Informer, episode 2 review: Another troubled counter-terrorism officer, another boring cliche from BBC1

I have a dream. That one day they’ll make a TV drama where the copper doesn’t punch a mirror, shred his knuckles and then have to make excuses about an accident with the cheese grater, or just go all moody and refuse to discuss, or slam the door and go out and get drunk. I have a dream.

By the looks of episode 2 of Informer, that dream may not be realised for a while. For reasons that were not clear, troubled counter-terrorism officer Gabe Waters (Paddy Considine) does indeed punch a mirror in the office toilets and spends the rest of the episode bleeding all over the place (in every sense). It didn’t help me take it seriously.

I have a strong feeling, but not much of a memory, because such scenes all tend to blur into one shattered kaleidoscope, that somewhere during the six hours I spent watching Bodyguard, troubled counter-terrorism officer David Budd (Richard Madden) also punches a mirror. Maybe it’s a wall. Or a wardrobe. Anyway, mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the most boring telly cliche of them all?

So I wasn’t quite convinced by Considine’s DS Waters. He’s too identikit, if you’ll pardon the expression. Ever since Jack Regan in The Sweeney TV series (circa 1976), police officers have been prone to unhappy marriages, drinking too much and punching inanimate objects. I’ve had enough.

I also wanted to punch his putative informer Raza Shar (Nabhaan Rizwan), being groomed as part of an all-too-vague counter-terrorism operation. Rizwan is an excellent actor, but there arises another problem. You see, Rizwan plays the part of Shar as incompetent ingénue so well that you wonder why an apparently tough, ruthless but still intelligent member of the security services – Waters/Considine – would want to recruit this idiot.

Shar actually has to practise his patois before he goes anywhere near his mark, Dadir Hassan, a drug dealer in the East End of London (and possibly with a more serious second job, waging jihad). This dude is portrayed as a figure of towering criminal brilliance, an operational genius and, in his own depraved world, a successful businessman. Roger Jean Nsengiyumva makes a good job of Dadir, but makes you wonder why he isn’t running PR for Facebook or something, instead of committing random acts of violence in fried chicken shops and poncey degree shows. Maybe he is a master terrorist. Must be, I suppose.

By the end of it, after Raza has joined in a fracas over the fricassee and knocked a tooth out of a hapless KFC cook, you can just about believe that these two – Ali G meets Osama bin Laden – have bonded in some way. But only just.

There were no suicide bombs, exploding trains or assassination attempts on the Home Secretary, but the episode had its moments. The wonder of it, I suppose, is that the writing supplied by Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, and Sam Mendes as executive producer, make you believe that there are social housing flats out there with samurai swords mounted handily on living room walls for an impromptu decapitation, as Raza discovered, and that people really could live such lives at the triangulation point of drug dealing, £3.99 fried chicken meals and terrorism. They certainly give one the creeps.

Not having spent much time dealing narcotics, nor even hanging around chicken shops, I am in a poor position to judge, so I have to give the creators of Informer the benefit of the doubt. I might as well be asked to judge whether those bores you find at sci-fi conventions speaking Klingon and making Klingon jokes and getting into Klingony arguments with each other are the Klingon “real thing” or just charlatans. I’ve no idea, and I’ve no idea what to make of Informer, to be honest. Sorry. Now I’ll just go and punch the mirror in the gents. That’s what us troubled journalists do. Didn’t you know?