Collateral

Collateral: Trailer - BBC Two
Collateral, on Netflix, is a four episode mini-series about a police investigation of a murder in present day London. It is a cut above your typical show about the police. The show manages to cover a wide range of subjects without being too preachy. Okay, there is some preaching going on, but it's out-and-out preaching, mostly used to fill in the political landscape. We have a labor MP (Minister of Parliament) railing against the current immigration policies (the labor party is roughly equivalent to the Democrats in the USA).

We also have several scenes where a higher-up lays down the law on a subordinate. This is a standard scene in many cop shows. The chief of detectives calls in the investigating team and chews them out for doing their job which makes him out to be a tool of the establishment and a jerk. We have a couple of those here, but it's not as over-the-top as you get in shows like Dirty Harry. In addition we have:

• a bishop laying down the law on a gay preacher
• the head of the opposition (a woman) bringing the smack down on our outspoken MP

The show manages to touch on several continuing social issues. To its credit it brings a little insight into them. We have:

• women doing men's work
• not one, but two pregnant women
• illegal immigrants, both political and economic
• people smuggling
• gay people in the clergy
• pervasive, low level, illicit drug use
• women in the military
• sexual harassment of said women
• soldiers returning from combat to civilian life
• the difficulty of caring for the aged and infirm
• compulsive gambling

The show is basically about women. That's okay, I like women.

Then we have the combative relationship between the MP and his ex-wife. He is apparently sane, her, not so much. I've seen these kind of relationships before, where you have two people yelling past each other, neither one can see the other's point of view, they are not even going to try. They may have had rational discussions in the past but they are well beyond that now. 

Seems like there were several non-white women in high level support roles, i.e. the person behind the front man (or woman) who takes care of all the day-to-day hassles of scheduling and access.

Illegal immigrants come in two flavors. Political refugees fleeing war and persecution and economic refugees who are tired of their subsistence way of life and would like to be able to afford a cheeseburger.

The prime villain gets away in the end, which means a sequel could pick up right where this one left off. If there is going to be a sequel. If he is really a villain. He is definitely a criminal in the eyes of the law, but sometimes the law is an ass, isn't it?