Luther S3

So to clarify off the bat, I'm going to come down pretty hard on a lot of the elements from this season, but that doesn't mean I disliked it as a whole. It is weaker than season 2 for sure, simply because season 2 didn't make a lot of the missteps I'm about to talk about, but at the end of the day Luther S3 still has a lot of what makes 'Luther' the show unique and great. In other words, I'm leaving the good pretty much unsaid and focusing on what shouldn't have happened in my opinion.

• The internal affairs investigation was a subplot that was just sort of bland and predictable from start to finish. Just from being told the broad strokes you would be able to visualize in your mind and dismiss how the whole thing plays out. Sure, we liked Luther being on the run and being a suspect by the police once back in season 1, but it didn't work at all for me the second time out. Especially because it goes fucking nowhere and tells us nothing about Luther the character, which after all is what we're here to see. The subplot could have been saved if the antagonist IA inspector had been interesting, but he was just a one dimensional Captain Ahab who pisses us off then gets unceremoniously wasted by an unrelated villain. Should have been left as a bad idea on the drawing board when the writers were figuring out this season.
• While we're on the subject of that failed subplot, I'll identify as its own problem the Ripley loyalty thing. I don't think they fooled many people with that, and even if they did it still doesn't work. If you were fooled into thinking Ripley might give Luther up then you would be pissed off that Ripley's not the unshakeable friend to Luther you thought he was, and if you weren't fooled then you're just pissed off that they're wasting your time. A real juicy subplot that would have advanced Luther's and Ripley's personal development as characters would have been Luther doing something that actually deeply troubled Ripley. Ripley would have some great internal conflict if it were justified by a real moral trespass by Luther, and the audience would have reason to sympathize. Of course it would be a real balancing act for the writers to keep Luther likeable in the process, but the point is this is the lines along which I think the series should have progressed, rather than retreading previous dramatic elements.
• The first of the two story arcs was excellent and exactly what it needed to be in its own right in my opinion. It was your basic Luther villain, in that he was totally alien in his insanity and stalks his victims in interesting ways, and it led to a great face off in the end in my opinion. Sure, the overarching plot that was hung around this wasn't great (the IA investigation), but episodes 1 and 2 stand out on their own.
• The second of the two arcs is more ambitious and has a great first half and a weak second half. The key aspect that distinguishes this story is that the villain is pitting Luther against society's expectations. It contains a memorable scene where Luther tries to defend a pedophile that's been hung from the rafters against the London citizens trying to kill him. The internal affairs subplot even takes the backseat here thankfully, but the story is ultimately let down by its conclusion.
• The conclusion to the season is weak, no other way to say it. I've never really been as enamored of Alice as everyone else, and the show's writers seemed to think that just her presence alone would make the proceedings cool and exciting. Really, she has no purpose here, everything she accomplishes could just have easily been done by Ripley or even Luther himself. I guess they were just giving fans what they wanted and wrote around her, which means that the finale to our psychological thriller is a sequence of meandering chases that don't intrigue. The final scene where the villain tries to make Luther "choose" between the two women is pretty tense (and like everything else in the show, well done), but ultimately a cheap shot. And then Luther just kind of wanders off into the London skyline because the writers still don't know if there will be another season or a movie or what.
• No Mark or Jenny? Come on, we loved those characters, at least Mark...

3/4