Spotless (Netflix): not to be confused with the other Spotless

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Spotless (Netflix): not to be confused with the other Spotless

August 24, 2016 - 13:33
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Spotless is a thriller about a professional crime scene cleaner Jean who gets reluctantly roped in to work for a mobster.

Spotless

By OhThisBloodyPC

Spotless is a thriller about a professional crime scene cleaner Jean who gets reluctantly roped in to work for a mobster.

There are no star names in it. So nobody’s asking us to believe that Dr Who or that nice lady from Peep Show are hard bitten detectives. So there are plausibility barriers to overcome. There’s no man killing of women and children so that luvvy detectives can get to look disgusted about the awfulness of men.

Well, that’s me as a devoted follower already.

But there’s a few complications. Somebody is trying to throw me off the trail. I don’t think it’s the casting director (see above), so it’s more likely to be the script editor or the director. Or they could have had their hands tied by The Boys Upstairs, on the board of the production company. Whoever it, is they are definitely trying to lose me.

Our conflicted crime scene cleaner has a loveable rogue of a brother called Martin who turns up like a bad penny. Hmmm. No, let’s be fair, that does happen. Martin is an overweight, chain smoking alcoholic frenchman that the ladies can’t resist. Well, OK, stranger things have happened. Not many though. He’s not as brutish as Gerard Depardieu, but neither is he a famous actor. But they’ve gone too far. They’re asking me to believe that he's a twinkly eyed, sensitive chivalrous heroin dealer. No, I‘m sorry, that just doesn’t add up.

If I’m going to suspend disbelief that much, you might as well throw in the ability to time travel. In which case, they might as well have blown the budget and hired Dr Who.

(Incidentally, my favourite ‘gangster with a conscience’ was in a film called Angel, where Robert Carlyle’s armed robber character came out retirement for ‘one last job’ because he was disgusted about what the Thatcher government was doing to the NHS.)

But the cliches don’t end there.

There’s a bent policeman under investigation. That’s obligatory now. If they wanted an original angle for a ‘cop under pressure’ they could have had him being being yanked off murder investigations for a series of televised raids of celebrity homes. Or maybe they could have the cop coming out of retirement for one last whitewash.

But that’s nothing compared to the organised crime gang where the henchmen are all handsome, debonair film buffs and Mr Big is a borderline genius. He only chose his life of crime as an act of rebellion against the system.

Someone, somewhere, is sending me a message (as they say in time capers). The message seems to be “don’t watch this tosh any more - unless you wanna end up in a pit of cliches”.

But hang on. There’s a second messenger. It might be the story editor, I don’t know, but someone has managed to make this Designer Lowlife story gripping.

For reasons I can’t quite explain, I’m hooked. The stories, despite the apparent attempts at sabotage, are quite watchable. I actually care about Jean and his family and want to see where this story pans out.

Just please don’t let it all end with Mr Gang Boss giving a speech about the NHS. Although he did surprise me by killing the bent policeman, a twist I wasn’t expecting at all.

Oh well. I guess I picked the wrong month to try and quit Netflix.