Cracker The Complete Collection
May 2009 Reviewed by: Charlotte Meyer Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

You may know Robbie Coltrane best as the giant Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter series. He was probably better known in the mid-1990s, when he played Dr. Eddie Fitzgerald in the hit British crime series Cracker. Fitz, as he prefers to be called, is a criminal psychologist, a "cracker." He cracks case after case with his uncanny intuition into the criminal mind. The premise of the show is that although Fitz knows how rapists and murderers think, he has no insight into his own misdeeds. Addicted to alcohol, gambling and cigarettes, boorish and immensely obese, Fitz has made a mess of his private life. As the series opens, his wife Judith is filing for divorce. He even botches an affair with the pretty young detective Sergeant Jane Penhaligon by standing her up at the airport.

If he’s a bad boy, he’s a funny one. Penhaligon says, "To be left at the airport, Fitz, that's one thing. But to be left by a big, fat, egocentric, middle-aged man, well, that's a different thing altogether." To which he answers, "I didn't mind the big." Coltrane is as much comedian as actor. That blend in the lead character gives Cracker its edge. He is outrageous. You find yourself laughing at very inappropriate behavior, siding with him against his reasonable and long-suffering wife, loving it when he tops anyone who opposes him, and many try.

Despite the humor, Cracker is particularly grisly. By contrast, another popular BBC series, Prime Suspect, starts off with a violent crime, discreetly shot, and you are done with the gore. The murders continue in Cracker, and you get a good look at them. Another difference is that the character Fitz isn’t really a detective, only a consultant, so his position on any case is tenuous. He irritates everyone so much he’s always about to get kicked off the investigation but for his nick-of-time intuitions and the intercession of Detective Penhaligon. Like Prime Suspect’s CDI Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren), Fitz is a brilliant interrogator, using reverse psychology and outright lies to bring a suspect around. (In 1997, to benefit a charity, Coltrane and Mirren shot a spoof together called Prime Cracker.)

This DVD is the complete collection: 11 mysteries, 18 episodes, 10 discs, 22.5 hours of viewing, plus an interesting 45-minute behind-the-scenes bonus. From 1994 to 1996, the first nine stories aired on ITV in England and A&E in the US. After a ten-year hiatus, Cracker came back. Its original (and Coltrane would say best) screenwriter, Jimmy McGovern, wrote two feature-length episodes, one set in Hong Kong titled "White Ghost" and another called "A New Terror" that involves Fitz’s return to Manchester after ten years in Australia. After all I’ve written about Robbie Coltrane, I have to say it’s the writing that really makes this series. It’s smart, funny, fast, and full of insight into British culture, yet leaves a lot of the work to you.

The set comes in a handy, handsome case with a slip jacket. A nice feature is the English subtitles that take you over the hurdle of the Manchester accents -- you don’t want to miss a line of Cracker.

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