I normally don’t write reviews of TV shows but JERICHO OF SCOTLAND YARD piqued my interest. First of all it isn’t a TV series (which I thought it was until I watched it) but a 4 part miniseries concerning the exploits of a troubled Scotland Yard detective and his 2 associates who become involved in a series of brutal murders in late 1950s London. Each of the 4 episodes deals with a different killer and the murders are of an increasingly nasty nature. JERICHO features a sequential storyline as each episode flows into the next one until it ends on a quiet note after the grand climax is reached.
However JERICHO wants to be more than just another hard boiled, noiresque police drama, it also wants to deal with topical themes such as immigration racism (first episode), closeted homosexuality (second episode), bizarre murders involving lipstick smeared on the victims whose mouths are stuffed with newspapers (third episode), and finally extremely ugly murders involving disembowelment that are tied to the blockbuster movie THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI. Woven into these investigations are a romance between detective Jericho and a French illegal alien, subterfuge at Scotland Yard aimed at discrediting Jericho, and a re-connection with his Jewish mother after 10 years.
In addition to those separate storylines, each episode is named after a line from a T.S. Eliot poem with the third episode actually featuring a murder victim named Thomas Srearns Eliot (the poet’s real name) who is a nuclear scientist here. Executive producer Rebbeca Eaton and scriptwriter Stewart Harcourt clearly have bigger things on their minds than just another crime drama which is commendable but unfortunately their execution is not. Interjecting these various themes and subplots into JERICHO makes it difficult to keep up with which may have been the principal reason its audience dropped by over a million after the first part aired which ultimately led to its quick cancellation.
Putting aside the issue oriented, convoluted storylines, JERICHO has a few things going for it. The late 1950s setting (BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI was released in 1957) is beautifully captured although it took me until the second episode to realize the time frame. The acting is top notch from Robert Lindsay as the title character, his two associates (David Troughton, Ciarin McMenamin) and from old pro guest stars Francesca Annis, Claire Bloom, James Wilby, and Dudley Sutton. JERICHO was first shown in America in 2006 as part of the PBS MYSTERY series. I only encountered it recently. Overall, I found JERICHO worthwhile but it bites off more than it can chew which hampered my enjoyment of it. That along with the brutal killings and unsavory subject matter will keep me from watching it again.
