TV Review The City And The City

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Spoiler alerts. Ambitious but very well done adaptation of a Chine Mieville novel. A cop in an unspecified European country finds himself solving a murder involving a woman from another city. That seems plain enough until we see that the second city occupies the same space as the first one. The cities are superimposed on top of one another with citizens of each conditioned to avoid noticing the points at which each spills over into the other. In many stories of alternate dimensions, the other place is vastly different to home, but The City & The City are quite alike bar subtle difference. Both are run by very harsh regimes, especially in cases of breach between the cities such as the case the lead cop gets caught up in here, a case that will lead him to discovering the truth about his wife’s disappearance many years before. David Morrissey (The Governor from The Walking Dead series) I great in the lead as a cop on the edge, especially when he is put in a position of not knowing which city he is in when he oscillates between the two. The cities are not futuristic. They feel like East Berlin and West Berlin melded together. The events in the shadows and overlooking the links and points of entry are just like the way we overlook the homeless and needy on our own streets. Dark and nourish, spoilt only by its over-stretched is he dead or isn’t he game with a throat-cut hero in the closing moments. Otherwise, serious quality viewing. Arthur Chappell