The Responder review: Martin Freeman convinces as a policeman falling apart

Pat Stacey

The Responder, BBC1, ****

Martin Freeman in The Responder

January 23 2022 11:00 PM

NEW five-part drama The Responder (BBC1), starting on Monday night and continuing on Tuesday, looks like the kind of thing that could have been written with Stephen Graham in mind for the title character.

The prolific actor has become television’s go-to guy for playing either seething bundles of repressed rage or essentially decent but anguished men who are rapidly coming apart at the seams. It’s even set in his native city, Liverpool.

Instead, The Responder stars Aldershot-born Martin Freeman, doing a persuasive (at least to these ears) Liverpool accent.

No easy task, that, when you’re surrounded by a supporting cast mostly made up of real Liverpudlians, including the incomparable Ian Hart and several familiar faces from the old days of Brookside.

Freeman is fantastic, however, giving a tour de force performance as urgent response officer Chris Carson, who’s been stuck on the night shift alone for too long and is hurtling headlong towards a breakdown.

Chris is suffering from mental health issues that mandated therapy so far hasn’t been able to cure. “I’m wrapped up inside here,” he tells his therapist, tapping his own skull. “We both know I’m not fixed, the job has ruined me. Every night there’s spit on me face there; blood on me shirt – it never stops.”

Chris is wound tight, unable to fully articulate what he’s going through and incapable of talking about it even to his wife Kate (MyAnna Buring, a little underused so far).

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Crime dramas are ten a penny right now, but first-time writer Tony Schumacher used to be a Merseyside police officer, so the script rings with authenticity.

It’s particularly good on showing the depressing, soul-destroying incidents a frontline police officer has to confront on a nightly basis.

They range from the mundane (an escalating row between neighbours over dog poo) to the senseless (thugs burning the mattress of a homeless old man – a cameo by David Bradley) to the nightmarishly gruesome (a search for scattered body parts).

There’s grim humour too, though. While awaiting the arrival of the pathologist at the home of an elderly woman who dropped dead watching TV, Chris pockets her left-behind tobacco and glugs the flask of pea and ham soup meant for her.

Chris used to be respected; now he’s treated as a punchline by younger officers, including the self-righteous, by-the-book rookie Rachel Hargreaves (Adelayo Adedayo), who he’s reluctantly partnered with.

But traces of the caring, compassionate man buried deep poke through now and again, as in his kind, sensitive way with the dead old lady’s nephew.

We gradually learn Chris made it to the rank of detective inspector, only to be busted all the way back down to constable for so far unspecified transgressions.

The man behind his demotion was the widely unpopular Ray Mullen (Warren Brown), who’s back on the scene, intent on destroying Carson completely and putting the move on his wife (there seems to be history between them).

As well as being psychologically unstable, Chris is morally compromised. Financial problems caused him to fall into the pocket of drug dealer Carl Sweeney – Hart in a curly black fright wig, like Harpo Marx after he’s been dipped in ink. Despite his comedy hair, Carl is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, protected and abetted by hammer-wielding heavies.

Kate, unaware of the toxic relationship between her husband and Carl, and seemingly unaware of what the latter does for a living (a slight strain credibility), considers him to be Chris’s only true friend.

Carl puts the pressure on Chris to track down a drug addict called Casey (Emily Cairn), who’s stolen a large stash of his cocaine.

This plot is the engine that drives the first two episodes, but the real strength of the series is the cauldron-like atmosphere, Freeman’s intense performance and the fine supporting cast, including the excellent Josh Finan as a conflicted young scally called Marco, whose bravado hides insecurity.

Lovely, too, to see Rita Tushingham pop up, if only for two episodes, as Chris’s mother.

THE RESPONDER IS ON BBC1 ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY AT 9PM