight of the diversity of Canada and which reflects the depth of feeling to which the First Nation/Native Americans will see further erosion of their rightful land by those with different practises and ways.
It is in this mirror of society, the drug lords, the law, and the community that just wants to be left alone to live in peace that the second series of Tin Star finds its way and gives the main cast of Tim Roth, Genevieve O’Reilly and Abigail Lawrie, and with superb support from John Lynch, Jenessa Grant and Anamaria Marinca, the intimacy of their respective roles, the outsiders on both sides meeting with a common cause but to whom that newly created circle of Hell awaits.
Tin Star continues to impress and proves that no good deed goes unpunished when God is listening to the wrong prayer.
Ian D. Hall