There ought to be more than one word for love

Omar_Firestone

Finally a show that gives theater-goers a reason to stand up and cheer, and prime-time armchair detectives a reason to waddle off their La-Z-boys and dust off their Bard, and perhaps Ursula K Le Guin as well. River works on three levels: A Police Crime Drama; A "fine, Shakespearean wine" that presents with a bouquet of "Romeo and Juliet", develops notes of "Hamlet" and "Comedy of Errors", and finishes gloriously with "Tempest"; and finally a sublime work of metafiction that challenges us to sleuth out the clues to solve the riddle of River's character.

Against the familiar backdrop of the the sharp-witted, keenly observing police detective solving the classic "Whodunnit" drawing room murder mystery: "A shot rings out in the dark followed by the thud of a body hitting floor as the stage lights come up..."; writer Abi Morgan and Directors Richard Laxton, Jessica Hobbs and Tim Frywell explore Love and Isolation as basic elements of the human condition in 6 1-hour episodes. A Greek Dramatic Chorus comprising "Manifests" (as River calls his hallucinations of the deceased), fight over which will ultimately rule River's character. Historical figure Thomas Cream, (a notorious Victorian serial killer whose biography River is reading) plays his "Id", while an otherwise nondescript skunk dealer who dies in the opening scene, argues for love as his "Ego".

Like the action of "Hamlet" in Tom Stoppard's "Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead", while River inexorably connects the dots upstage: a raised eyebrow (at a "second phone") here, a second look at an old coat there; Morgan gives us close-ups of six couples (one per "act" ) whose relationships embody the series' themes. But Morgan adds the clever twist of having only one of the six interact on camera:

1) Erin & Aten: Tragic, young love

2) Tia & Bruno: Selfless love

3) Jordan & Sasha: Love that Kills

4) Haider & Wife: (While we are initially led to believe that "Chrissie and Tom" (love that believes in the guilty) is the theme, the hat-tip to William Wellman's 1946 "Oxbow Incident" with Haider's "Letter of Conscience/Profession of Love for his wife" read from beyond the grave, shows Morgan's true intent.

5) Ira & Marianne (The sole nuclear family of the six)

6) River & Stevie: Platonic love that redeems, enabling River to narrowly avoid a psychotic break, cf Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Fans of Nicholas Roeg's classic "Walkabout" will appreciate the scene in the swimming pool ("Into my heart an air that kills...")

Finally as a work of meta-fiction the show rewards the attentive viewer with a wealth of visual and auditory "dots" to connect while River pieces together snippets of imagery from London's vaunted public and private CCTV networks. Like a Stanley Kubrick film, almost no detail in the fame is insignificant:

• A foreshadowing copy of "Romeo and Juliet" on top of a case file

• The opening lines from "Comedy of Errors" - spoken so offhandedly as to seem anticlimactic after the camera has lingered so lovingly on the Globe's interior architectural detail

• Miscellaneous dialogue how new immigrants to the *island* of Britain, including the Irish Mr. Bennigan, are used as "slave labor"

• River's "Water Motif": The aquarium screen-saver in the Karioke Booth, "Flamingos on the Pond" displayed on the screens at the TV store where Erin's mother works; a photo of "The Lake" (a surrogate for one associated with his "Primal Pain" abandonment issues) which Rosa then pins to her wall after River gives her the copy of National Geographic's "Greatest Parks of the World"

• A large-scale reproduction of artwork from "Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa" (depicting yoked slaves being driven and beaten), prominently displayed in the antagonist's home.

• River's characterization of Bennigan as a "monster" upon realizing his base character

• Stevie's calling River "Mr. Magoo" for his inability to "see" her love for him despite his keen powers of physical perception

Yet Morgan's message is ultimately one of Hope. As Haider wrote to his wife,

"We are born alone, we die alone; only though love and friendship can we create the illusion of the moments that we're not alone"

Omar Firestone, Dec. 3, 2015

score 10/10

Omar_Firestone 1 December 2015

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3364930/