BBC's Luther may be as close as we can get to that TV version of Gotham Central some of us GC readers always wanted to see

The BBC One cops-vs.-serial killers procedural Luther, which concludes its second season on BBC America tonight, isn't a perfect show, but it's more enjoyable than most procedurals, due to an imposing and lively but never hammy turn by former Wire star Idris Elba (an actual lead of color who still has his show!) and a distinctive, not-so-generic look.

(Photo source: Luther Caps)

The '60s Batman had the Dutch angles and Homicide: Life on the Street had the jump cuts and washed-out color scheme (something Homicide phased out in its later and less interesting seasons). Luther likes to take its actors and place them at the bottom left and right corners of the screen so that they're surrounded by lots of negative space. If I recall correctly, a Luther crew member said the crew favored this framing effect because it makes it appear as if comic book-style thought bubbles are about to surface above the actors' heads.

(Photo source: Luther Caps)

The framing effect, which was more prominent in Luther's first season (did some Beeb higher-up put NBC exec-vs.-Homicide-style pressure on the Luther crew to do less of it?), also enhances the show's sense of dread and unease. It dwarfs the actors and manages to make the tall Elba look as small as the runty white psychos he's been chasing this season (at times, Luther feels like a serious version of Chris Rock's post-Columbine stand-up routine about crazy white kids who scare the shit out of him, like the goofily named Trenchcoat Mafia).

Luther evokes dread and unease more effectively than most shows. The mute, hammer-wielding LARP-er who terrorized working folk in the penultimate episode of Luther's second season is scarier and more menacing than anything during Luther's American ratings competition, FX's trying-way-too-hard-to-be-scary American Horror Story. The LARP-er's muteness and the episode's preference for filming his killings from a distance or having them take place off-screen--we're subjected only to gruesome hammer-to-skull sound effects--both make his acts of violence more disturbing. And though it's resorted to the tired and annoying device of children in peril that's been used by torture-porn procedurals like Criminal Minds, Luther rarely feels as sadistic as that show (below an A.V. Club piece about Criminal Minds and its short-lived spinoff Suspect Behavior, a commenter astutely noted that "Middle America eat [sic] this crap up with a spoon. It genuinely baffles me that middle aged and conservative Americans have made this show such a mainstream hit.").

That quality of being unnerving without getting sadistic or graphic recalls Gotham Central, the much-missed DC Comics crime title that writers Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka told from the point of view of Gotham City homicide detectives who resent Batman (Gotham Central was a bleak book, but it wasn't as sadistic as most of DC's puerile attempts at edginess, perhaps because Brubaker and Rucka write like grown-ups instead of horny and torture-porn-obsessed adolescents). From "the operatic theatricality" that crime novelist and Luther creator Neil Cross once said he's brought to DCI John Luther's adversaries to that aforementioned framing effect that creates the illusion of thought bubbles, the larger-than-life Luther is basically a comic book--or as John's teenage charge Jenny Jones (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) would prefer, graphic novel--but it's a very good one, which Gotham Central was.

There was once talk of turning Gotham Central into a TV series, which would have been nice to see, although I don't think there are any showrunners who would have been able to master the tricky balance of supervillain theatrics with much more grounded police detective business that even Rucka occasionally had trouble pulling off in the comic (for instance, the gaudily dressed heroes from the Teen Titans stuck out like a sore thumb when they were awkwardly integrated into the not-so-gaudy Gotham Central).

But after watching how Luther handles John's bordering-on-superhuman investigative skills or the theatricality of both John's adversaries and his sociopathic adversary-turned-ally Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson) without looking goofy and lame, I think Cross would be the perfect showrunner for a TV version of Gotham Central if it ever becomes a possibility again.

(Photo source: Luther Caps)

If that TV adaptation never surfaces, then think of Luther as a pretty good Gotham Central spinoff in which Elba is terrific as deceased Gotham detective Crispus Allen, who's reimagined himself as a David Bowie-loving(*) British supercop in some sort of crime-ridden afterlife that's a cross between the original Life on Mars and Lost's much-maligned sideways universe.

(Photo source: Luther Caps)

(*) You gotta love a procedural that has a lead who idolizes Bowie and, as it's implied in one episode, uses his music to help him think, although why Luther didn't choose a Bowie track as its theme music--it went with Massive Attack's "Paradise Circus," which actually isn't too shabby--is as puzzling as any of John's cases.

