Law & Order: UK: Difference between revisions

'''[[Most Wonderful Sound|Chung! Chung!]]'''

 

 

 

== Season 1 ==

* [[Birth-Death Juxtaposition]]/[[Retirony]]: Plays the first trope straight while simultaneously ''brutally'' subverting the second. At the end of "Deal", Ronnie gushes to Matt about the birth of his grandson and the possibility of reconciling with his daughter. Minutes later. . .it's ''Matt'' who's been shot.

* [[Blood From the Mouth]]: Matt, in the episode "Deals."

** {{spoiler|Plus the fact that like Archie, Matt died making a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. Or the tendency of Jamie Bamber's characters [[Dead Star Walking|being killed off]]}}

* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Occasionally, the show will take a Mothership script and give it a darker, less-sympathetic spin:

** "Safe" - in the original ("Angel"), the defendant was a disturbed woman who killed her infant daughter because she believed she'd be better off dead and in heaven than with her. In "Safe", the mother was a self-centered dullard who let her boyfriend abuse her son and killed him rather than let Child Services take the child (or hand him over to his biological father).

** "Confession". The [[Pedophile Priest]] in the original episode "Bad Faith" was a pathetic loser who did nothing but make excuses for his behavior and try to blame everyone else for his actions. His counterpart in "Confession" was even worse--a [[Complete Monster|menacing figure]] who alternated between showing absolutely no remorse for his crimes or smugly denying them outright, knowing that 25 years later he could ''still'' intimidate his former, now adult victims into keeping quiet.

* [[Honor Before Reason]]: In "Samaritan" Ronnie insists on investigating the report that a police officer did nothing to aide his dying colleague, despite Matt's angry, steadfast refusal to believe it. The feelings are reversed in the aptly titled "Honor Bound", where it's Matt who insists on investigating an officer's murky account of a shooting, while Ronnie refuses to believe that his friend could be corrupt. In each case, with the evidence mounting, each man reluctantly concedes that the other is right and follows protocol.

* [[Hope Spot]]: there are occasions where the CPS look almost certain to gain a conviction but fall short (for example, "Alesha"). Some episodes [[Zig-Zagging Trope|zig-zag]] the trope to get [[Justice by Other Legal Means]] (e.g. "Alesha", "Love and Loss"). "Broken" inverts it when the CPS are trying to get a ten-year-old girl for manslaughter by diminished responsibility, but the [[Convicted by Public Opinion|press latch onto the case and demand a murder conviction, which happens instead.]]

* [[I Never Said It Was Poison]]/[[Saying Too Much]]: During the prosecution of an accused rapist, the key witness is a young woman who had noticed him lurking about her apartment building (and may very well have been the intended victim had she not evaded him). The man angrily denies ever seeing the girl before, calling her a liar and referring to her many tattoos before covering his mouth in horror as he realizes his mistake--although the young woman's arms were indeed covered with tattoos, she was wearing a jacket. The only way he could have known about her tattoos was if he had seen her previously.

* [[It's Personal]]/[[One of Our Own]]:

*** "Survivor": In the original "Punked", a woman was given a harsh sentence for a minor drug crime that she may even have been innocent of and Abby is completely unsympathetic to her situation. In "Survivor", the woman was undeniably guilty of drug trafficking and received the standard sentence, yet refuses to take any responsibility for her actions and insists on blaming Alesha--who is portrayed as merely doing her job--for what happened to her and rebuffs her attempts to help.

*** "Survivor's Guilt": In the original ("Suicide Box") the perp was a young boy lashing out at the police for botching, then burying, his brother's murder. There, not only did circumstances pile up to increase the sympathy factor, the cop he shot was an unknown character who survived with just an injured arm. The perp in "Guilt" was an adult actively gunning for cops and his victim was a beloved character who perished. But many of the same mitigating factors were ported over from "Suicide Box" (The missing body, the botched investigation) along with the alleged killer being strongly implied to be lying about the murder for street cred.

* [[Misplaced Retribution]]: Matt is gunned down by a young man seeking revenge against the police for bungling the investigation into his brother's murder, a screw-up he believes was racially motivated. But rather than one of the cops who ''did'' botch the investigation, or the actual killer himself, he shoots someone who wasn't a bigot, had nothing to do with the investigation in question, and if anything would have done everything possible to ''solve'' the case--claiming "all cops are the same", [[Hypocrisydisplaying|the same prejudice he accused the police of]]. What's worse, his actions can neither bring his brother back nor make him feel better about his death--they've just caused even more pain and misery for everyone involved.

* [[Not His Sled]]: A nearly [[Recycled Script]] (even admitted so in the credits) had a major shift from the original story in the second half, when something that was a civil matter in New York was a criminal matter in London.

* [[Pedophile Priest]]: Father Nugent in "Confession". Zig-zags between a screed against the Catholic Church as a whole and a portrayal of the Church as well-intentioned-but-legally-wrong. Not coincidentally aired less than a fortnight after the Pope's state visit to Britain.

* [[Recursive Import]]: Has begun airing on BBC America.

** However, there was one major difference. In [[Real Life]] the victims family’s were unhappy with the little sociopath's light sentence for cold blooded murder and her accomplice got off completely. On the show though the victim’s mother argued that her son’s murderess should not be punished and just needed rehabilitation and acted like her sentence (the same as the real Mary Bell) was too harsh. Needless to say the victims’ families were not happy with the change.

* [[Short Run in Peru]]: Episodes 8 to 13 had already aired in Canada.

* [[Sound Effects Bleep]] (in America): [[Values Dissonance|"Tit" (not even referring to breasts, just "Don't make me look like a tit") gets bleeped while "bull/shit" gets a pass?]]

** Not to mention DI Chandler saying she'd like to "cut (the suspect's) dick off and ram it down his throat!" in "Alesha" went through.

* [[Sting (music)|Sting]]: Yep, all present and correct.

* [[That One Case]]: A few of the characters have had this (James, Ronnie). Unlike most examples, the case in question has been solved and put to rest, only for new evidence to surface years later indicating that the person convicted may be innocent.

[[Category:Detective TV Series]]

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