Strike: Troubled Blood
Dec. 22nd, 2022 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessI watched the first two episodes as a double bill and then waited about a week for the third part and watched the final part the next night, not quite when they aired. I remember most of the plot from the book, certainly whodunnit, and it’s laid out from the first flashback if you’ve read the book, but I didn’t recall the details so well that I was always sure which bits they’d tweaked as well as truncated.
The first ep set up the case and certainly the pressures in Strike’s personal life. Robin’s troubles with The Awful Matthew came up once per episode, while annoying Saul was given about as much time as copper George, who also annoyed Robin. The main line of investigation in the second ep was Gloria Conti’s link to the mob and the snuff tape. The second episode ended with the Dennis Creed line of inquiry seeming to take on more importance, just after it seemed like they’d come to a dead end.
As it was a cold case, this series was flashback heavy, although that tailed off episode by episode. Is it me, or did the actress they cast as Margot not have a touch of the Emma Watson about her look? They didn’t overdo it, but the echo between Strike’s and client Anna’s situations were there. He was now watching the woman who’d raised him die, while remembering he’d been loyal to his birth mother as a child, not to mention Rokeby reaching out when Cormoran didn’t want to have anything to do with his birth father. We saw a flashback of Anna as a very tiny eight-year-old brutally discovering that the woman she thought of as her mother was the nanny who had married her father after her birth mother had vanished, and all the ruptures that had caused.
We got to see Cornwall (and it wasn’t overemphasised but sympathetic Anna and her partner HAVE A SECOND HOME IN CORNWALL. Just saying.) Burke put in a little more ‘Cornwall’ in the final A in some words all of a sudden this series. I enjoyed seeing the locations, particularly the walkthrough of the route Margot should have taken, as it was slightly different from what my imagination had come up with as I read the book.
In that vein, I like their Pat. Her delivery and demeanour were great, even if she wasn’t quite as I’d imagined her upon reading, and I enjoyed her growing working relationship with Strike and Robin in the background.
I think it might have been a bit of a mistake to have Robin try to ream out Saul for not following orders so close to Robin too acting on her own initiative and ignoring Shanker and Strike’s advice not to go into the care home. Okay, Strike isn’t her boss now, even if Saul hadn’t got that memo, but he’s still the more experienced partner, and, as he said, Shanker knew what he was talking about. Robin took precautions and seemed to have got away with it, but the way it played out blurred things with Saul not respecting her authority.
Robin’s over-involvement in the case seemed to come mostly from seeing the snuff film and the possibility that that was Margot – she crossed the line in the phone call to Gloria here and in pressuring Anna to let them continue the case at a very stressful time. There wasn’t quite the overidentification with Margot there is in the book, although you could draw the parallels in their fighting for other women.
Strike seemed a bit more objective, with the case starting as an useful distraction from his upcoming loss and Lucy judging him for not doing life the way she saw fit! His exchange with her about why he and Robin shouldn’t get together took on a lot of significance. But we saw the ease between Strike and Robin when working on the case, though he shut her down, like everyone, about Joan. Oh, and there was also ease between them and Shanker in their scene with him, while Strike had to commend Robin for getting them Gloria’s evidence.
They elided a lot in the third episode to make it about investigating Creed, tensions between Robin and Strike because he was a failboat (for Reasons) and Joan’s death. Robin’s brother and his girlfriend turning up for the dinner Cormoran forgot seemed random, because this episode tilted more towards Cormoran’s POV than Robin’s.
Robin got invested in Brian Tucker’s search for Lou’s body, and, with Joan having passed Strike signed up to interviewing Creed (which happens later in the book) and offered a cut-rate deal for Anna. (Maybe the show is pretending that Falmouth is their only residence, but I’m sure it’s a second home in the book, so I wasn’t that sympathetic. Yes, to Anna finding the truth about her mother, but not saving her money.)
Apart from getting justice for Lou, even if they couldn’t for Cara (and weren’t sure about Margot) it was mainly about ruling things out. There were only a couple of flashbacks, it was more about pictures and letters.
Despite Robin’s entirely fair blow-up at Strike for being drunk and inconsiderate, there were a few Strike/Robin moments. That whole touching the shoulder moment, which Lucy walked in on and made Robin realise what she was doing! The whole ‘your Robin’ from Joan, and Robin picking up ‘The Lovers’, which was again changed from how it happened in the book to make it more pointed. All the cutting maybe was to the detriment of the mystery, but they tried to embiggen the emotional stuff. I don’t remember book!Strike crying in a cove, but it was a picturesque cove,
Anyway, now that they had found Louise’s body (Robin’s Google-fu: 1 – Dennis Creed: 0), Robin’s latest bit of investigating led her to believe that Steve Douthwaite was the serial killer they were looking for, all set up for the next and final ep.
