A couple of one-and-done TV series

I watched The Murder Line (ITVX) and The Copenhagen Test (Channel 4). Both were fairly entertaining and diverting in ways, and both were done after one season. In the case of the latter, because it was cancelled.

The Murder Line

Slightly confusingly titled because this Canadian series was originally called The Borderline, but ITV already had a 2024 Ireland-set series by that title.

The Murder Line stars none other than Minnie Driver, who arrives in the small Canadian border town giving off rich widow vibes and seems friendly enough. Local cop Henry is trying to walk the line, in spite of having A Past, but then his old friend Tommy crawls into town. Tommy is a drug trafficker who lost his consignment and he needs to get it back. Meanwhile Ruby, a local youngster, stumbles across her dealer boyfriend dead and pulls in Miles, a comic book store clerk, to help her.

The bodies pile up quickly in the first episode, and you are reminded of Fargo. Idiots stumbling around getting killed while searching for the Maguffin is very much the vibe.

The charming and well turned out Minnie Driver is of course the kingpin, and she too wants the consignment of cocaine back. Unfortunately, she’s surrounded by idiots. Luckily Henry the local cop is so busy trying to hide his own crimes that he barely notices. And so it goes. Everybody concerned really needs to question their life choices.

It’s funny at times, and Minnie Driver is great in it. The humour is mordant and the body count is high. It’s only six episodes, and competently made. Thumbs up.

The Copenhagen Test

This one clearly had higher ambitions than a one-and-done series. To be fair, I might not have started watching if I had looked it up in advance and seen that it was cancelled after its eight-episode first season. But I have some simple advice here: watch it, but maybe stop watching about halfway through the last episode. At that point, everything is neatly wrapped up in a bow. What follows is a clearly strained attempt to set us up for a second season. So at the point where she tells him to look her up when he’s done with the life and gets off the subway train, stop playback.

The Copenhagen Test of the title is a loyalty test, designed to put an operative under pressure in an impossible situation and demand that they make a choice. This is all set up in the first episode. Alexander Hale (Simi Liu), a Chinese American, is tasked with rescuing some hostages. He is then told there is one more place on the helicopter, and he needs to prioritise American citizens above all else. Of course, he then stumbles across a non-American child before being confronted with a young American woman who begs him to take her instead.

The choice he makes will come back to haunt us in various ways, but the meat of the show is the science fiction premise that Hale’s brain has been “hacked”. He has somehow been infected with nano tech which broadcasts everything he sees and hears. This is a problem because he’s a spy.

So it’s spy stuff and its science fiction stuff, it’s about loyalty & betrayal, identity & honesty, and truth & lies. It is mostly fairly well done. Several operations go pear-shaped and a mole within Hale’s division (“The Orphanage”) is suspected. Of course, the “mole” is Hale, who is unaware that he is responsible. Once his informed what has been going on, he is offered the chance to uncover the origin of the hack. This means going on as if the hack has not been detected, but being handled by various other agents who are never sure of his allegiance. And, as the child of immigrants, he is desperate to be seen as loyal.

There are layers upon layers. Michelle, one of his handlers, is played by Melissa Barrera, and she is very good. Hale doesn’t know if he can trust her, and vice versa. Meanwhile Michelle’s “legend” is being handled by Samantha Parker (Sinclair Daniel), who seems to be quietly falling in love with Hale while remaining unseen by him.

It all rocks along quite nicely. But then… trouble in (very much not) paradise? I think it was around episode 5 when there was a weird kind of “recap” episode. As if some suit had been overseeing production and got really confused about what was going on. So there’s this whole flashbacky thing where Hale narrates to himself what has been happening. Like the whole episode is a “previously, on The Copenhagen Test…”

It is strange. And fuck the suits, because you can now see the writing on the wall. It’s too complicated, there are too many layers, the suit doesn’t know what’s happening.

And in the last few episodes, we keep getting these mini flashbacks and recaps, a replay of an earlier scene with a little more context, because clearly the suits have taken over from the creatives. By the final episode it really is like someone is holding your hand through the plot.

And then there comes the moment where everything is done and dusted and there’s a really quite sweet scene on the subway train… but then another fifteen minutes or so of setting up a second season that never comes. Shame.

Shame, because it is good. A good meaty show with some interesting characters and plot layers. Well worth a watch, but as I said, hit STOP after the subway scene.

#CopenhagenTest #MurderLine #review #reviews #ScienceFiction #SF #Television #tv