azdak

I never bother with what actors and acresses say about how they approach roles because they have all kinds of weird and wonderful ways of getting inside characters, very few of which are analytical, or even involve the conscious part of their brains. It's like the Death of the Author, only more extreme, because I think actors have even less of a clue about their end product than writers. I care about what I see on screen, not what they thought they were putting there.

I also don't think that just because some unreconstructed Neanderthal policeman took an uncritical approach to Gene Hunt means it isn't possible to see him in a different light. I do get the impression that the writers of LoM felt much more nostalgic about 1973 than they did about 1982 - perhaps 1982 is too close to be suffused with a rosy glow, or perhaps London is closer to home than Manchester. Whatever the reason, I get the feeling that they take 1982 more seriously - and one of the effects has been to disempower Gene and make the "Ha ha, he's beating up a perp" scenes come across differently - there's certain amount of sending up in the show's treatment of him (overly "heroic" shots and music, designed to get a laugh), and at the same time it's made clear that he isn't absolute master of his demesne, he's now part of the Met, and his hands are often tied. 1973 was a cosy community (if you were white man), in those idyllic far away pre-Thatcer days. Sam chooses to go back at the end because he misses that sense of community. But 1982 doesn't - at least so far - seem cosy and community-minded at all. It's much less like Oz, and more like Kansas.