I’ve just watched the final episode of The Take which has been screening on Sky. A sort of English Sopranos, of course I had to watch. Set in the 80s and 90s, it’s a series of four episodes and follows a pair of East End villains, Freddie, who intuits and who uses extreme violence to get his way, and Jimmy, who thinks and is, much to Freddie’s chagrin, more financially successful as a result. It’s all bound to come to a head, of course, and it does, but not quite how you expect.
I was going to write that Freddie is a pathological murderer, and it’s true he murders easily, but pathological murderers don’t feel emotion, whereas Freddie is overcome by his. Jimmy, on the other hand, finds killing distasteful but when he does do it, and he is pushed to it at the end, his murders are all the more chilling and grotesque, being thought-out and coldblooded.
Comparing to the Sopranos is obvious but only goes so far. Yes it’s about organised crime and the effect on the families of the perpetrators, yes it is violent, yes the violence is how they do business. But on the other hand, the families live, for the most part, in grotty housing estates as opposed to opulence, the women are key to the plot development, there is, surprisingly, more of an emphasis on the clannishness of the organisation than in the Sopranos. Here two cousins marry two sisters, and their parents feature in a good half of the scenes even though they’re not shown to be crims themselves. There are of course only 4 episodes as opposed to dozens, and British crime shows still seem to have a grittiness that the American shows somehow polish away. The Sopranos is about how domestic it can be, whereas The Take is about how severely dysfunctional it really is. Tony Soprano is a hero, really, whereas you would never call Freddy or even Jimmy that.
The series opens with Freddy coming out of prison after, I think, a four-year stretch. He is set to build up his organisation again with the help of his younger cousin Jimmy who has always looked up to him. It isn’t long before their different personalities produce rifts in the relationship and suspense builds as to who will come out on top. Jimmy is clearly able to use his brains and therefore we must believe he will win, our social mores tell us so, but Freddie feels his way in to, and out of, all the awkward situations he is presented with. And Jimmy doesn’t like killing. So you just don’t know, right up to the end, how it will end.
There’s tension, intense emotion, moody production and classy scripting. And the acting is out of the top drawer. All the cast are without exception excellent, but I will say Tom Hardy stands out as Freddy. Freddy is such a pain in the arse at the beginning, and a horrible horrible person, and you never feel any liking for him, but by the end you want to know what he feels and how he will react. I see Tom has been in Black Hawk Down and Band of Brothers and indeed Layer Cake but he is unforgettable in this.
Yesterday, in preparation for the final episode, I watched all the earlier three back-to-back, and I’m very glad I did. First time through, I was a bit bored by the first episode, but Sky1 were very clever and screened the second straight away afterwards, so I thought (as I was supposed to think) that I may as well watch that as well. By which time I was completely hooked. I watched the third chapter the following week with intense concentration. I got a lot out of that second runthrough, I like to see the plot building when I don’t know what’s coming, and again when I do. I’m going to watch the final again to make sure I’ve got it right.
I’ve given it an 8 at IMDB, which is normally reserved for “I want to see this again” – I probably don’t, but it is far too fine a production for a 7. My only quibble is, why is it call The Take? I don’t want to spoil it for you but no-one is on the take, not in the corruption sense. Things are there for the taking, perhaps that’s what they’re getting at.
