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Red Riding provides no such sweetened pill, maintaining a dark, bleak tone throughout, as it reveals its sordid tale. While Red Riding is not one to watch in the expectation of a happy ending, it is a brilliant and brave piece of work, which deserves your attention.
The Red Riding Trilogy, the TV adaptation of David Peace’s cult noir novels, features a celebrated cast including Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Andrew Garfield, David Morrissey, Rebecca Hall and Maxine Peake. It features three of the four novels, all set when the spectre of the Yorkshire Ripper loomed ominously over Yorkshire: 1974, 1980 and 1984. The separate dramas depict a murky sinister web of corruption and paranoia, involving the police, local authorities, newspapers and prominent local figures.
The 1970s are evoked in a style reminiscent of Life on Mars. The brown leather jackets, the flares, the y-fronts, the heavy-handed coppers and the incessant smoking; the stereotypes we have become familiar with are all there. Except this time there’s no wise-cracking Gene Hunt to lift the mood. Red Riding goes out of its way to show that it truly is grim up North, focusing on desolate landscapes, everyday violence and hopeless individual situations. The fictionalised West Yorkshire police shown are far from ideal protectors of the public, occasionally the very opposite. Red Riding’s stunning cinematography is relentlessly bleak; its sepia tones and shadowy lighting conveying the confusion and moral ambiguity of many of its characters.
The first film, 1974, follows the efforts of a young cocky journalist investigating the disappearance and murder of several young girls in the area. A sprawling network of complicity and corruption is unveiled, making the audience question who really is accountable for the murders. The second outing moves on to the year 1980 and focuses on an internal investigation that was launched into the Ripper Inquiry. Although the plot occasionally veered towards the ludicrous, this was again a solid drama with a great performance from Paddy Considine, with yet more details of the rotten core of the police emerging.
The final part, 1983, is set to air Thursday night. It is set to tie up all the interconnecting threads and draw a fuller picture of the scale and impact of the evident corruption amongst high powers. The protagonist is solicitor John Piggott, who attempts to discover the perpetrator of the schoolgirl murders, knowing the boy convicted of the crimes cannot be guilty. It is sure to be a dramatic and harrowing conclusion to a serial that is one of the boldest seen on television for some time. Do not be put off by the bleakness of its outlook. Red Riding will not put you at ease, it will not allow you to laze in your sofa and remain detached. It will however keep you captivated and make you question how much we really know about those that have immense power over our lives.
The Red Riding Trilogy concludes Thursday 19th March on Channel 4 at 9.00pm.
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