Cracker - When Robbie Coltrane's Fitz Came To Hong Kong

In Looking For Robbie, Neil Norman provides a superb episode-by-episode guide to Jimmy McGovern's Cracker. Here, I take a whack at 1996's 'White Ghost', the first of two Cracker special editions.

Without every episode taking place within the shadow of Old Trafford, Maine Road and/or the Arndale Centre, Jimmy McGovern's Cracker never sought to disguise the fact it was set in Manchester. No, one couldn't claim the city functioned as an uncredited character in the same way as, say, Baltimore does in The Wire. However, McGovern's was a programme that occupied a specific time and place.

What said time and place most certainly weren't was Hong Kong on the brink of the handover. It's here, though, that we find our hero in White Ghost, the Cracker special that earned Robbie Coltrane a third successive BAFTA for portraying high-functioning dysfunctional criminal psychologist Eddie 'Fitz' Fitzgerald. In town for a lecture tour, this Paul Abbott-scripted adventure commences with a slice of classic Fitz; Eddie serenading his audience with a rendition of Jim Reeves' 'Distant Drums', the song Fitz's father used to sing to himself when trying - and failing - to keep his temper. Yes, we might be on foreign soil but the most important thing on the landscape hasn't changed.

Indeed, the Fitz of ‘White Ghost’ - a nickname given by locals to those of European origin who've made their home in Hong Kong - is very much the man we've long been shadowing. He's still broke - he only took the lecture tour because he needs the money - he's still on shaky ground with his family - his dislike of his daughter's new boyfriend apparently has a lot to do with him being called Brett - and he still can't resist a flutter. Or a drink. Or a fag. Fitz is still too much. He's just now that much closer to the Equator.

He's also on his own. Never before has the importance of Cracker's superb supporting cast been more keenly felt than in its near-complete absence. Not that we don't welcome the fresh faces around him. On the contrary, Freda Foh Shen's DCI Janet Lee Cheung is an excellent addition to the series. A confident, highly professional woman, Janet's very much in the mould of Jane Penhaligon. Jane Penhaligon, however, she most certainly ain't. And if the absence of Panhandle wasn't problematic enough, the bait and switch that occurs in ‘White Ghost’ is the kind of disreputable plotting that has no place in so an august show.

For when Fitz is brought in to investigate the double murder at the episode's heart - more of which later - he does so on the proviso that Panhandle be flown out to aid his efforts. Had this line been removed, we might have been quite chuffed to see Ricky Tomlinson's DI Wise coming through customs. As it is, it takes a good few minutes to get over the disappointment of a key character being left on the bench - Penhaligon has been promoted, necessitating a return to education - while a duty free-clutching Scouser fights a losing battle with jet lag in the back of a cab.

As for the crimes Fitz and Wise are investigating, they've been committed by Dennis Philby (Barnaby Kaye), a British businessman who came to the colony to make it big but instead looks bound to return to Romford with his tail between his legs. To make matters worse, it's fallen to an old friend, Peter Yang (a very young Benedict Wong), to stick the knife in. Dennis' parlous situation also leaves his girlfriend Su Lin (Rene Liu) convinced that the couple can't possibly afford the baby she's carrying, necessitating a visit to obstetrician Dr Sunny (Glen Goei).

That Messrs Yang and Sunny end up dead won't surprise anyone whose watched even half-an-hour of Cracker. And for those familiar with the original series' weakest story ‘The Big Crunch’, Dennis's decision to hold Su Lin hostage until she's gives birth will cause nary an eyebrow to be raised. Only when Fitz is face-to-face with Dennis in the interview suite does ‘White Ghost’ truly catch fire, and even here it isn't the originality of Dennis' motivation that drives things forward; rather it's the site of Robbie Coltrane setting about his prey with the verbal equivalent of a lump hammer.

With Line Of Duty having made much hay out of the drama inherent in the police interview, it's easy to forget that Jimmy McGovern got there a long time before. And superb as Martin Compston, Vicky McClure and Cracker alumnus Adrian Dunbar undeniably are, they still barely add up to one big Rob. Skipping effortlessly between comedy, enmity and compassion, it's this that we're really going to miss about Robbie Coltrane - the ability to run the gamut of emotions with the agility of a gymnast and the speed of Usain Bolt.

After this bravura performance, the climax of ‘White Ghost’ is, in truth, an anti-climax. Okay, so there's gunfire and explosions and something approaching a car chase but we've all watched sufficient police procedurals to know where we're heading. The police helicopter is a nice edition, mind, what with it providing the closing shot of Fitz and Wise - clearly identifiable thanks to their robust frames - in unfamiliar surroundings a very long way from home.

Would it have been wrong had Cracker come to an end with our heroes so isolated?
I think so. But when, 10 years on from ‘White Ghost’, Fitz returned to Manchester following a decade-long exile in Australia, the joy would only last so long...