Dr Edward "Fitz" Fitzgerald is a criminal psychologist. He is rather anti-social and obnoxious but he has a gift for solving crimes. Thus he is employed as a consultant by the Manchester Police.
A working class man, distraught at the recent death of his father, impulsively becomes a skinhead and murders a Pakistani shopkeeper over a perceived insult.
Fitz returns to Manchester after living 10 years in Australia with his wife and youngest son. He is soon drawn into the investigation of a British soldier who may have been traumatized by his years serving in Northern Ireland.
Director:
Antonia Bird
Stars:
Robbie Coltrane,
Anthony Flanagan,
Stefanie Wilmore
DI Jack Frost is an unconventional policeman with sympathy for the underdog and an instinct for moral justice. Sloppy, disorganized and disrespectful, he attracts trouble like a magnet.
Set in Edinburgh, the mercurial Detective Inspector John Rebus's investigations lead him through the city's ancient beauty and into its more sinister quarters.
Unconventional psychologist Gerry "Fitz" Fitzgerald is one of the best police interrogators in the business, mostly because his own quirks and perversities help him get inside the criminal mind.
Stars:
Robert Pastorelli,
Carolyn McCormick,
Josh Hartnett
A series of brutal sex murders disturbingly similar to the pattern of Superintendent Jane Tennison's first major case leads to the awful suggestion that she may have caught the wrong man the first time.
Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison's investigation of the murder of a Bosnian refugee leads her to one, or possibly two, Serbian war criminals determined to silence the last witness to a massacre a decade before.
Stars:
Helen Mirren,
Liam Cunningham,
Oleg Menshikov
This mystery series from the U.K. outlines the adventures of a psychologist employed by the police to aid them in profiling and questioning suspects. "Fitz" (Robbie Coltrane), an avowed drunkard and gambler, has an uncanny knack for boring directly into the hearts and minds of his subjects, many of whom may in fact be saner than he is...Written by
Aaron Finkelstein <afink@ix.netcom.com>
The "Men Should Weep" storyline was originally conceived as a plot for Prime Suspect (1991), in which the series' protagonist, Jane Tennison, was raped. See more »
Quotes
Teacher:
Please don't smoke sir, this is a school.
Fitz:
That's where I started.
See more »
Alternate Versions
All the stories were originally shown on ITV in several parts, each of one hour (including commercials). However they were later released on DVD as a single episode per story, with a combined cast list rather than the one from the end-credit sequence of any of the transmitted parts of the story. See more »
If you had to choose one ITV-made psychological thriller series from the Nineties for a desert island, what would it be?
Some may plump for Prime Suspect but for many, Cracker wins hands down - not least because of its star.
Robbie Coltrane has always been good value for money in comedy roles, but as the criminal psychologist Eddie Fitzgerald, he shone brighter than most stars of his generation.
Scripts by Jimmy McGovern (among others) did no harm and with a knockout supporting cast including Barbara Flynn, Lorcan Cranitch and Christopher Eccleston, it was little wonder the show won a string of awards.
When the Americans decided to remake the show almost word for word with Robert Pastorelli in the lead, it was a pretty fruitless attempt to sell a great series to a wider audience.
Although not bad, the star was lighter in more ways than one and the whole thing gave many fans a nagging sense of deja vu.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this
If you had to choose one ITV-made psychological thriller series from the Nineties for a desert island, what would it be?
Some may plump for Prime Suspect but for many, Cracker wins hands down - not least because of its star.
Robbie Coltrane has always been good value for money in comedy roles, but as the criminal psychologist Eddie Fitzgerald, he shone brighter than most stars of his generation.
Scripts by Jimmy McGovern (among others) did no harm and with a knockout supporting cast including Barbara Flynn, Lorcan Cranitch and Christopher Eccleston, it was little wonder the show won a string of awards.
When the Americans decided to remake the show almost word for word with Robert Pastorelli in the lead, it was a pretty fruitless attempt to sell a great series to a wider audience.
Although not bad, the star was lighter in more ways than one and the whole thing gave many fans a nagging sense of deja vu.