Zen

In lieu of new episodes of the Kenneth Branagh Wallander (the good news being that more have been commissioned, including 3 new stories), BBC1′s new Sunday night detective drama Zen ended it’s first 3 part run last night.

Zen, based on Michael Dibdin’s series of novels, starred Rufus Sewell as the titular detective, an honest man in a corrupt world just trying to keep his head down and get from one day to the next. Forced to live with his mother after the breakdown of his relationship with his cheating wife, and dragged into seemingly inescapable situations by dirty politicians looking for a clean way out of trouble, Zen is soon up to his neck in intrigue, double-crossing and unsolved crimes. The shady government hand on his shoulder points him towards bloody mess after bloody mess, saying, “there you go. Make all this go away quickly will you? There’s a good chap.”

I liked the approach taken with the tone of the show. Despite the action being set in and around Rome, the production makes no attempt to Italianise anyone involved (except those who are already Italian, such as Caterina Murano, above). It could just as easily be an East London cop drama, but for the beautiful settings, the character names, and the golden light washing almost every frame. At times it looked like a renaissance painting.

The humour also greatly appealed – Sewell is as dry as the Sahara, and in the final episode in particular there were some big laughs, particularly an incident with a desk set up several scenes before and subsequently forgotten until the payoff.

Every police procedural has to have a unique angle to recommend it. Luther’s was the love/hate relationship with an uncatchable nemesis turned helper, and Wallander’s was his fight with depression. Zen has several goes at different things but never fully alights on one – good man in a bad world, steamy affair kept secret, government intervention at every turn. It’s a subtle blend of different influences and becomes all the more satisfying for not hitting you over the head saying ‘this is what this show is really about’. An intelligent programme which credited its viewers with a modicum of intelligence too – a rare thing in this day and age. I hope, and think, we can expect to see more of Zen.