The series benefited from the inspired casting of Robbie Coltrane, a Scottish actor known chiefly for comic roles (and his recent turn as Hagrid in the Harry Potter films), who brought a vicious wit and an imposing physical presence to the part of Fitz, the overweight, arrogant, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, compulsive gambler who was the series’ unlikely hero. Detectives with troubled personal lives have been a staple of crime fiction, but it is hard to imagine any so abundantly dysfunctional. Fitz’s personal inadequacies, however, were balanced by a razor-sharp mind and an uncanny ability to pinpoint character and to locate the weak spots of his opponents, qualities that placed him in the lineage of Sherlock Holmes.

Fitz was a triumph of characterization for Coltrane and for series creator Jimmy McGovern. But the key to Cracker’s success was the fact that its rotund hero was not a policeman at all, but a criminal psychologist. This gave McGovern a distance from the police that enabled a more critical approach. Writers like Conan Doyle, Chandler, and Hammett had previously used an independent detective as a device to make a dig at police incompetence, but the savagery of McGovern’s critique was unusual.

The first two stories of the first series, dealing respectively with an apparent case of amnesia and a latter-day Bonnie and Clyde, introduced Fitz’s chaotic home life, including a tempestuous relationship with his wife, Judith (admirably played by the underrated Barbara Flynn), and the prolonged psychological cross-examinations that were to be the program’s stock-in-trade. Such scenes were a showcase for Fitz’s combative interrogation style and his incisive intelligence, but they also illustrated an attention to criminal motivation and psychology that was unusual in a genre that typically prefers its villains two-dimensional.

It was the third and final story of the first season, “One Day a Lemming Will Fly,” in which the latent anger in McGovern’s writing was given full expression. The story begins with the sexual murder of a sensitive young boy, the suspicion falling on a socially awkward teacher at his school. In an atmosphere of mounting tension, and with a mob outside the police station baying for blood, Fitz secures a confession, only to find that the suspect is actually innocent and the true killer is still at large. The police, however, are satisfied that the case is closed, despite Fitz’s protests.

The story was a ferocious piece of social criticism, railing against the police, media, and public hysteria surrounding pedophilia and demonstrating how the search for justice is sacrificed in the cynical pursuit of a “result” to satisfy a political leadership obsessed with statistics and a public thirsty for revenge. Perhaps most extraordinary, the writer calls into question his hero’s own previously faultless professional judgment.

Equally powerful was “To Be a Somebody,” in which a disturbed young man (memorably played by Robert Carlyle) attempts to avenge the 1986 Hillsborough disaster (in which 96 soccer fans, many of them children, were crushed to death as a result of serious errors in police crowd control, compounded by the insensitivity of some tabloid newspapers). A particularly memorable scene had Christopher Eccleston’s Detective Chief Inspector Bilborough, stabbed and slowly bleeding to death, delivering his testimony by radio while his horrified colleagues listen helplessly. McGovern would return to this subject in his 1996 documentary-style drama Hillsborough.

McGovern also brought to Cracker a fascination with Catholicism, which he would continue to explore in his later work, notably in his screenplay for the feature film Priest (directed by Antonia Bird, 1994) and in the BBC series The Lakes (1997). McGovern situated Cracker in Manchester (a city with a strong Catholic tradition, in part due to its historical ties with Ireland) and themes of guilt, confession, and redemption echo through the series. The villain in one story pretends to be a priest, while another has a priest covering up his brother’s crime. Other characters, including the boorish and emotionally unstable Irish policeman Beck (Lorcan Cranitch), struggle with issues of faith and morality. Moreover, Fitz is himself a Catholic-turned-atheist, but when he interrogates suspects he explicitly offers redemption through confession.

Similarly intriguing was the awkward relationship between Fitz and the ambitious but undervalued detective Penhaligon (Geraldine Somerville). Coltrane and Somerville created a tangible sexual chemistry, despite their apparent mismatch in size and temperament. Their relationship, growing from an initial mutual hostility and thriving on a shared intellectual combativeness, was a refreshing departure from conventional representations of sexual attraction.

The brilliance of the early stories proved difficult to sustain, but nevertheless the series continued to offer surprises. Particularly impressive was the unraveling of Beck following Bilborough’s death, culminating in his rape of Penhaligon. Other issues tackled in later stories included a murderous Christian sect and a mixed-race rapist driven by insecurity about his ethnicity.

Following McGovern’s departure, writers included Paul Abbott, initially one of the show’s producers and subsequently creator of the excellent blue-collar drama series Clocking Off. Directors included Michael Winterbottom, who has since become one of Britain’s most consistently innovative film directors with credits including Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and Wonderland (1999), and Simon Cellan Jones, who also moved into feature films with Some Voices (2000).

A one-off special set in Hong Kong failed to recapture the success of the early episodes, and Fitz was retired from British screens in 1996. The following year, an attempt was made to recreate the series, retitled Fitz, for an American audience, but, although well written and performed, the show failed to find a large audience.