“Luther,” the loony British cop show in which Idris Elba has been starring over the last decade, is very hard to kill. It rises from the dead again Sunday on BBC America after four years. This season, the fifth, is a typically tidy four episodes — short arcs being advisable when you routinely suspend all the laws of logic, psychology and police procedure. Detective Chief Inspector John Luther should have been fired or dead from the first episode back in 2010, but as Season 5 opens he’s still on the job, chasing a serial killer with a taste for mutilation while simultaneously avoiding a vendetta being carried out by an angry gangster. The show lives off the tension between Cross’s grand-guignol theatrics — the latest killer wears not only a creepy Guy Fawkes mask but a halo of halogen lights, like a self-contained circus sideshow — and Elba’s immensely world-weary, endearing performance as Luther.

Source: New York Times June 02, 2019 18:00 UTC