There’s a fair chance you may not recall the first series of The Tower. Screened in 2021, it is after all part of an unceasing flood of new cop dramas (too many to list here, but you could start alphabetically with Annika and Blue Lights).
Anyway, it was one of the better examples of the genre, with a tight script by Homeland veteran Patrick Harbinson and a low-key realism that made Line of Duty seem like Police Academy. Being based on a crime novel by Kate London, a former Met detective, probably helped in that respect.
Gemma Whelan from Game of Thrones starred as DS Sarah Collins, who, in series one, was conducting an internal police investigation after a young Libyan refugee and a policeman fell to their deaths off a London tower block.
That same tower block made fleeting background appearances in the opening episode of series two, as if contractually obliged by the programme title. Otherwise, you could have watched the new episodes largely unhindered by knowledge of prior events.
The principal characters were given a fresh start: Sarah was now transferred from internal affairs to homicide, while PC Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif) was cleared of the disciplinary charges stemming from going AWOL in series one. Back at work under her old boss and lover DI Kieran Shaw (Emmett J. Scanlan), she was dispatched to investigate a domestic disturbance.
Discovering a bruised woman, a cowering child and her belligerent father, Lizzie arrested the father. It was a decision that would rebound on her twice by the end of the episode.
Sarah’s first day on homicide went just as badly. Her boorish boss assigned her a 25-year-old cold case involving a missing teenager, and loaned her a reluctant subordinate known to all as “Fat Elaine”. “I don’t give a toss,” said Elaine (Ella Smith) of her offensive nickname, obviously long inured to the knuckle-dragging office culture.
Their chalk-and-cheese partnership looks promising, although the conscientious Sarah sticks out in an office whose motto might as well have been “anything for a quick arrest”. Her thorough background investigations and sensitive interviewing technique elicited vital new clues from both the long-gone missing teenager’s mother (top work from Niamh Cusack) and the former prime suspect, a park keeper with learning difficulties.
A female officer facing an antediluvian police culture (why, hello again Prime Suspect) and a cold case involving a missing teenage girl (ditto any number of crime dramas) – the new series was arguably a tower of cop-show clichés. The over-familiarity was however displaced by the feeling that Harbison is too smart a writer not to eventually subvert any dramatic formulas. Being so grounded in realism helps dispel the impression that the narrative is in the hands of a hack.
Some fine performances also helped. Tahira Sharif, who was Bafta-nominated for the first series of The Tower, was again impressive as the vulnerable but increasingly street-smart Lizzie. Jimmy Akingbola, as Sarah’s former colleague Steve Bradshaw, hasn’t had much to do so far. But it’s Whelan, hitherto better-known for her comedy chops, who carries the show in a straighter-than-straight role.
For viewers who prefer their TV cops to be more colourful and gung-ho, Sarah might seem a bit dour and as beige as the walls in the kitchen where she microwaves her meals for one. But Whelan gives her a quiet integrity that’s both believable and highly watchable.
And the signs are that she might soon be buying ready meals for two after a former witness she met while out shopping suggestively slipped Sarah her phone number. Either way, while The Tower might not have reinvented the cop show, Sarah feels like a largely novel creation.