Copper: Season One Blu-ray Review
Bad Penny?
Reviewed by Michael Reuben, February 22, 2013
With its first original series,
Copper, TV network BBC America leapt into the ranks of HBO,
Showtime, AMC and FX as a creator of challenging adult drama with intelligent writing and
first-rate production values—the kind Hollywood has largely abandoned. Set in the squalid
immigrant slums of New York City's Five Points neighborhood, the scene of Martin Scorsese's
Gangs of New York,
Copper is
nominally a cop show but with a key difference. In 1864, when
Copper is set, the NYPD was in its infancy. New York's finest may have had uniforms, but they
were barely a step up from the gangs they were charged with policing. Bribery, corruption and
brutality were standard practice, and the notion of a "good cop" was flexible at best.
Copper
portrays a murky world in which everyday life is as uncertain as the future of a nation still cleft in
two by the Civil War and wary of the outcome, no matter which side won.
Copper is the creation of two complementary talents: Will Rokos, who spent a year as a producer
on the acclaimed police drama
Southland and, before that, was nominated for an Oscar for co-writing and co-producing the dark drama
of racial politics,
Monster's Ball; and Tom Fontana, the
multi-award-winning writer and producer of HBO's gritty prison drama
OZ and, with Barry
Levinson, the NBC drama
Homicide: Life on the Streets. Though they drew on other writers to
help flesh out individual scripts, Fontana and Rokos wrote each of the ten episode stories
themselves. The result is the kind of sophisticated plot architecture that one has come to expect
from masterworks like
Breaking Bad or
Dexter, where individual story lines develop, overlap,
criss-cross and collide in ways that are both unexpected and deeply satisfying.
The production also benefitted from Fontana's obsession with American history.
Copper plays
out just after the so-called "Draft Riots" that concluded Scorsese's
Gangs and overlaps the
efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment that are the subject of Steven Spielberg's
Lincoln. But
where
Lincoln portrays the machinations in the corridors of power,
Copper shows life outside:
both in the gutters of Five Points, where fear and rumor circulate, and in the tony homes of Fifth
Avenue, where businessmen attempt to calculate the most advantageous position. Meanwhile,
ordinary individuals try to get by as best they can.
Copper ran on BBC America from August 1 through October 21, 2012. The network reported
that it was their highest rated show of all time.
Like most of New York's police force in 1864, the copper of the title is an Irishman. His name is
Det. Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones), a naturally heroic figure who fought for the Union
and survived the bloody battle of Gettysburg only to suffer tragic consequences. First, he was
part of the Union forces ordered to fire on the rioters, many of them fellow Irishmen, when the
military quelled the Draft Riots. Then, after four years of faithful service, he returned home to a
missing wife and a murdered five-year-old daughter. As the series opens, Corcoran ("Corky" to
his friends) prowls Five Points by night, patrolling for criminals as a cop but always inquiring
after his missing Ellen and questing for clues about his daughter's death.
It's on one such patrol that Corcoran encounters ten-year-old Annie Reilly (Kiara Glasco), who
ran away from the brothel operated by the Contessa (Inga Cadranel), to whom she was sold.
Corcoran's heart melts at the opportunity to save a child,
any child, but there's more to Annie
than meets the eye. Older than her years and a survivor of many horrors, Annie will develop a
unique relationship with Corcoran as the series progresses. Canadian child actress Glasco has a
remarkable self-possession that recalls the young Kirsten Dunst in
Interview with the Vampire.
Be prepared to be unsettled by much of what she does.
Probably the most important adult woman in Corcoran's life is Eva Heissen (Franka Potente),
whore, madam and owner of a successful tavern and brothel in Five Points. A hard-headed
businesswoman, Eva has a soft spot for Corky, and though she would be happy to have him as a
partner in both business and life, she accepts that his first priority will always be his search for
answers about his family. Still, as long as she can have him to herself, Eva will brook no
competition.
As a result of an investigation, Corcoran makes the acquaintance of a society lady, Elizabeth
Haverford (Anastasia Griffith), who is Eva's opposite in every way and through whom the series
provide a window into polite Fifth Avenue society. But Elizabeth, who left England to escape
stuffiness, can't abide the crude American attempt to replicate upper class life in New York.
She's fascinated by the directness of a man like Corcoran and troubled by the appalling
conditions that exist just a few miles away in Five Points. Her perspective is intriguing, because
she brings so much doubt to the world around her.
