Always on Sunday: Cracker

Robbie Coltrane (born
Anthony Robert McMillan
in 1950) is the cracker

The word "cracker" as the title of the 1990's British TV series means several things:
    It's about a criminal psychologist, Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald (played by Robbie Coltrane), who cracks [solves] cases. The Manchester police are lucky to have him on retainer, even if they often ignore his advice, to their disadvantage.
    His conversation crackles with wit—not the same as making wisecracks, which are mostly flippant; there's nothing "sitcom" about this serious drama—Fitz's conversation sparkles with insight.
    A number of the characters (mainly the criminals, but also Fitz sometimes) seem to be cracked; i.e., somewhat crazy if not really so.
    Fitz is a brilliant, likable, witty, infuriating character, indispensable to police in questioning suspects, whose hearts he fathoms in a few minutes of conversation and observation. He's addicted to gambling, a tribulation to his wife of twenty-five years (Barbara Flynn), who nevertheless tells him that other men don't have a tenth of his head or a quarter of his heart.
    Comparable characters in their brilliance and self-absorption come to mind: Doc Martin and Dr. House.
    Episodes of Cracker are well and believably developed; they almost always come in two or three 50-minute parts.

At some point three or four episodes in to Season 1, I said to my wife, "Do you think that Robbie Coltrane ever did stand-up comedy?" He has such presence and his talent for improvisation is obvious.
    She agreed that he might have done stand-up and googled it to find out. According to IMDb, he's "one of Britain's most popular comedians."
    If you're a fan of wizards (which I am not), you might recognize his name for playing Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films.
    Or do you remember his name from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989)? Coltrane played Sir John Falstaff, "a fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight...primarily a comic figure...embodying a kind of depth common to Shakespeare's tricky comedy" [wikipedia].
    Cracker is something to enjoy highly. We access it via Netflix download.