Good Cop (BBC-1 2012, Warren Brown)

In Good Cop police constable John Paul Rocksavage is devestated when his partner is brutally beaten and killed by a gang. When he realises the investigation is going nowhere he decides to take matters into his own hands.

After confronting one of the gang, Noel Finch, at the house where the attack on his partner took place John Paul discovers a gun and shoots and kills Finch. He then targets the rest of the gang.

In a convoluted plot John Paul is also trying to reconnect with the girl he abandoned several years earlier when she told him she was pregnant. John Paul lives with his father, who has some unspecified illness, and spends quite a bit of time reading to him. He is also having an affair with the married nurse who looks after his father.

In the fourth and final episode the emphasis switches to the search for two men who are attacking young girls in the area. John Paul has now become something of a vigilante and determines to kill them too.

Unfortunately the four parter ends with so many loose ends hanging that you feel somewhat cheated. The BBC declined to make a second season.

The series is written by Stephen Butchard who says of his inpetus to write the show “What also really appealed to me was that they (early response cops) are the first on the scene and they make the first early decisions. They bring in other people, and then that’s really it. They’re sent away then. I like that you know the fact he’s done his job and now he’s got to move onto the next crisis. I wanted it to be about the man as a whole, not just about the police man. I very much wanted to go home with him, and see what’s happening there and how private life impacts upon the life in the uniform and vice versa.”

Brown though is quietly proving himself to be one of the UK’s most reliable young leading men these days.

production details
UK / BBC One / 4×60 minutes /Broadcast 30 August – 13 October 2012.

Writer: Stephen Butchard
Theme Music: Armies by Tricky
Producer: Rebecca Hodgson
Executive Producer: Jessica Pope
Directors: Sam Miller (episodes 1 & 2), Sue Tully (episodes 3 & 4)

cast
Warren Brown as John Paul Rocksavage
Michael Angelis as Robert Rocksavage
Aisling Loftus as Cassandra
Tom Hopper as Andy Stockwell
Stephen Graham as Noel Finch
Stephen Walters as Callum Rose
Joe Macaulay as Jonjo Heinz
Jodie Comer as Amy
Johann Myers as Gary Walton
Carl Rice as Philip Davenport
Kerrie Hayes as WPC Amanda Morgan
Kevin Harvey as Sergeant Middleton
Robbie Jarvis as DCI Stoddart
Christine Tremarco as Nurse Justine
Mark Womack as DCI Costello
Philip Hill Pearson as DC Liam Frainey
Shaun Mason as Kyle Smart