Wake The Dead

We watched the two part "Blind Beggar" Wake The Dead episodes tonight and I found myself really caught up in it. Unlike the splashy melodramatics of most Ametican crime shows Wake plays against type and trend. There's a Simenonesque thoughtfulness to the writing and the acting. Another thing it does much better than American crime shows is show the working class in real depth. This is what the people look like, talk like, behave like. And there's a spectrum of them, again against type. I liked the cops, too. Sound, sensible folks whose work is offered in detail but--thanks to editing--never lingers too long. In every respect exciting and memorable tv. Not a single Dirty Harry or Shield moment in nearly two hours.