Bloody, brutal and beautiful: Martina Cole’s The Take

Good old Tom Hardy, he is that calibre of actor you can rely on to give a bone-chilling performance no matter what. I recently saw a magazine cover declaring him to be ‘the greatest actor of his generation’ and the first thing that sprung to mind was his portrayal of scumbag slash psychopath Freddie Jackson in The Take.

The Take, based on Martina Cole’s novel, is dark, sinister and explosive — it’s everything you could ever want from a crime thriller. But what really separates this from being just another ‘good old British crime drama’ is the acting. It’s been a while since I’ve been captivated by such dynamic, honest and exciting acting from every actor in a TV series. And leading the way is Hardy who picks up the ball and runs at an unrelenting full speed with it. The deeper the story twists and contorts into a black hole of corruption, greed, and depravity so does his performance.

We meet him as he’s released after four years in prison, and itching to unleash hell on London’s East End. His psychotic and brutally violent behaviour grows more terrifying by the second. Like lighting a stick of dynamite, the closer it gets to the blasting cap, the more volatile and dangerous it becomes — and is at the same time frightening to watch but impossible to take your eyes off.

Freddie is a character that could so easily have been overdone and turned into a gurning caricature, but Tom plays it with enough depth and charisma — and he know exactly when to hold back to give some relief from the intensity of his unravelling demise.

The anithesis to Freddie’s intensity and ferociousness is his cousin Jimmy, played by the divine Shaun Evans, who offsets Hardy’s brute force with his own wrecking ball of unassuming subtlety. We watch his character start off as sweet, baby-faced Jimmy full of wide-eyed admiration for his newly-released cousin, who seems out-of-his-depth as he hangs on Freddie’s criminal coattails — but it’s not long until he starts transforming into a slick, smart criminal mastermind himself. Will he end up as depraved and unpredictable as his cousin?

This is not all about the boys though, not by a long shot. You know what they say ‘behind every great man is a great woman, blah blah’ — well, Kierston Wareing and Charlotte Riley are flawless are the sisters behind the scenes of the Jackson family’s criminality. Kierston’s Jackie is frantic, desperate and deluded, and Charlotte’s Maggie is feisty, and interesting. A long with Brian Cox, Sara Stewart and other famous faces, The Take is full of reliably good actors whose performances layer up to create a dynamic and unpredictable story.

The masochist in me has a tendency towards anything that feels like an assault on my nervous system, and The Take is definitely that. At the end of it, I felt wiped out — I’d felt just about every emotion there is to feel from fear to anxiety to distress and excitement, not to mention a few genuinely shocking and gut-wrenching moments. We’re so spoiled for choice when it comes to good thrillers these days, and the downside of that is that we can become desensitised to otherwise exciting and thrilling things but The Take certainly provided a few blood curdling moments that took me by surprise — and still make me flinch just thinking about it.

Call me biased, but British crime thrillers are the best in the world. They’re loaded with intelligent depravity, original writing, explosive performances, and gorgeously talented actors. But, The Take takes it up a few notches. Trust me, you’ve never seen anything like this before.