Which started with Strike and Robin making their case to George about why they needed help to find Steve Douthwaite, but finding him themselves, so let’s put that down to dramatizing exposition. Strike got set up and wound by Carl Ogden and punched him, catching Robin accidentally and then having a heart to heart where we heard the story of Cormoran’s meeting with his father as a child (with the memory of the flashback to wee!Coromran in the viewers’ minds) then calling Robin beautiful and having UST, before Saul got the wrong idea when Robin answered Strike’s door and I rewound three times and thought on balance the delivery guy had called Robin Mrs Strike when she answered the door.
Over Christmas, Strike caught a cold that saved him from getting poisoned to death, Saul sent Robin THAT picture, there was the road trip to Skegness and cuteness over mushy peas, before Douthwaite’s terror of Someone finding him gave Strike The Clue to solve the case. Suddenly, Robin was busting out the self-defence moves on Saul in front of an admiring Pat (best line? Pat thinking Saul had sent the picture via the post, which I think was Rowling’s.) And sacking him because she could. I was a bit squeamish again about how Robin took advantage of the Athorns’ disabilities, even if it was in the cause of justice.
Meanwhile Strike was going to see nurse Janice – no idea if that was a shocker or entirely credible for viewers who hadn’t read the book - (played by Tom Burke’s actual mother, although to their credit as actors, I was seeing the characters.) Janice tried to kill him again but discovered she was busted and he was no drunk girl tottering near a swimming pool. Her confession was as chilling as it had been to read, even if they’d dropped her experiments on her grand-daughter.
Whew! It was a bit disorientating that Strike was then going back to Cornwall for the funeral, although the Skegness trip and confession from Janice/finding the body could only have taken a few days. So, they could tell client Anna the truth and even let her see a clip of her mother holding her as a baby.
And then we got some Robin/Strike business, where losing Joan/hitting Robin by accident/nearly dying/everything had jigged his conscience to getting her the pony (in balloon form) – nice visual - and the gift she’d wanted with plausible deniability if you ignore the continuing UST and the fact a straight guy telling his female best friend she’s beautiful is…well, there’s a reason the half of your family you interact with ship you, Strike. In fact, most of the universe seemed to be.
All this did happen over a much truncated period, and I can see why they separated the lines of enquiry in a way the book didn’t. It lent focus to each episode, but a lot of discoveries seemed to come easily, when there were chapters and chapters of surveillance and graft. But they kept in most of the important stuff and certainly all the big drama.
[Edited for typos 23/2/25.]
The first ep set up the case and certainly the pressures in Strike’s personal life. Robin’s troubles with The Awful Matthew came up once per episode, while annoying Saul was given about as much time as copper George, who also annoyed Robin. The main line of investigation in the second ep was Gloria Conti’s link to the mob and the snuff tape. The second episode ended with the Dennis Creed line of inquiry seeming to take on more importance, just after it seemed like they’d come to a dead end.
As it was a cold case, this series was flashback heavy, although that tailed off episode by episode. Is it me, or did the actress they cast as Margot not have a touch of the Emma Watson about her look? They didn’t overdo it, but the echo between Strike’s and client Anna’s situations were there. He was now watching the woman who’d raised him die, while remembering he’d been loyal to his birth mother as a child, not to mention Rokeby reaching out when Cormoran didn’t want to have anything to do with his birth father. We saw a flashback of Anna as a very tiny eight-year-old brutally discovering that the woman she thought of as her mother was the nanny who had married her father after her birth mother had vanished, and all the ruptures that had caused.
We got to see Cornwall (and it wasn’t overemphasised but sympathetic Anna and her partner HAVE A SECOND HOME IN CORNWALL. Just saying.) Burke put in a little more ‘Cornwall’ in the final A in some words all of a sudden this series. I enjoyed seeing the locations, particularly the walkthrough of the route Margot should have taken, as it was slightly different from what my imagination had come up with as I read the book.
In that vein, I like their Pat. Her delivery and demeanour were great, even if she wasn’t quite as I’d imagined her upon reading, and I enjoyed her growing working relationship with Strike and Robin in the background.
I think it might have been a bit of a mistake to have Robin try to ream out Saul for not following orders so close to Robin too acting on her own initiative and ignoring Shanker and Strike’s advice not to go into the care home. Okay, Strike isn’t her boss now, even if Saul hadn’t got that memo, but he’s still the more experienced partner, and, as he said, Shanker knew what he was talking about. Robin took precautions and seemed to have got away with it, but the way it played out blurred things with Saul not respecting her authority.
