big bad John

Idris Elba's small-screen DCI eyes a feature franchise with a step up in scale and ambition. Elba and his team tell Total Film why morally compromised Luther can take on 007 in the movie stakes...

- By Jane Crowther

John Luther is in West London. He’s abandoned his usual stomping ground of Hackney and environs for a Hangar Lane photo studio and is currently looking mean and moody down the lens of a clicking camera while rap tracks boom over the sound system. Well, we say Luther – but the man who plays him is, after five seasons essaying the conflicted TV detective, so embedded in the character that his alter-ego appears as soon as he slips on the iconic Paul Smith overcoat and red tie. Six feet two inches of imposing Idris Elba channelling a pissed-off Luther is quite the intimidating sight on a nippy November morning, so Total Film waits for the actor to slip into hair and make-up later before tackling some police questioning.

So the intel for those just coming into this investigation? Neil Cross created DCI John Luther started out on the BBC in 2010 as a brilliant Serious Crime Unit detective with an estranged wife he was trying to woo back as he stalked the most depraved murderers the capital had to offer. One of those wily crims was Alice Morgan (played by Ruth Wilson), a sociopath who became Luther’s nemesis and then companion as his ex and work partners were murdered, and his world became morally murkier. By the end of 2019’s Series 5, Alice was dead after a lethal fall (or is she?) and Luther was in handcuffs. A copper who’d bent the law to pursue the worst of the worst, the finale left viewers with a tantalising cliffhanger: would big John rot in jail or would his determination to hunt down wrong ’uns provide further adventures?