Idris Elba may not end up being the next James Bond. But he’ll always be Stringer Bell to us here in the States. And he’ll always be DCI John Luther to our cousins across the pond.
While Luther was a hit in the UK, it caught a new lease on life here in the US when the show hit BBC America and subscription services like Hulu — and Torrent sites. The last Luther episode was in 2013. But now John Luther is coming back for a two-episode miniseries.
Creator Neil Cross will write the episodes. Sam Miller will direct it. Of course Idris Elba is in as John Luther — as opposed to the whispered Fox remake that would not have had Elba along.
“It’s very exciting to have Idris Elba back as DCI John Luther and to be in East London shooting the show’s fourth installment,” said executive producer Elizabeth Kilgarriff. “Neil Cross has pulled out all the stops to make this the biggest, scariest story yet and it’s a privilege to welcome such a glittering array of acting talent to our already stellar cast.”
First day back to set of John Luther….stand by East London.pic.twitter.com/tkALv7zO9L
— Idris Elba (@idriselba) March 2, 2015
The cast will also include:
Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey)
Laura Haddock (Guardians of the Galaxy)
Darren Boyd (Fortitude, Spy)
John Heffernan (Ripper Street)
Patrick Malahide (The Paradise)
Michael Smiley (who played Benny Silver in Luther before)
Dermot Crowley (who played DSU Martin Schenk in Luther before)
Missing from this list — glaringly missing, in fact — is Ruth Wilson. Wilson’s character of Alice Morgan was in many ways central to the Luther series. But there has been no mention of her returning to the fold for these episodes. Wilson has been busy since Luther. She currently stars in The Affair on Showtime, a role for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama.
But since Luther creator Neil Cross had been talking about writing an entire spin-off series around Wilson’s character of Alice Morgan, her not even being mentioned among the cast is a bit of a downer.
Then again, her surprise drop-in for the final season of Luther was a huge treat. Idris Elba has already expressed a keen desire to put Lohn Luther on the big screen as a feature film. Maybe these two episodes are a warm-up for that. Perhaps he and Cross are testing the waters on the heels of the upswing of American interest in the franchise. Perhaps they are holding Alice in reserve for a surprise role in the two episodes, only to bring her into the film.
One can hope.