Robin’s over-involvement in the case seemed to come mostly from seeing the snuff film and the possibility that that was Margot – she crossed the line in the phone call to Gloria here and in pressuring Anna to let them continue the case at a very stressful time. There wasn’t quite the overidentification with Margot there is in the book, although you could draw the parallels in their fighting for other women.
Strike seemed a bit more objective, with the case starting as an useful distraction from his upcoming loss and Lucy judging him for not doing life the way she saw fit! His exchange with her about why he and Robin shouldn’t get together took on a lot of significance. But we saw the ease between Strike and Robin when working on the case, though he shut her down, like everyone, about Joan. Oh, and there was also ease between them and Shanker in their scene with him, while Strike had to commend Robin for getting them Gloria’s evidence.
They elided a lot in the third episode to make it about investigating Creed, tensions between Robin and Strike because he was a failboat (for Reasons) and Joan’s death. Robin’s brother and his girlfriend turning up for the dinner Cormoran forgot seemed random, because this episode tilted more towards Cormoran’s POV than Robin’s.
Robin got invested in Brian Tucker’s search for Lou’s body, and, with Joan having passed Strike signed up to interviewing Creed (which happens later in the book) and offered a cut-rate deal for Anna. (Maybe the show is pretending that Falmouth is their only residence, but I’m sure it’s a second home in the book, so I wasn’t that sympathetic. Yes, to Anna finding the truth about her mother, but not saving her money.)
Apart from getting justice for Lou, even if they couldn’t for Cara (and weren’t sure about Margot) it was mainly about ruling things out. There were only a couple of flashbacks, it was more about pictures and letters.
Despite Robin’s entirely fair blow-up at Strike for being drunk and inconsiderate, there were a few Strike/Robin moments. That whole touching the shoulder moment, which Lucy walked in on and made Robin realise what she was doing! The whole ‘your Robin’ from Joan, and Robin picking up ‘The Lovers’, which was again changed from how it happened in the book to make it more pointed. All the cutting maybe was to the detriment of the mystery, but they tried to embiggen the emotional stuff. I don’t remember book!Strike crying in a cove, but it was a picturesque cove,
Anyway, now that they had found Louise’s body (Robin’s Google-fu: 1 – Dennis Creed: 0), Robin’s latest bit of investigating led her to believe that Steve Douthwaite was the serial killer they were looking for, all set up for the next and final ep.
Which started with Strike and Robin making their case to George about why they needed help to find Steve Douthwaite, but finding him themselves, so let’s put that down to dramatizing exposition. Strike got set up and wound by Carl Ogden and punched him, catching Robin accidentally and then having a heart to heart where we heard the story of Cormoran’s meeting with his father as a child (with the memory of the flashback to wee!Coromran in the viewers’ minds) then calling Robin beautiful and having UST, before Saul got the wrong idea when Robin answered Strike’s door and I rewound three times and thought on balance the delivery guy had called Robin Mrs Strike when she answered the door.
Over Christmas, Strike caught a cold that saved him from getting poisoned to death, Saul sent Robin THAT picture, there was the road trip to Skegness and cuteness over mushy peas, before Douthwaite’s terror of Someone finding him gave Strike The Clue to solve the case. Suddenly, Robin was busting out the self-defence moves on Saul in front of an admiring Pat (best line? Pat thinking Saul had sent the picture via the post, which I think was Rowling’s.) And sacking him because she could. I was a bit squeamish again about how Robin took advantage of the Athorns’ disabilities, even if it was in the cause of justice.
Meanwhile Strike was going to see nurse Janice – no idea if that was a shocker or entirely credible for viewers who hadn’t read the book - (played by Tom Burke’s actual mother, although to their credit as actors, I was seeing the characters.) Janice tried to kill him again but discovered she was busted and he was no drunk girl tottering near a swimming pool. Her confession was as chilling as it had been to read, even if they’d dropped her experiments on her grand-daughter.
Whew! It was a bit disorientating that Strike was then going back to Cornwall for the funeral, although the Skegness trip and confession from Janice/finding the body could only have taken a few days. So, they could tell client Anna the truth and even let her see a clip of her mother holding her as a baby.
And then we got some Robin/Strike business, where losing Joan/hitting Robin by accident/nearly dying/everything had jigged his conscience to getting her the pony (in balloon form) – nice visual - and the gift she’d wanted with plausible deniability if you ignore the continuing UST and the fact a straight guy telling his female best friend she’s beautiful is…well, there’s a reason the half of your family you interact with ship you, Strike. In fact, most of the universe seemed to be.
All this did happen over a much truncated period, and I can see why they separated the lines of enquiry in a way the book didn’t. It lent focus to each episode, but a lot of discoveries seemed to come easily, when there were chapters and chapters of surveillance and graft. But they kept in most of the important stuff and certainly all the big drama.
[Edited for typos 23/2/25.]
