Don't Want to Believe: 'Edge of Darkness: The Complete BBC Series' DVD

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MOVE OVER, ERIN BROCKOVICH.

Ronald Craven is the new (fictional, but still) messiah of indignant environmental activists everywhere.

As portrayed by Bob Peck (a well-heralded British actor who us Americans only know as the guy that played Muldoon in "Jurassic Park"), Craven is the main character in "Edge of Darkness," a BBC mini-series from 1985 that focuses on an international nuclear conspiracy that forever changes Craven's life when his activist daughter Emma (Joanne Whaley) is murdered because of it. And now that the much-praised, six-part collection is finally available on DVD in the United States, we turncoats can finally be pleasantly surprised by what all the fuss is about before Mel Gibson's movie remake comes out in Jan. 2010.

To look at the list of accolades for "Edge of Darkness" (and watch the clips from the awards shows themselves, as those are included in the special features of this set) is to know that you're getting into a good thing. At the 1986 BAFTAs, the series came away with six nods, including Best Drama Series, Best Actor and Best Original Television Music, while at the Broadcasting Press Guild awards that same year, "Edge of Darkness" also won for Best Drama Series and Best Actor (though Peck had to share the award with Ben Kingsley, who won for "Silas Marner").

Nevertheless, all that praise is a good clue for the series' strongest points: Fantastically layered writing by Troy Kennedy Martin and production by Michael Wearing; a devastatingly determined performance from Peck; and a hauntingly somber score by the one and only Eric Clapton. If you're in need of anything else, we can't help you.

The series is divided into six 55-minute parts, and things get started pretty intensely: After police detective Craven picks up his much-loved daughter Emma from a meeting for an environmentalist group at her college, she is murdered at their doorstep, plunging Craven into a flurry of confusion and determination to find out why she was killed. At first, he thinks it might have been revenge for someone he put away years before — and that's how his fellow police officers want to skew it — but soon he realizes Emma was entangled in "terrorist" activities.

As part of GAIA, an anti-nuclear group that didn't care about breaking laws to stop the arms race (hint, hint), Emma was murdered for her actions against not only the United Kingdom, but a slew of other countries involved in the proliferation of nuclear weapons — and soon, Craven finds himself caught up with Scotland Yard, the CIA, British intelligence and lots of other shady dudes in his quests to avenge Emma's death and to find the truth.

If this sounds vaguely "X-Files"-like to you, then sure, go right ahead with your judgment calls. But while "The X-Files" leaned heavily on government conspiracies and Fox Mulder's hate-hate relationship with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, "Edge of Darkness" goes more the Samantha route. There are a lot of close-up shots of Craven's pained, worry-worn face, and it's clear that it's his love for his daughter that keeps him going, not necessarily a higher ethical or moral ground. He keeps seeing visions of Emma everywhere, and it's the chemistry between Peck and Whaley that make this father-daughter dynamic wholly believable.

When Craven indulges in conversations with her — and at one point, ends up snapping at her about how she had no idea the kind of men she was up against — it is Emma's urgent persistence that he go on ("You've got to be strong like a tree; don't break") that lends a relatable air to the action. Plus, there are absolutely no flaws in Peck's performance: He balances the gritty fortitude of a police officer with the devastated resolve of a father, and when he collects both foes and friends along the way (the most notable being jaded, world-weary CIA agent Darius Jedburgh, played exceptionally well by Joe Don Baker), you get the sense that this is a man who, both literally and figuratively, is going it totally alone.

And if the series' thrilling, noir-esque pace and numerous twists and turns aren't enough, the special features aren't half-bad, either. The alternate ending to the final episode is brief, but well-thought-out and hard-hitting; the music-only audio option allows you to single out Clapton's score and get suitably chilled; and the 35-minute "Magnox — The Secrets of the Edge of Darkness" segment gives solid background about the conception and production of the series.

Interviews with Kennedy Martin and Wearing are informational and thought-provoking (such as when Kennedy Martin explains that "it was Thatcher's Britain ... at the BBC, there was no political dimension with their popular drama whatsoever, and I was really depressed about it" and first considered writing about the miners' strike of 1984 to 1985 instead), and learning about Peck's casting (Wearing bluntly says, "We went for Bob. And thank God we did") also helps viewers understand how his background in the Royal Shakespeare Company helped him craft the perfect character.

In fact, as a member of Britain's Broadcasting Press Guild matter-of-factly tells an interviewer in another of the set's special features, what made "Edge of Darkness" so great was that "you didn't really know what was going on most of the time [and that] made it most compulsive viewing."

Agreed.

Written by Express contributor Roxana Hadadi
Photo courtesy BBC