> […]BBC One’s The Responder […] features Chris, a night patrol officer played by Martin Freeman, who answers a 999 from the nephew of an 85-year-old woman found dead on her sofa. When he arrives at the scene, he promptly takes a cigarette from the pack lying next to the dead body and smokes it. A vacuum flask of soup sits nearby. Might she have been poisoned? Chris obviously doesn’t seem to think so; peckish on the night shift, he scoffs the lady’s last supper while watching the TV show she left half-seen.
>
> [W]riter, Tony Schumacher[‘s] […] 11 years as a first-response cop on Merseyside inspired the show.
>
> “*Police are the first response to most sudden deaths, and that takes a lot out of you. It’s a profound moment: I can still remember 80% of the deaths I attended. But if you let the profundity get to you, you won’t be able to do it. I never pinched a corpse’s cigarettes, but you’ve got to put up blinkers.*”
>
> But such defence mechanisms only partly worked for Schumacher, who left the force after a mental breakdown left him with post-traumatic stress disorder: “*I still have some not-great days now.*”
>
> During the extraordinary opening episode, scenes from a night shift are cut with Chris talking to an occupational therapist about violence he might do to the general public, or his own family. He is on the verge of exploding, imploding, probably both. There is a terrifying sense of momentum that builds up.
>
Have been looking forward to this for some time. Martin Freeman’s Scouse accent is really good; made me think about Stephen Graham and how he would have handled the role.
This looks great. I’ve been waiting for something to fill the void left by The Cleaner and leaning just a bit more dramatic is definitely a welcome change of pace.
> […]BBC One’s The Responder […] features Chris, a night patrol officer played by Martin Freeman, who answers a 999 from the nephew of an 85-year-old woman found dead on her sofa. When he arrives at the scene, he promptly takes a cigarette from the pack lying next to the dead body and smokes it. A vacuum flask of soup sits nearby. Might she have been poisoned? Chris obviously doesn’t seem to think so; peckish on the night shift, he scoffs the lady’s last supper while watching the TV show she left half-seen.
>
> [W]riter, Tony Schumacher[‘s] […] 11 years as a first-response cop on Merseyside inspired the show.
>
> “*Police are the first response to most sudden deaths, and that takes a lot out of you. It’s a profound moment: I can still remember 80% of the deaths I attended. But if you let the profundity get to you, you won’t be able to do it. I never pinched a corpse’s cigarettes, but you’ve got to put up blinkers.*”
>
> But such defence mechanisms only partly worked for Schumacher, who left the force after a mental breakdown left him with post-traumatic stress disorder: “*I still have some not-great days now.*”
>
> During the extraordinary opening episode, scenes from a night shift are cut with Chris talking to an occupational therapist about violence he might do to the general public, or his own family. He is on the verge of exploding, imploding, probably both. There is a terrifying sense of momentum that builds up.
>
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/07/martin-freeman-explosively-dodgy-cop-responder
Have been looking forward to this for some time. Martin Freeman’s Scouse accent is really good; made me think about Stephen Graham and how he would have handled the role.
This looks great. I’ve been waiting for something to fill the void left by The Cleaner and leaning just a bit more dramatic is definitely a welcome change of pace.