Some detective stories are primarily character driven while others are driven by their plots. While both ways of approaching a story can be interesting and provide satisfactory viewing for an audience, the best shows not only find a balance between the two, but somehow manage to integrate them. The term pathetic fallacy is a literary device wherein the author uses natural events to reflect what's happening in the plot of their story. In detective stories the best marriages of plot and character are those where the former holds a mirror up to the latter, reflecting some aspect of his life back at him. It might not be exactly the same as a thunder storm indicating a world out of joint, but it does help to create the kind of emotional and psychological depth required to make a show all the more realistic and intriguing.

In the second instalment of the mystery stories inspired by the writer Kate Atkinson, Case Histories, Series 2, now available on DVD from Acorn Media we see just how effectively this technique can be utilized to make gripping television. Jackson Brodie (Jason Isaacs) is a former cop turned private investigator. Driven off the Edinburgh police force for turning in crooked colleagues he now makes his living doing everything from finding lost dogs to tracking down missing persons and solving murders. As the lead character in the series we not only follow him as he works his cases we also delve into his emotional and mental state.

He might start out with every intention of being professionally detached when investigating a case but inevitably he not only becomes emotionally involved but is reminded of his own troubled past. He can tell himself all he wants that he won't take a personal interest, but in each of the three episodes in "Series 2" (Started Early, Took My Dog, Nobody's Darling and Jackson and the Women) it doesn't take much for him to cross over the line and open his heart.

While the first two cases begin innocuously enough, a daughter seeking out her birth mother and a young woman wanting him to check up on her fiancee to make sure he's not having an affair, in each instance his natural empathy leads him to places he doesn't necessarily want to travel. In Started Early, Took My Dog he finds himself once again immersed in uncovering the dirty laundry of the Edinburgh police as the search for the birth mother leads him back to an old case involving a murdered prostitute, the officers involved with the original investigation and the mystery of what happened to the child who was found in the apartment with the dead woman. How this case from the past relates to both his client and the death of another prostitute in the present forces Brodie into making a decision based on what he deems best for the parties involved rather than what the law and his own financial considerations demand.

In Nobody's Darling Brodie's life is complicated by his daughter's return from Australia where she had been living with his ex-wife. With her living with him temporarily we watch as he tries to negotiate both raising a girl entering adolescence and once again finding himself involved in a case which turns out to be far more complicated then he first thought. What starts out as a simple checking up on a possibly unfaithful partner, turns into an investigation of a suspicious death. Along the way Brodie also finds himself becoming the suspect in a murder inquiry when a bookie who hired him to investigate why money was going missing from his shop turns up dead. It doesn't help Brodie any that he won 60,000 pounds from the same bookie the day he was killed by placing a 1500 pound bet on a 40-1 long shot hardly anybody else had backed.

The title of the final episode of the series, Brodie and the Women, refers not only to the case he take on, but to the complicated relationships he has with the women in his own life. While a young man asks him to re-open the investigation into the death of his mother, she was originally thought to have been the victim of a serial killer, he also has to deal with the fact his assistant, Deborah (Zawe Ashton) has finally had enough of not being paid and quit, trying to reconnect romantically with his one friend on the police force Detective Inspector (DI) Louise Munroe (Amanda Abbignton) and his ex-girlfriend, Julia (Natasha Little) turning up very pregnant.

Playing a character with as many complexities as Brodie requires an actor of singular quality. A person who can not only show subtle shifts of emotion merely with his eyes and face, but who can also wear his heart for all the world to see without descending into melodrama. As Brodie Isaacs not only allows us to witness the character's inner turmoil play out behind his eyes, he also shows us there is more than one dimension to this man. Too many actors will fixate on one aspect of their character and ride it like a wave, but Isaacs understands there is more to a person than simply their past or one emotion. Empathy does not mean just be able to feel people's pain, it also means having the ability to share joy and other positive emotions. When Brodie is happy, his whole face lights up as if he's illuminated from the inside out.

However, while Isaacs performance is enough to make the series worth watching, its more than just a one man show. The scripts work to bring out the many facets of his character through his interactions with both the people in his life and the way he reacts to the situations in his life. From the over protective father learning how to let his child grow up, the man frightened of committing to a relationship, to the person with a sense of justice based on the needs of the individual rather than what others might demand of him, the scripts allow us to see all sides of Brodie while also telling three great stories.

The special features part ot the DVD set include some fascinating interviews with the cast and crew. Of most interest is the one with Isaacs, for not only does he star in the show he is also one its producers. He's able to to give viewers a perspective on the show from both sides of the camera we don't normally hear. He covers everything from the choice of music in the film to how they developed new scripts not based on books by the author while attempting to stay true to the characters and themes she developed.

It's not often you'll find any television show, let alone something as genre specific as a mystery show, where plot and character are as seamlessly integrated as they are in Case Histories, Series 2. Not only are the mysteries Brodie attempts to solve intriguing to watch, they are a reflection of the inner turmoils he's constantly dealing with. Whether it's a case of him deliberately seeking out this type of work as some sort of redemption or whether the universe is just messing with him doesn't really matter. The result is some of the most well acted and beautifully scripted television you'll see this year.

(Article originally published at Blogcritics.org as DVD Review: Case Histories Series 2)

Posted by Richard Marcus at 3:06 PM | Permalink