Red Riding 1974, 1980, 1983 – 6.8

Long on style, short on sense, these three made-for-TV crime dramas had a Twin Peaks flavor to them, with suspenseful music and an overriding sensation of never knowing exactly what was going on. Partly this was due to the Yorkshire accent, which begged for subtitling, but mostly it was due to the misdirection, which withheld key items of information and threw in red herrings instead. Who killed whom in the Karachi Club after Eddie Dunford took his revenge? Why? What happened to the shopping mall? What happened to the corrupt cops? To Helen Marshall? Why did she have a relationship with Rev. Laws? Why did Peter Hunter’s wife keep calling him? So many of the characters and situations seemed familiar from Prime Suspect and other shows of that ilk, most of which I preferred. It does seem that the scriptwriters in London have a pretty low opinion of what goes on out in the English boondocks. Red Riding (what does that mean?) did offer one novel twist: the three episodes had a common bad guy but a different hero, each of whom was suitably engaging.