"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," Eddie Fitzgerald says, easing into his first confession in 30 years. "I drink too much. I smoke too much. I gamble too much. I am too much."
Fitz is back. Dr. Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald (Robbie Coltrane), one of the most flawed and fascinating hero/anti-heroes in the history of television cop drama, returns on cable channel A&E tonight, and he's carrying around even more guilt, anger and existential angst than he did during last year's award-winning season of exquisite "Cracker" mysteries.
Enough guilt to lead him to the confessional, so that he might take communion at his poor mother's funeral in tonight's season premiere, titled "Brotherly Love." But not enough guilt for him to suffer the sanctimony of his old parish priest, whom Fitz angrily winds up accusing right there in the confessional of sleeping with prostitutes and murdering one of them to boot.
Fitz never did do contrition well. But what a pleasure it is to see him rage on against almost everything in his life.
Tonight will mark the start of "Cracker"s third season on A&E. Last year, the British import and its star both won the top CableAce awards here and the equivalent of the Emmy and the Oscar in England. Coltrane's Fitz is a psychologist in working-class Manchester who is regularly brought in by police on tough cases, because of his ability to get inside criminals' minds.
The only cop characters and dramas on American television that can hold a candle to Fitz and "Cracker" are Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) on "Homicide" and Andy Sipowitz (Dennis Franz) on "NYPD Blue." As on "Homicide," some of the best scenes on "Cracker" take place in the interrogation room when Fitz goes one on one with suspects, like Pembleton.
Unlike Pembleton, though, whose strength seems to come from his Jesuit-bred sense of righteousness and moral superiority to the criminals, Fitz is a fellow traveler down some of the darkest alleyways of the human heart with the men and women he questions.
"Cracker" goes into places no American cop drama does.
Tonight's episode begins four months after last season's
startling finale, which included the rape of Jane Penhaligon (Geraldine Somerville), the young police inspector with whom Fitz had been having an affair since his wife, Judith (Barbara Flynn), moved out on him.
