“Sleepyhead” was directed by Stephen Hopkins, whose résumé includes episodes of “24” and, from this season, Showtime’s engaging “House of Lies.” He uses lots of visual tricks that help make this a cut above all those good but interchangeable British police procedurals, including filming scenes from the perspective of that locked-in patient. Billingham has a taste for the bizarre and grisly, and here Thorne’s investigation connects to an old case that was macabre in its own right. Thorne begins to suspect that this surviving victim wasn’t a mistake by the killer at all, and things grow weirder from there. She can hear you, she can understand everything, but she can’t move. “It’s characterized by complete paralysis of all voluntary muscle functions in the body, apart from those which control eye movements,” a doctor (Natascha McElhone) explains to Thorne. And by the end of the second, “Thorne: Scaredy Cat,” on Wednesday, poor Detective Inspector Thorne has a whole new set of burdens to brood about. In the first piece, “Thorne: Sleepyhead,” on Tuesday night, we learn one reason that Thorne seems so haunted: The creepy present-day case he is working turns out to be related to a case from his past in which his conduct was not exactly by the book. Morrissey, a veteran of many British television series, has reticence down to an art form as he brings Thorne, the character from Mark Billingham’s crime novels, to life. In the championship he might well meet David Morrissey’s Tom Thorne, who, based on the two intense dramas being offered this week on Encore, would have an excellent shot at being the British finalist.
The smart money would be on Tom Selleck’s growly Jesse Stone to come out of the American bracket. The supporting cast includes Natascha McElhone as a neurologist to whom Thorne takes a liking Sandra Oh, from “Grey’s Anatomy,” putting on an English accent - somewhat disconcerting, until you realize that, yes, that is Sandra Oh with an English accent - as a troubled detective and Eddie Marsan as a fellow inspector unnaturally bent on bringing Thorne down.Picture a bracket-style Fictional Police Brood-Off in which all those moody cops populating the international television landscape would compete to see who could convey the most while saying the least. (Sara Lloyd-Gregory is excellent in the part.) And certain of its devices - a key witness in “Sleepyhead” is a victim of “locked-in syndrome,” conscious but paralyzed, but her inner monologues actively contribute to the action - are very well realized and creepily effective. If “Thorne” is not exactly enjoyable, it does generate a good degree of tension and dread, and some quite unpleasant scares. In the way of fictional detectives, he is also an intuitive genius and a marvel of quick physical recovery. He has, seemingly, but a single friend, a pathologist played by Aidan Gillen (Mayor Tommy Carcetti on"The Wire,” Littlefinger on"Game of Thrones”), with whom he shares a dark secret. There’s not much we’re shown about the character, past that he likes country music, has an aging father who likes corny jokes (the show is surprisingly short on humor) and that he’s basically a nice guy who could use a little love. Such chilliness notwithstanding, one does feel for Thorne, not the least because Morrissey naturally attracts sympathy, even when he plays characters who don’t really deserve it. The landmarks of the new school are not Big Ben and the Tower Bridge but the London Eye and that big glass building Londoners call the Gherkin, among less metaphors in the inhospitable, hard-edged city “Thorne” roams, even the old derelict buildings (where a killer might hide or a body be abandoned) are of comparatively recent vintage.
One thing “Thorne” makes clear, alongside shows like"Luther"and Steven Moffat’s 21st century"Sherlock,"is that the quaint old London of Hercule Poirot and Peter Wimsey is all but gone as a setting for crime stories. There is also a tediously artsy, almost epicurean regard for the work of the psycho killer, a convention I’ve never much trusted or liked, but which has become standard for the form. Its visual tics seem imported from American procedurals like"CSI,"and if they make “Thorne” seem contemporary and excite its surface, they can also obscure whatever human story they have to tell you can’t see the grit for the gloss.
THORNE SLEEPYHEAD CAST SERIAL
in 2010, but here takes the form of back-to-back feature films - adapts two novels by Mark Billingham, “Thorne: Sleepyhead” and “Thorne: Scaredy Cat,” both of which concern apparent serial murders.
The series, to stretch the term - it ran in six parts in the U.K. David Morrissey, a good-looking big lug of a British leading man with a talent for playing tortured rectitude, is the star and producer of “Thorne,” a detective drama airing Tuesday and Wednesday on Encore.
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