You could watch the excellent 'Case Histories' (Sunday, PBS Masterpiece, check local listings) just to see Jason Isaacs play an Edinburgh detective very well, but this mystery import offers a host of other pleasures.
The thing is, Masterpiece's 'Case Histories,' which adapts a trio of Kate Atkinson's popular Jackson Brodie novels over the course of three weeks, can't be neatly filed away in the "mystery" category. As is the case with Atkinson's bestselling novels, this thoughtful and well-paced program ranges from the subversive to the sad without losing focus on the emotions of the complex people at the center of the story. Its frequently light tone can turn on a dime to tragedy, and the fact that this version of 'Case Histories' pulls off those transitions so deftly is a minor miracle.
"There is a bit of magical misdirection going on," actor Jason Isaacs, star of Showtime's 'Brotherhood' and NBC's upcoming drama 'Awake,' says of 'Case Histories,' in which he plays the ex-cop Jackson Brodie. "It looks like a crime thriller and it's not that at all. It's a great, big, current anthropological satire. It's full of these rich, boldly etched characters that leap off the page and screen, and they are not from the rag-bag of clichés that a crime thriller is normally made of."
As Isaacs says of Atkinson, "She is clearly not interested in crime or the solving of it."
That said, fans of crime imports like 'Luther,' 'Prime Suspect' and 'Sherlock' will find solidly told stories about dark deeds here, but, like those shows, 'Case Histories' is character driven, not procedurally oriented. The central pleasures of the first installment of 'Case Histories' is that it doesn't take itself too seriously as it paints compelling character portraits and deftly weaves together several sagas that demonstrate the hold that the dead have on the living. It's one of those rare stories that takes sentiment seriously without being sentimental.
Read the full interview at AOLTV
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