The Tower returns for a highly effective third (and final?) series 3 with Gemma Whelan in fine form
“You can arrest me, I don’t care”
Kate London’s Metropolitan trilogy of books have steadily adapted over the last couple of years as The Tower – a fantastic first series leading into a middling second which never quite justified the franchise’s continuation for me. Since I’m not in charge of these decisions though, the third series – Gallowstree Lane – has just premiered on ITV and actually does a much better job of telling its wider story.
We rejoin Gemma Whelan’s ace DS Sarah Collins nearly two years after the events of Series 2. In the interim, all the things that were hinted at therein have come to pass. Lizzie Adama has made detective and also has had her child from her affair with married DI Kieran Shaw, who in turn is wrapped up in undercover Operation Perseus, in which Sarah’s old partner Steve Bradshaw has been in deep, deep cover.
Just the basics of it being a case connected to the main characters results in a more cohesive series from the start this time around, rather than Sarah’s cold case being the focus. And here, she’s soon drawn into the action as she’s given the case of a brutal stabbing of a teenage boy, the key witness to which is an integral part of the inner circle of the drugs kingpin Perseus is trying to take down.
At just four episodes, the storytelling is necessarily tight but even as it is swift-moving, it is dramatic and grippingly intense as Sarah’s pursuit of justice for her victim slams up hard against the wider aims of the task force, her wrestling with the morality of chasing down DI Shaw’s illegal actions from Series 1 in the face of him doing huge good in leading Operation Perseus – can a wrong be wiped out by a bigger right?
Whelan brings her customary intensity to Collins and I love that whilst we get hints of her personal life with Camilla Beeput’s Julie (another link back to Series 1’s original case) now established as her partner, it is incidental detail rather than the full focus. Emmett J Scanlan blends sleaze and studiousness so well as Shaw and Tahirah Sharif is strong again as Adama, albeit not quite given enough to do for my liking.
