An Ambitious Six Part British Crime Drama Centering On An Ill-Fated Romance
After loving the British TV adaptation of Martina Cole's "The Take" (with a riveting, star-making performance by Tom Hardy), I was more than eager to check out this six part series. While "The Runaway" is also based on a Cole novel exploring the criminal underbelly of recent London, it has a much broader scope. With a story that spans several decades, occurs across different continents, and focuses on multiple plot lines, "The Runaway" certainly doesn't lack ambition. It may, however, miss out on an intimacy as episodes jump forward through time, often just when things are at their most interesting. Although I have not read the source novel, this television production does feel like the equivalent of reading a sprawling potboiler. By the end, the central protagonists have lived through a good chunk of history and it's fascinating to see just how far they come as actual characters within this broad narrative arc.
"The Runaway," at its core, tells the story of star-crossed...
An Ambitious Six Part British Crime Drama Centering On An Ill-Fated Romance
After loving the British TV adaptation of Martina Cole's "The Take" (with a riveting, star-making performance by Tom Hardy), I was more than eager to check out this six part series. While "The Runaway" is also based on a Cole novel exploring the criminal underbelly of recent London, it has a much broader scope. With a story that spans several decades, occurs across different continents, and focuses on multiple plot lines, "The Runaway" certainly doesn't lack ambition. It may, however, miss out on an intimacy as episodes jump forward through time, often just when things are at their most interesting. Although I have not read the source novel, this television production does feel like the equivalent of reading a sprawling potboiler. By the end, the central protagonists have lived through a good chunk of history and it's fascinating to see just how far they come as actual characters within this broad narrative arc.
"The Runaway," at its core, tells the story of...
Brighton Rock Revisited
Although this series succeeds beautifully as a crime drama and a romance, there's more going on than one might at first think. I have not read the novel on which this program is based, but at the very least the adaptors of Cole's story, if not Cole herself, have put together a stylish twist on the classic literary quest for redemption. Whether or not the creators of "The Runaway" intended to reference Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock," I couldn't help seeing Eamon as a slightly more appealing counterpart of Greene's Pinky Brown, and his struggle as parallel to Pinky's conflict over alone-ness and connection. The production also shares Greene's concern for the divide between various systems of morality and gives at least a nod to Greene's exploration of the role of faith, and particularly Catholicism, in a fallen world. In other words, this is a great show that reminds me of one of my favorite books. As in "Brighton Rock," the story comes to an easily forseen conclusion, but it still...
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