Cracker Is A Groundbreaking British Crime Thriller

Cracker is a groundbreaking British crime thriller from the 1990s. Robbie Coltrane might be best known overseas as Hagrid in the Harry Potter series, but it was his performance as Dr. Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald in Cracker that made him a star in the UK. The show follows Fitz, a brilliant, charismatic and insightful criminal psychologist who works on cases with the Manchester police. He’s also a chain-smoking, heavy drinking gambler who cheats on his wife and is an all-around mess who seems to have a high degree of self-loathing.

Cracker might be a procedural on the surface but it avoids many of the cliches that litter the genre. Instead of a whodunnit mystery, the story follows the killer (or killers) and the police effort to hunt them down. The victims are never just props to set the story in motion either, with the murders themselves depicted in disturbing detail. The effect these deaths have on families and friends is also explored, especially when one key supporting character played by Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) is stabbed to death during the second season.

Cracker was created by Jimmy McGovern and set in his hometown of Manchester. He often used the crimes on the show to explore various social issues, including a storyline involving a killer named Albie (Robert Carlyle, Trainspotting), a survivor of the real-life Hillsborough stadium disaster. The killers themselves are never one-note psychopaths either and are usually suffering from some kind of trauma themselves. While the show is largely driven by Robbie Coltrane’s performance as Fitz, it also featured a pretty incredible supporting cast, including Barbara Flynn as Fitz’s wife Judith, Geraldine Somerville, Liam Cunningham (Game Of Thrones), John Simm and many more.

At the center of Cracker is fantastic writing, with great dialogue and fascinating, three-dimensional characters. This is best seen in Fitz himself, who verges from incredibly likable to repugnant – sometimes in the space of one scene. He’s a man littered with flaws and demons, but it’s only in his work that he seems able to fully channel his energy. He’s a borderline genius when it to his job and “cracking” the minds of the killers he’s investigating, with his interrogations often being the most compelling sequences of the show.

Like most great British dramas, Cracker came to an end pretty quick. The show ran for three seasons and two specials, with Jimmy McGovern wanting to move on to other projects. Robbie Coltrane refused to return without Fitz’s creator penning the scripts, with the last instalment being a one-off 2006 special penned by McGovern which found Fitz in a surprisingly stable emotional place – which is threatened when he helps the police investigate a new murder.

Cracker was also remade for American audiences in 1997, with the late Robert Pastorelli playing the title role after James Gandolfini turned it down. Sadly, the U.S. take on Cracker sanded off the harsh edges of both the storylines and Fitz himself, resulting in a much weaker show that was canceled after one season. Coltrane made a guest appearance as a different character, while it provided a young Josh Harnett (Penny Dreadful) with an early lead role as Fitz’s son. Nearly 30 years after its debut, the original version of Cracker is still one of the best crime dramas to come out of British television.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3486 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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