Dark City is an eerie, pitch black and totally original Christchurch crime drama
We open on expansive shots of a version of Christchurch, gleaming bright and a little too pretty.
The setting of Dark City: The Cleaner has an unmistakable comic book quality, with artfully unreal newspapers and brands, pristine 70s busses and hi-fi equipment, while cellphones and modern cars make it clear this isn’t a period piece.
There’s affable narration from Joe Middleton (Cohen Holloway), the titular cleaner, talking us through his affection for the city.
Then, in one of many queasy twists, Middleton is revealed to be not just our guide for the series, but also the unctuous serial killer stalking the city’s young women.
Mercifully he’s superb in (almost) every way. His skin is damp and mottled, his hair lank – physically he perfectly embodies the socially awkward, hyper-repressed Middleton, who works as a janitor at a police station and is thus privy to every beat of the futile investigation into the murders he’s been committing for two years.
Holloway’s performance is brilliantly contained, he’s deferential to the point of servility, struggles to meet the cops’ eyes and is disgusted by the affection of his colleague Sally Galletly (a quietly compelling Dea Doglione).
Still, due to his narration, we’re always in Middleton’s world – an uncomfortable situation. He’s an affable murderer of beautiful and wholly innocent women, and for long stretches of the first episode you naturally wonder whether Dark City is going to be content to just show us Middleton’s perspective.
Middleton’s mum is awful and he ticks many other serial killer 101 traits, while the cops are vaguely hapless.
Yet just when the plot starts to get over-familiar, a journalist named Melissa Flowers (a scene-stealing, almost show-stealing Chelsie Florence) appears for a deliciously unhinged scene that completely upends Dark City’s carefully cultivated order, while entirely living up to its name.
Starring: Cohen Holloway, Chelsie Preston Crayford, Dea Doglione
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https://www.madfind.com.ng/2024/03/dark-city-cleaner-download-tv-show.html
