Collateral
To determine the Emmy Awards, the Academy sends out DVDs with sample episodes of shows to its voters. I don't know how, but someone who worked in my last office left a bunch of these DVDs. Now, most of these discs were useless. Why would I want to see two or four random episodes in the middle of a series? Then I noticed that many of these nominated shows were available online or on Netflix. So I made a note a few that seemed interesting.
Collateral was one of these. I knew nothing about it going in, other than it starred Carey Mulligan, whom I enjoyed in Bleak House and Doctor Who. (I didn't realize that both of these were over a decade ago, but there you go.) The pleasant surprise watching the opening credits was discovering that John Simm and Billie Piper, also of Doctor Who, were in the series.
Mulligan is Kip Glaspie, a detective trying to solve what appears at first to be a random murder of a pizza delivery man. But, of course, there's more to in it than just a random shooting.
When I realized that the entire series would revolve about this murder, I was a little disappointed. It turns out that the series is only four episodes long, so it's basically a novel for television, but it would've served better as a two-episode pilot for a police series starring Mulligan. The story, such as it was, could have been condensed down to two episodes. One reason for this is that I didn't see the point to Piper's or Simm's roles in the series. It didn't connect to the main story.
Yes, the murder did occur outside Piper's loft, and she knew the murder took place after her pizza without "special toppings" was delivered, but the larger story told about her was non-essential. And her ties to Simm, who is the "Shadow Minister for Transport", do nothing for the plot. Both of them could've been removed after the police interview Piper about the shooting.
The murder investigation, and whether it was a case of mistaken identity, or something much larger, was interesting and worthwhile. I wouldn't mind seeing more of Mulligan and her partner, Nathan Bilk, played by Nathaniel Martello-White. One other fun note: it took a moment to recognize him, but the detective superintendent is played by Ben Miles, who I know primarily as "Patrick" from Coupling. He's the only one of the three male leads on that show that I haven't seen do anything else since.
TL/DR: Worth a watch Carey Mulligan is great. Billie Piper and John Simm are wasted in pointless roles.
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