Ashes to Ashes’ Keeley Hawes plays ex-police officer caught in shoot-out with armed locals while on holiday, in BBC First’s Crossfire
- Keeley Hawes plays a former police officer who gets caught in a shoot-out in Spain with locals while on holiday in BBC First’s Crossfire
- Meanwhile, Netflix series Divorce Attorney Shin stars Cho Seung-woo as the titular lawyer, who bursts into tuneless singing at the drop of a hat
Calling the tune in thwarted-romance thriller Crossfire (BBC First) is Keeley Hawes as both gun-slinging heroine and possible pariah in one Manichean package.
Hawes plays Jo Cross (handy little joke, that), usually found in her natural suburban habitat but here on holiday in Spain with family and close friends.
If things go according to plan, one of those friends will soon become a friend with benefits; it soon becomes obvious, however, that things have not been apprised of said plan, especially when a pair of armed locals with a grudge start shooting hotel guests.
Cross’ police-officer past then animates her present: with a hotel manager who coincidentally keeps a couple of shotguns in the office safe (perhaps for drunken British yobs?) she takes up arms and goes after the murderers, who are casually picking off holidaymakers in the inexplicable absence of any uniformed help.
Tension ratchets up on this holiday from hell, especially for those being shot. Cross, however, feels a public duty to protect all the guests while not knowing if her own family, or those of her friends, are safe. And it is here that Hawes puts the contrition into the conflicted Cross, who reveals in anguished flashbacks and philosophical voice-overs that none of them would be in this deadly mess were it not for her selfish motivations.
In fact, the story is so flashback- and flash-forward-laden that Hawes must have been having flashbacks to her flashback-heavy second big break: 2008 series Ashes to Ashes, in which she played a gunned-down detective.
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Will Cross be caught in the crossfire, or shot down by the flirtatious selfies she’s been sending? Is the phone mightier than the automatic pistol?
Stay tuned
Netflix series Divorce Attorney Shin initially seems in danger of hitting some bum notes – until it becomes clear that, like many Korean dramas, it is merely suffering from second-episode syndrome.
The lawyer in question is Shin Sung-han (Cho Seung-woo), who is given to breaking into song – sometimes in public, rarely too tunefully. But it is not until the series’ second instalment that the true importance of music to him becomes apparent … and the disjointed elements of the story start to crystallise into a plot with potential.
What’s upfront is the sordid tale of media star Lee Seo-jin (Han Hye-jin), who becomes embroiled in a grubby public scandal because of a leaked sex video, which allows Shin to indulge his particular courtroom skills.
What emerges behind it is the main course of the show: the backstory of Shin the eccentric, melancholic, manic professor of music who turned to law as a profession after, it seems, some unnamed tragedy he can’t forget.
The 12-episode first series, which concluded last week, explores what’s bothering Shin the still sensationally talented pianist, who can bash out a refrain on anything from a concert grand to one of those street pianos available to all.
As the slightly slobby Shin then takes on other cases, ruefully watching families bitterly implode, and the glamorous Lee surprisingly reinvents herself as an employee of his practice, the obvious odd-couple pairing looms. Which could leave paralegal sidekick Jang Hyeong-geun (Kim Sung-kyun), comedic counterpoint to Shin and Lee’s No 1 fan, feeling like a third wheel.
In the meantime, there is, thankfully, sufficient humour to offset some of the nasty effects of divorce, especially on children. Shin, a fan of Korean “trot” pop music, needs little persuasion to break lustily into a karaoke number at home in the company of friends.
As one neighbour down in the street asks another: “Does he do that because he’s single, or is that why he’s single?”
