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As Taylor, Iain Glen will have you leaning into the screen watching his every move and listening to his every word.

DVD Review: ‘Jack Taylor, Set 2’

The troubled Private Investigator (P.I.) or police detective with a dark secret has started showing up in so many television shows and movies the role has come close to being a cliche. Troubled marriages, drinking and drug problems, intimacy issues, and the old favourite post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) brought on by the job seem to abound on both the big and small screens. It’s to the point where they play as big a part in the stories as the actual crimes being solved these days. It’s as if after years of ignoring the fact cops and P.I.s are humans, scriptwriters and producers are making up for lost time by giving them as many foibles as possible. Unfortunately, this means it has now become somewhat difficult to take all these variations on the same theme seriously. They’ve too obviously become just another plot device.

In fact it takes a very special performance to make this type of character and the show he’s featured in believable. Jack Taylor, Set 2, being released by Acorn Media on Tuesday, June 24, 2014, not only contains just such a performance, the three feature length episodes contained in the set create the perfect context for the character in question. Jack Taylor (Iain Glen) is an alcoholic former Garde (police officer) in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. Thrown off the force for drinking and punching a politician, he’s now struggling to keep his head above water taking on cases privately.
Cover Jack Taylor Set 2
In “Set 1” we discovered he came by most of his problems because of a dysfunctional home life. His mother was a survivor of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries, work houses for “fallen” young women run by the Catholic Church, and had been badly twisted emotionally by her experiences. This affected not only her own behaviour, but the way she treated her son and husband. In the first episode of “Set 2”, The Dramatist, Taylor and his mom are trying to reconcile. She is recovering from a stroke she he’s been on the wagon for six months. There’s a beautiful scene with the two of them sitting by the water’s edge, him eating yogourt for his stomach and her laughing at the idea of him trying to eat healthily.

However, this one bit of brightness in his life is soon eclipsed by a case he’s drawn into involving the apparent overdose/suicide of a young theatre student at the local university. Aside from his friend Garde Kate Noone (Nora-Jane Noone) the local police believe the death was an accident or at worse suicide. The one disconcerting element is a quote from a play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, by Irish playwright John Synge found on the girl’s body and the fact she was dressed in a costume and make up. One of the professors at the university isn’t convinced it was a suicide and hires Taylor to look into the matter. Along with his assistant Cody Farraher (Killian Scott), Taylor starts to investigate the young girl’s life at university and the people she associated with. When a second young woman turns up dead in a similar fashion – overdosed, dressed in costume and a quote from the same play carved into her back – the police realize the first girl was murdered as well.

While there’s nothing straightforward about the case, the almost ritualistic aspects of the girls’ murders bears all the indications of a serial killer at large; it takes a bitter twist at the end and dregs up some of Taylor’s sordid past. However, while this case might be personally haunting for our PI, the second one in the series rips open the scab on a society wide problem in Ireland, child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. The Priest starts with Taylor being asked to investigate when the body of a decapitated priest is found kneeling in front of the altar in a church. He discovers that not only had the dead man abused altar boys, he had also raped a nun. Through investigation he also discovers the horrible truth about child abuse; the crime doesn’t usually end when the abuse stops and the victims are scarred for life.
Killian Scott, Iain Glen, Nora-Jane Noone Jack Taylor
This is quite a disturbing episode and probably shouldn’t be watched by those recovering from abuse as it could trigger some nasty responses. However, like the entire series, the episode is also handled with intelligence and compassion. It might be difficult to watch, but it makes clear the horrible nature of the crime committed against the children who suffered at the hands of those who were supposedly responsible for keeping them safe. It also shows how when the problem is ignored and the victims not treated, the repercussions can last for generations.

The final feature in the set, Shot Down, has Taylor on the run from his guilt over something which happened in the previous episode. He’s pretty much living rough and taking work where he finds it while travelling across the west of Ireland. Which is how he stumbles onto a young girl running through a forest covered in blood. It turns out she had found the body of her murdered mother and has blocked out most of her memories of the event. Taylor suspects she’s also a witness to the events of her mother’s death and worries her life might be in danger. He convinces her extended family of Irish travellers (gypsies) that he should hang around and try to figure out what the girl witnessed.

In dealing with helping the girl remember what happened to her Taylor is also forced to confront his what’s happened to him recently. The relationship which develops between him and the child helps him overcome his guilt about those events and allows him to achieve a kind of redemption. While it’s hard to describe the essence of what Taylor goes through without giving away key details of the stories being told, the arc his character travels over the course of the three episodes describes an emotional and spiritual roller coaster which has to be seen to be believed.

It takes a special kind of actor to bring this to life and Glen, with his craggy face and whisky steeped voice, is phenomenal in the role of Taylor. He’s not afraid to show us all aspects of the man he plays, his weaknesses and his strengths. While we are able to sympathize with some of the things Taylor goes through, Glen also manages to show us how he has a drunk’s penchant for self pity and denial. However, there has to be a reason people like Garde Noonan and his assistant Farraher don’t give up on him, and Taylor also manages to show us the heart of the good man who beats beneath the crumpled, slightly degraded exterior.

Jack Taylor, Set 2 might be shy on special features, an interview with one of the directors about the show and some photo galleries, but its compelling and well acted television. The stories are drawn from the gritty realities of Irish life, not from the romantic notions of green hills and folk songs. They might be hard to watch at times yet there is no denying the power of the stories and the strength of the cast. While all the actors involved do a wonderful job in their roles, the reality is they are merely satellites in orbit around Glen’s stellar work in the lead role. There aren’t many opportunities to see a tour de force performance these days, but Glen as Taylor will have you leaning into the screen watching his every move and listening to his every word.

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About Richard Marcus

Richard Marcus is the author of three books commissioned by Ulysses Press, "What Will Happen In Eragon IV?" (2009) and "The Unofficial Heroes Of Olympus Companion" and "Introduction to Greek Mythology For Kids". Aside from Blogcritics he contributes to Qantara.de and his work has appeared in the German edition of Rolling Stone Magazine and has been translated into numerous languages in multiple publications.

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