Joe Barton’s crime drama has the wit and feeling to justify most of its restless stylistic changes. The gang intrigue can drag, but the performances make its crowded story worth the attention it asks for.
Giri/Haji is a crime drama worth staying with when its gang business gets cumbersome. Creator and writer Joe Barton sends a Japanese detective into a story connecting Tokyo and London, then keeps making room for people who would be supporting characters in a tidier thriller. The comedy matters, and so does the unhappiness. There is more here than the plot can comfortably accommodate, but we would be reluctant to lose much of the company. The patience it asks for is mostly repaid.
Takehiro Hira gives Kenzo Mori the steadiness that a programme this changeable needs. Kelly Macdonald’s Sarah also helps keep the human exchanges from becoming merely intervals between criminal developments. Joe Barton is interested in duty and family without assuming that solemn dialogue is the only way to show it. His writing allows humour to interrupt serious business, and those interruptions often tell us more about the characters than another explanation of the case would.
Will Sharpe, as Rodney, is the strongest reason to keep watching. We were surprised by how fond we became of him. Will Sharpe gives the wit an uneasy edge, making Rodney’s unhappiness apparent without asking the jokes to stop. That combination could have become a familiar routine in which an amusing supporting character periodically demands our sympathy. Here the sadness remains visible while he is being funny, and the performance never seems to be waiting for permission to change mood.
Cinematographers Piers McGrail and David Odd resist the obvious invitation to turn Tokyo and London into a collection of sights. The cities feel like places where these people have business to attend to, which makes the shifts between them easier to accept. Morgan Kennedy’s production design supports that impression of surroundings occupied rather than displayed. Against this everyday credibility, the animation provides a useful disruption, changing how we take in the story without making the live-action passages seem timid. The series is willing to be showy, and usually earns it.
Directors Ben Chessell and Julian Farino allow violence, comedy and family trouble to sit close together without smoothing away every awkward change of mood. Editors Matthew Tabern, Elen Pierce Lewis and Dominic Strevens have a busy story to organise, and the movement between cities generally remains intelligible. The cutting is less successful at disguising how long some of the yakuza intrigue takes to get going. Adrian Johnston’s music helps the quieter scenes hold our attention, allowing their sadness to register amid the frequent changes of pace.
The weakness is the amount of criminal explanation competing for attention with that cast. Some is necessary, but the early yakuza material can make the series feel dutiful just when its other scenes are becoming unpredictable. Once Rodney brings his energy into the London story, another stretch of gang complications can seem like an interruption. The writing also takes on more changes of tone than it can always manage. Occasionally, we need a moment to work out how seriously to take the next scene.
Across eight episodes, Giri/Haji allows its characters to remain awkward and changeable rather than making everybody useful to the investigation. That is a good reason to accept its occasional untidiness. Give it proper attention, and forgive the stretches when the gangsters are still explaining themselves.
