“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
Dr Seuss
The Interceptor is a new BBC crime drama whose chief attribute seems to be that it is sensationally dull.
Well. Perhaps not dull. There are plenty of exciting car chases and fist fights, for example. Tedious is a better word for what it is: tedious and uninspired.
It begins with a man being offered with a job. (Well, in fact, it begins with a car chase, but the first really important thing that happens is the job offer.) Long-term policeman Ash is bored of going after petty criminals and longs to bring down the crime bosses at the top. And, lo and behold, an undercover organisation springs up whose objective is just that. (Oddly, the organisation is called UNIT, a name calculated to make viewers think of a much more iconic and certainly more interesting TV show.) Would Ash like a job at UNIT? Of course he would.
And so it goes.
Ash is, predictably, a bit of a maverick, often putting personal motives over the painstaking objectives of his colleagues (because gods forbid our TV characters should be professional). And I think what the show is aiming at is talking about the process of taming that; of harnessing individual drive and ambition into a cooperative framework.
But this is not a new storyline. These are not new characters or new motives or new criminals. It’s the same stuff, over and over again, and it’s dull.
The English Student 