As one would expect of a former soldier, however, Corcoran prefers the company of men. Both
on and off duty, he is usually found with one or both of his two police colleagues, Det. Francis
Maguire (Kevin Ryan), who was rejected by the Union army because of a blind eye (though, as Corky tells him,
they'd take him now, since they're desperate for men), and Det. Andrew O'Brien (Dylan Taylor),
a bear of a man who fears only one thing in life, his diminutive wife, Sybil (Lara Jean
Chorostecki). In the close relationshp among these three officers, one senses the origin of the
code of silence that, one hundred years later, had to be broken by Frank Serpico and the Knapp
Commission. But here and now, in the gas-lit alleys of Five Points, with deadly potential around
every corner and superiors who wouldn't hesitate to sell them out for an invitation uptown, the
solidarity among these men makes perfect sense.
Corcoran is part of another trio, one that's both secret and highly unorthodox. It was forged on
the battlefield, where Corcoran's commanding officer was Robert Morehouse (Kyle Schmid), the
playboy son of one of America's wealthiest entrepreneurs, Norbert Morehouse (Geordie
Johnson). In Corcoran, Robert recognized a man of character, and it was Corcoran who held him
steady when Morehouse's leg had to be amputated after it was shattered by a Confederate bullet
(without anesthetic, as was customary during the Civil War). The surgeon who performed the
operation was officially not a doctor at all, but another soldier—and, scandalously, an African
American enlisted man, Matthew Freeman (Ato Essandoh), who trained as a doctor in Paris (because no such
training would have been available to him in America).
Now that all three have returned home, they maintain their strange alliance, but no one knows
about it. Morehouse can't afford to have his father learn that a "Negro" amputated his leg,
because of the stigma. As for Corcoran, he finds it useful to have a trained physician to consult in
murder cases, because the local coroner is both unhelpful and unversed in forensic techniques.
The downside is that Freeman is no longer near at hand, because he has been forced to relocate
from Five Points to what is now Harlem but, in 1864, was pastoral countryside. While Freeman
fought for the Union, his wife, Sara (Tess Thompson), remained behind to endure the Draft
Riots, during which the Irish turned on their black neighbors, and Sara had to watch helplessly from
her window as her two brothers were lynched. She and many other black residents of Five Points
now fear for their lives whenever they step outdoors. Through Sara's eyes,
Copper explores the
terror and uncertainty with which African Americans viewed the course of the Civil War.
Through Matthew Freeman's eyes, it explores the hope.
Fontana and Rokos have so ingeniously structured their tales that even seemingly unrelated
matters handled by Corcoran and his squad end up looping back unexpectedly into ongoing
storylines. As the election nears that will bring Abraham Lincoln a second term, rumors of a
Confederate plot to burn New York to the ground circulate regularly through the streets of Five
Points. Are they real or just a clever ploy to start another riot? Who is behind them? And why
does the trail of Corcoran's wife go cold every time Corky appears to be drawing close?
Copper: Season One Blu-ray, Video Quality
When
Copper was first broadcast on BBC America, I tried to watch it and gave up. The HD
broadcast of BBCA on my local Time Warner Cable simply wasn't up to the demands of the
show's challenging imagery, which requires rock-steady black levels and precise delineations of
shades of black to prevent the imagery from dissolving into what my wife (who doesn't mince
words) termed "sludge". Both
Copper's production design and its digital cinematography (by top
Canadian cinematographer Paul Sarossy, the usual DP for director Atom Egoyan) seek to plunge
the viewer into the dirt and grime of Five Points in 1846, an era before electricity and ready
access to clean water. Except for occasional trips to what is today known as Central Park and to
the Freeman household in the countryside that would later become Harlem, the imagery is
unrelentingly dark, even when it is colorful.
Fortunately, BBC Video's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-rays are more than up to the challenge.
Watching
Copper on these discs, after struggling to view it on TWC broadcasts, was a revelation.
Even in the dimmest scenes composed almost entirely of blacks and browns, fine detail was
evident, and faces could always be recognized. When bright or pastel colors appeared, usually in
the brothels or the Fifth Avenue homes, they were appropriately saturated. Video noise was
wholly absent, and the overall image had the smooth, almost film-like appeal of today's finest
digital work.
Copper may not be eye candy in the traditional sense, but it is demo material for the
proper calibration of contrast and black levels.
