Minor spoilers for The Tower episode 1 below.
A tall tale where we hope the plot doesn’t fall flat towards the end, The Tower is ITV’s latest multiple-nights-in-a-row crime thriller. It’s a high concept affair that tells the storeys of… Alright, let’s stop with the daft puns and explain properly.
We open by following two detectives as they rush to the scene of a nasty incident. A high-rise flat on a busy housing estate has been cordoned off. In a large puddle of blood and viscera at the bottom of ‘the tower’ are a hefty bobby on the beat and a young refugee girl. Both, quite obviously, dead.
Heading up to the roof and we meet the only three eyewitnesses to whatever happened: rookie PC Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif – The Haunting of Bly Manor), her boss DI Kieran Shaw (Emmett J Scanlan – Hollyoaks, Peaky Blinders) and a five-year-old kid that, we’re soon told, was snatched by the now-dead teenager. Everyone’s in shock, there’s a puzzle to solve. Tasked with that very job are DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan – Game of Thrones, Killing Eve) and DC Steve Bradshaw (Jimmy Akingbola – Ted Lasso).
A couple of things stood out here early on. After the exciting beginning, the picture of police life presented looked rather mundane. That’s not a criticism, if anything it’s a compliment. The police station looks run down, like an actual government building. The flashback chats in the squad cars are silly and irreverent and full of teasing and self-deprecation. Like many actual work conversations. Too many crime dramas show stations that look like Frank Gehry designs, with conversations between colleagues being tense stand-offs or philosophical musings.
Part of the reason there’s a level of realism here in The Tower, perhaps, comes from the source material. This three-parter is based on Kate London’s popular 2015 book Post Mortem, a novel praised on its publication for its gritty lifelike style. London was a serving Met copper before she took up writing.
Perhaps one of the lesser known parts of the job is how frequently you have to announce your name. Only in the opening scene here, ‘DS Sarah Collins from the Directorate of Special Investigations’ said just that at least three or four times. It was a little jarring but, to be fair, it does help you remember her name and who she works for. It’s DS Sarah Collins and she’s from the Directorate of Special Investigations. That’s DS Sarah Collins. The Directorate of Special Investigations.
The DSI are, of course, made up. They’re what a hard-boiled ‘80’s cop thriller would call ‘goddamn internal affairs’. They investigate ‘their own’. Shocking and bloody deaths, made-up departments snooping around bent coppers… any bells ringing?
Luckily for us, The Tower isn’t a cheap Line of Duty rip-off. It – mostly – has its own style, albeit not a hugely original one. Despite the odd realistic detail, many of the tropes of the TV police drama are evident here.
Onto the slightly less impressive side of The Tower. Not for the first time when discussing a television drama, our first complaint is about the sound. It’s a common issue that us viewers seem to whinge about eternally but programme makers never seem to take note of. Maybe they can’t hear us. So let’s be clear:
STOP. MUMBLING. AND. RUSHING. DIALOGUE!
There was an almost incredible scene at around the midway point here in this opening episode. In about thirty seconds, several potentially key plot points were trotted off in double quick time by DI Shaw in a barely audible murmur. Mumbled under his breath in a thick Dublin accent, even an Irish dolphin would’ve struggled to pick up what he said. Yet again, this is another TV drama that most of us will be forced to watch with the subtitles turned on.
Sound issues aside, there’s plenty to like so far about The Tower. We’ll get further into the storyline in our reviews of parts two and three later in the week. Both of which we have high hopes for.
‘High hopes’? Like a tower… No? Suit yourself.
Love The Tower? You’ll love these…
Snatched by Karin Slaughter
No Less the Devil by Stuart MacBride
The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen
Excellent series and great storyline. Dialogue a bit muffled in places could have done with subtitles.
Ending has definitely left it open for follow up series.
Really enjoyed it
Enjoyed it, it was well acted (Gemma Whelan is good in everything she does) but struggled to hear half of the dialogue! Would definitely watch a second series.
A very good series, loved every moment of it, very good acting and a very good story, the only thing i didn’t like was the ending i wish they had all been brought to justice