A new Yorkshire-set, female-led crime drama has been swiftly lined up by the BBC to succeed Happy Valley. Its title, Better, shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value.
This five-part series about a dirty cop trying to clean up her act doesn’t seem destined to become the broadcaster’s next unmissable gritty hit. Unlike its headstrong protagonist, the show plays things a bit safe — rarely challenging itself to go deeper or darker in its story of a detective interrogating her own conscience.
She is Lou Slack (Leila Farzad), a Leeds-based police officer who moonlights as a protector and fixer for the city’s pre-eminent gangster, Col McHugh (Andrew Buchan). Slack by name, but clearly not by nature, Lou has managed to keep up a close allyship with Col for nearly two decades without detection, using her position to crack down on his rivals while obfuscating his own shady dealings.
It’s only when her son falls gravely ill that Lou finally begins to recognise that helping a murderous drug baron establish an illicit monopoly can’t be explained away through moral relativism. “You’ve only just realised this?” her husband asks, echoing our own incredulity.
But if there’s a neatness to how Lou is struck by an epiphany, the show does a better job exploring the messiness of redemption. Atonement itself is not free from selfishness and compromised ethics as Lou soon finds out. Unburdening herself of guilt may mean exposing her family, and any attempt to bring Col down hinges on Lou’s ability to sustain his trust in her.
Such themes and paradoxes are hardly novel, yet they’re refreshed by Farzad, who doesn’t overplay Lou’s internal anguish and gives a watchable turn touched by both regret and resolve, as well as warmth and wit.
Her performance is not always best supported by the secondary cast or the clunky production embellishments. But the more it goes on, and the more Lou becomes trapped in her moral maze, the better Better seems to get.
★★★☆☆
On BBC1 from February 20 at 9pm and on iPlayer
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