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Hard Sun

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay

TV Series Review

Someday, this world of ours will move past its expiration date. Whether its decline follows the biblical book of Revelation down to the letter or whether the sun simply coughs out its last bit of life-supporting fusion in a trillion years, it’ll happen.

But what if it happened tomorrow? Or next year? Or five years from now?

And while Christians are told to be ready for the end at any moment, the more secular among us aren’t quite as prepared.

Hard Luck

A few days ago, London detective Charlie Hicks’ concerns were relatively straightforward (if a bit unseemly): He provided for his wife and daughter to the best of his ability. He provided for his mistress, too—the widow of his own dearly departed police partner, actually. He’s no saint: Hicks has been known to pocket a bit of cash from a crime scene or rob the occasional robber. But if Charlie’s not a great guy, he’s still better than the villains he arrests, right?

Right?

Hicks’ new partner, Elaine Renko, has her doubts, along with her own English fish to fry. Eight months earlier, she had a near-lethal run-in with her own son, who’s now safely in a psych ward. And even as she and Hicks team up to catch the bad guys, she’s secretly investigating Hicks, too. Renko believes that he just might’ve killed his own police partner. Ticklish, that.

If Renko uncovers the truth, it might feel like the end of the world for Hicks. If Renko’s own desperate attempts to reconcile with her son fail, it might feel like the end of the world for her.

But then both unexpectedly learn that the end of the world—the literal, actual end—is on its way: Humanity’s got less than five years left. That information leaks out, but the government discredits it all as so much fake news. Suddenly, Hicks and Renko have to run from MI5 agents (who want to keep the cops from adding more credence to the story) while chasing down kooks and criminals inspired by the earth’s impending doom. And they’ve got to re-evaluate their own priorities along the way.

Hard to Watch

Hard Sun saw its first light on Britain’s BBC One in January 2018, then migrated to the former colonies via Hulu a couple months later. And while the show wants to be counted as a dark, gritty, prestige-TV type of offering (its creator, Neil Cross, previously developed the acclaimed crime drama Luther, which helped shoot Idris Elba to superstardom), it feels a little … overheated.

For our purposes, though, the show’s content is the most troubling issue here.

Given all the blood and brutality we witness, Hard Sun can be hard to watch. People die, sometimes in horrible ways. Serial killers seem to relish the prospect of living in the “end times,” and the demand for body bags swells to unseemly levels. Guns, knives and even the occasional fork find time on screen, poking through skin and shedding blood. Sexual content can also be problematic, though we hear more about people’s deviant—and often illegal—sexual behavior than we actually see.

And while obscenities aren’t as pervasive as I’ve heard on some shows, how many f-words does one really need to hear?

Episode Reviews

Hard Sun: Mar. 7, 2018 “The Sun, the Moon, the Truth”

Detective Charlie Hicks “welcomes” a new member to his team—Elaine Renko, who eight months earlier nearly died at the hand of her own son. But Hicks is suspicious that she’s actually a mole—perhaps investigating Hicks himself. And he may be right. In a secret workroom hidden in her apartment, Renko tries to figure out whether Hicks might’ve been responsible for his former partner’s death.

‘Course, all that is put on hold when both stumble across a much more serious problem: the impending end of the world.

We see, in flashback, Renko’s son (Daniel) attack her. He cuts her several times with a knife before stabbing her in the side. She fights back with a fork (which she jabs in his face) and a teapot (which she hits him in the head with). He overpowers her, pours gas on her and the rest of her house and then throws a match through the mail slot. Renko escapes, but gets blown forward by the explosion. When she later visits Daniel in a psychiatric ward, he still bears the wound on his face from the fork. After the visit, she clutches her side, as if the visit symbolically reopened her own stab wound.

She and Hicks also fight: They punch each other quite a bit (he slugs her in her groin), and she clocks him with a set of brass knuckles. When she overcomes him, Renko kicks Hicks several times to make sure he stays put. His face is a bloody mess, while hers bears a bloodied split lip.

A man falls to his death from a 15th story window—impaling himself in a tree. (We see the lethal branch protruding through the horrifically bloodied body, and a bystander is spattered with his blood.) Two people get shot in head, which obviously kills them both. One man chokes another. Hicks intentionally smashes car windows to set off car alarms. (He also takes one of the cars.) He robs a gang member, threatening him with a shotgun. Crime-scene photos depict gunshot wounds and dead victims. We see computer readouts that talk about mass extinctions and the estimated need for body bags.

Hicks knows Renko had her child when she was just a young teen; he suspects that the pregnancy could’ve been incest before surmising that it must’ve been rape. Detectives find child porn on the computer of an apparent suicide victim—content that the authorities later surmise was planted by the man’s murderers. Hicks, who’s married, visits his mistress and passionately kisses her before she leads him upstairs, apparently to have sex. (We learn that their affair is a longstanding one.) We hear verbal references to masturbation and bodily fluid.

Both Hicks and Renko take some sort of drug. Someone quaffs hard liquor. Someone references needing to urinate. Evidence (including dead bodies, it seems) is sealed away and/or destroyed. Characters use the f-word once; we also read the word (and see a stick figure making an obscene gesture) an additional time. The s-word is also used once, as well as “d–k” and the British vulgarity “bloody.” Jesus’ name is abused four times.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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