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Run-DMC, "Rock Box"

Song: "Rock Box" by Run-DMC
Released: 1984
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: The tune that gave the AFOS non-score music block its new name --and remains one of the most effective examples of rap experimenting with hard-rock guitar licks--clearly left an impact on young Chris Rock. (It also happens to include his last name in the title. I wonder why he digs it so much.) The comedian and Prince Paul sampled "Rock Box" in their 1997 Diddy parody "Champagne"--which was where I was first exposed to "Rock Box"--and then Rock and Everybody Hates Chris showrunner Ali LeRoi later got both Rock's younger self (Tyler James Williams) and special guest star Jason Alexander to lip-synch and quasi-air-guitar to the Run-DMC classic in a highlight of the 2007 "Everybody Hates Snow Day" episode of Chris. Most gamers may know "Rock Box" best from its appearance during Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Hear why Calvin Klein's no friend of Run's now at my SwiftFM site.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993-2009)

I remember first becoming a fan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien--despite its tired gags about docile Asian (or rather, gaysian) male hookers--back when Conan and Andy did a clever series of shows called "Time Travel Week," and during a reenactment of a Civil War battle on Civil War Night, they brought out ultra-frail Civil War veteran Carl "Oldy" Olsen (a character who was retired in 1998 after the actor who played him died). That's how old of a Conan viewer I am.

Everyone's chiming in with their favorite memories of Conan's Late Night run (the Masturbating Bear, Triumph at the Attack of the Clones line, the Walker, Texas Ranger Lever, the writers' strike shows), and sure, those are all amusing moments, but I'm more fond of the weirder, lesser-known bits that haven't been featured in any of the clip montages that Conan has shown during his final Late Night week, like "Time Travel Week" and the following:

- The Hunky Newcomer, an O.C.-ish intern who squints his eyes and pouts to the accompaniment of Simple Plan's "Welcome to My Life."

- Conan experiments with having an all-kid studio audience for an entire show. Whenever the testy six- to eight-year-olds express their boredom with guests Dave Foley and Myron Kandel from CNN, Conan either brings out the Boredom Monster to entertain the kids or gets the CNN financial expert to stand up and do the Chicken Dance.

- "Max on Max," a porno video of a naked Max Weinberg humping a naked Max Weinberg.

- A lengthy parody of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same and its dream sequences, in which the pale Late Night host proceeds to blind viewers' eyes by unbuttoning his shirt and imitating Robert Plant.

- Conan and Andy can barely keep their composure while a robot shits into a toilet during one of their "Staring Contests."

- Conan realizes the stupidity of his campaign for a 10th anniversary rerelease of Dirty Dancing after he plays back Jennifer Grey and Jerry Orbach's unintentionally funny crying scene (which Conan later reenacted with Orbach when he guested on the show).

- The search for Grady from Sanford & Son.

- Andy's little sister Stacy, who's obsessed with Conan. (She was played by a pre-SNL Amy Poehler.)

- The audience's horrified responses to Mick Jagger and Uma Thurman's "If They Mated" baby. The kid has such a disgusting-looking face it makes the V lizard baby look adorable.


- Years before Conan found comedy gold in the immensely popular Walker Lever, Polly the NBC Peacock shows Conan a clip of a badly aging Chuck Norris as part of a jab at craggy old CBS. The elderly Norris impersonator's fighting moves are priceless.

- Wrist Hulk.

- After a sketch in which Superman flies home to find Lois Lane in bed with her lesbian lover and he starts to masturbate, the camera cuts back to the actor who's playing Superman. He's still rubbing his chest long after the sketch ended, and a mock-disgusted Conan runs over to stop him.

- Conan and Andy watch a clip of the new Ninja Turtles ripoff Embryonic Rockabilly Polka-Dotted Fighter Pilots.



- Conan shows a blooper montage of Mr. T cracking up during the taping of a classic remote in which they went on an apple-picking field trip. T's pig-snort laugh is so bizarre and hilarious that viewers ask Conan to air the blooper montage again.

- The day after a fire chases Late Night out of Studio 6A, Conan tapes an entire show outside the building, near the Rockefeller Center skating rink. Left without a clip to plug guest Samuel L. Jackson's The Long Kiss Goodnight, Conan has to rely instead on a flipbook of the scene they were going to show. Then when people walk onto the makeshift set without realizing Conan and Andy are taping, Conan says, "It doesn't get any crappier than this."

- Though a 2003 New York blackout forces 30 Rock to turn to reserve power, Conan and announcer Joel Godard attempt to do the show with only flashlights to light the studio. But after about 15 minutes, they give up, turn off their flashlights and cut to a rerun.

- A forgotten uncomfortable moment, and it's not exactly funny or a favorite moment, but it's interesting because it shows how closely tied Conan is to SNL, which gave him his big break as a TV writer: in 1998, he asked Chris Rock about his upcoming projects, and Rock joked, "I'll be in Lethal Weapon 4, starring Brynn Hartman." Then the audience booed. (Brynn Hartman was Phil Hartman's wife. She killed her husband and then herself a few months before Rock made the joke.) Conan tried to defuse the situation by saying, "It's okay. We knew them. We can joke about it."

- "Clutch Cargo" Bob Dole (voiced by Robert Smigel) longs for his previous life as a pirate: "Oh, how I miss Squawky."

Oh, how I miss Late Night with Conan O'Brien already.