'Luther' recap: Season 2, Episode 1

By Ian Cullen Jun 16, 2011, 5:11 GMT

SPOILERS

Synopsis: As the body count rises, Luther must stop a murderer who wears a Punch mask and rescue a friend’s daughter.  

Luther (Idris Elba) is back and returns to the police force in order to head up a special investigations unit.

To do this, he has brought his old partner Ripley out from his exile amid the lower ranks of the force, but also has to contend with a new addition to his team of DS Grey, who is played by Nikki Amuka-Bird.

Grey is suspicious of Luther’s methods and is under the impression that he is somehow dirty, and even asks Ripley what she should be on the look out for.

Returning to the series is Ruth Wilson as Luther’s mysterious friend Alice Morgan, who is locked in a secure facility and receiving treatment for mental illness.

Upon his return to the force Luther is ordered not to see her, but it isn’t long before he feels compelled to pay her a visit. 

When a woman is brutally murdered in Spittlefields, Luther and his newly formed team start to investigate. The murder is caught on camera and the murderer has a flare for the theatrical as he stands arms wide in his Punch mask before the CCV camera after the act challenging the police to catch him. 

Even more disturbing is the fact that the murderer has taken the trouble to call people on his victim's cell phone and leave cryptic messages. Guessing that the Punch mask that the murderer is using is fairly distinctive - the team use it as one of their leads.

Luther knows that this psychopath is doing it for theatrical affect and that he will murder again - a hunch that soon proves to be all too true when the killer strikes in daylight. 

When Luther and team arrive on the scene, there are many people watching from the sidelines and as Luther goes out of his way to clear them, he spots a suspicious looking character that he proceeds to follow.

It’s the killer. After a foot chase, Luther loses the perpetrator and as he is about to leave the scene he gets jumped by the killer and a struggle takes place in which Luther manages to bite him and draws blood.

The killer does just enough to incapacitate Luther, but isn’t able to finish him and bolts just as Ripley and others from Luther’s team arrive. At this point Luther points out that he bit the killer and drew blood and gets a sample of the blood sorted out for DNA analysis. 

Not content with one investigation, Luther agrees to help the widow of a man he put in jail when her daughter gets involved in the making of extreme pornography. Luther finds the girl and takes her into custody under suspicion of drugs and other trumped up charges he just made up to get her out of the situation.

While driving the girl to a safe house he gets a call from Ripley telling him that the DNA analysis has identified their killer. Luther drops the girl with his mate, who takes care of her while Luther goes to the station to meet his team and track down the perp.  The trail leads to an art student who used to work with the suspect.

They bring her in for questioning, but get very little in the way of information other than the killer had an obsession with a character from Victorian folklore known as Spring-heeled Jack.

She revealed that this suspect who hung around with the art students was teased by his therapist about his obsession.   Now having the killer's name, the team are able to track down his residence and they head to his flat only to find it empty with the exception of a single phone sat in the middle of the room.

The phone rings and Luther answers and winds up in conversation with the killer, who is talking about how indifferent modern people are to London’s history.

He talks about kids playing video games in which they murder prostitutes on Whitechapel and adds that he intends to scare them out of their indifference.  Unfortunately the phone call is just 30 seconds short of Luther’s team being able to get a full trace.  

The killer strikes once more and sends a live video feed to Luther and his team and has them witness him commit another murder. The team try to get a trace on where the crime is taking place via a partial car registration, but by the time they have an accurate location the murder is done and the killer has made his escape. 

As the video stream of the murder closes the student, who Luther and his team had interviewed comes in to find out what’s happening. Luther asks Ripley and Grey to drive the girl home. As they arrive the girl asks DS Grey to walk up with her due to the fact that she is a bit worried. Grey walks the girl all the way to her home and makes sure she's safe, but a broken fuse temporally freaks her out.

After reclaiming her calm, Grey calls Ripley to let him know the girl is safe and shuts the curtains.  In the car Ripley is waiting for Grey to come back down so they can head back to the station.

And the end credits roll just as Ripley catches sight of the killer in the Punch mask in the back seat of the car. 

Idris Elba puts in a compelling performance as Luther and Ruth Wilson is pretty good as Alice, but doesn’t enjoy a great amount of screen time. The story was tense with some great location and camera work, which really set the scene and created some genuinely eerie moments.

Once Luther has identified the killer most would have thought he would have wrapped the case by the close of the hour, but this wasn’t the case. Instead we were treated to a somewhat shocking cliffhanger, which will definitely have me tuning in next week to find out what happens. 

Having not seen the first season, I can’t say whether this season is better, but I would say that it is probably a bit soon to make that call anyway, but this series has got off to a great start.