Luther’s back!
As a fan of the gritty, dark and completely unrealistic police procedural Luther, you can imagine how excited I was when I got wind of a new series. Working at the BBC, I have access to the corridors of power when it comes to TV commissioning, and so one day when I was caught short I accessed the toilets at the end of those corridors and was delighted to find that someone had left a shooting script for episode one of the new series on the floor next to the pedestal (they’d also left the pan in a terrible state, but sadly that’s nothing newsworthy). It’s my honour and my privilege to share an extract from this script with you.
INT. POLICE INCIDENT ROOM. NIGHT
The place is lousy with rozzers, doing their police work. They’re busy, because crime doesn’t sleep in London. There are always people doing Bad Things, and these hard-nosed heroes represent the thin blue line that stands between your family and a maniac kicking your front door down, shoving a straw into your eyeball and drinking all the juice out of it.
Suddenly, there’s a BANG as the office door is thrown open. Everyone stops and turns to look. We can’t see who it is, but we see shock etched on faces of everyone in the incident room like text carved into a gravestone. A beat, then INSPECTOR SMITH talks.
INSPECTOR SMITH
Bleedin’ ‘ell. I thought you was inside.
We hear a muffled noise.
INSPECTOR SMITH
I can’t understand you, mate.
LUTHER stomps into the room, his cheeks distended. He looks haunted; his time away has aged him. He looks around the room, looking for friendly faces, but seeing only fear. He opens his mouth, which is full of bees. The bees fly out and settle on his back like a giant tortoise-shell, but made out of loads of bees.
LUTHER
That’s because [SHOUTS] I HAD A MOUTH FULL OF BEES, KEITH!
INSPECTOR SMITH
Calm down, John. We’re all good, aren’t we? Yeah. Now let’s lose the bees, and we can talk.
LUTHER
Can’t lose the bees, Keith.
INSPECTOR SMITH
OK, we keep the bees.
LUTHER
So, what’s happening?
INSPECTOR SMITH
We’ve got a killer on the loose.
LUTHER
(Nods) M-O?
INSPECTOR SMITH
He uses a mincer, John. Carries it around, and forces people into it.
LUTHER
The sick… OK, so what do we know?
INSPECTOR SMITH
Um… I just told you. He feeds people into a mincer.
LUTHER
No, I mean other stuff about him.
INSPECTOR SMITH
Well, he must be a big guy, to lug that mincer about and then push people into it.
LUTHER
That’s a given. But what drives him? What about his mental state?
Luther starts to consider. He enters a world inside his own mind, looking for the ridiculous leap of logic that will allow him to smash the case wide open. People stop what they’re doing and start to watch him as he begins to rotate, slowly at first but increasing his speed until he’s spinning so fast that he’s just a blur. He screams like an owl hitting an electrified fence.
Well, I don’t know about you, but just that small extract from the first scene has got me so excited that I fear my head might fall off my shoulders and roll along the floor like a volleyball with hair and spectacles. And let me tell you, it only gets better and more outrageous from there on in. The baddy makes that surgeon from the last series look like something from a children’s book! I think it’s coming out in autumn this year. Next time I need a wee and I’m close to that department I’ll see what I can find out, and make sure I take a toilet brush with me.