History Series / Cracker

* WhamEpisode: "To Be a Sombody" ([[spoiler:Bilborough dies]]) and "Men Should Weep" ([[spoiler:Penhagilion is raped by Beck, who commits suicide]]).

** [[spoiler:Billborough, having been fatally stabbed, gives a precise and detailed description of assailant]].

** "Brotherly Love": [[spoiler:DS Jimmy Beck. He throws himself off a tall building after being overwhelmed by self-loathing from DCI Bilborough's death and his raping of DS Penhaligon.]]

* AnonymousPublicPhoneCall: In "The Mad Woman In The Attic" part two a man, claiming to be a priest, calls the police from a railway station payphone claiming to be able to confirm a man suffering from Amnesia after seemingly jumping off a train is the SerialKiller "Sweeny", as he told him he murdered a woman and dumped her body in a river in confession. The police are able to track the phone call to the platform but by then the caller has departed on the train. Searching the river the do find another body. [[spoiler: As Fitz quickly figures the caller is in fact Sweeny, who is trying to remove the one witness to his crime]].

* ArentYouGoingToRavishMe: Played seriously in "True Romance" where Janice's spree is motivated by the fact that she was the only one of her family '''not''' molested by her father (because, as Fitz points out at the end, her father realised she was likely to tell someone about it, whereas her sister wouldn't out of shame).

* CooldownHug: The tall, heavyset Fitz grabS a hysterical, furious and much smaller young man in a BearHug, indicating that he's prepared to headbutt the other man if he tries anything funny, and hanging onto him until he calms down.

* AnonymousPublicPhoneCall: In "The Mad Woman In The Attic" part two a man, claiming to be a priest,, calls the police from a railway station payphone claiming to be able to confirm a man suffering from Amnesia after seemingly jumping off a train is the SerialKiller "Sweeny", as he told him he murdered a woman and dumped her body in a river in confession. The police are able to track the phone call to the platform but by then the caller has departed on the train. Searching the river the do find another body. [[spoiler: As Fitz quickly figures the caller is in fact Sweeny, who is trying to remove the one witness to his crime]].

%%* RaisedCatholic: Fitz and many others

* RaisedCatholic: Fitz and many others
* RapeAsDrama: In ''Men Should Weep''
* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: D.C.I. Wise.

* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: Averted with Albie, and Lampshaded by Fitz:

'''Albie''': (scoffs)
'''Fitz''': You kill human beings, why not a few kittens?
'''Albie''': They hadn't done me any harm!

** The most extreme example of this is present in "True Romance": Fitz compares [[spoiler: Janice to Margaret Thatcher. Janice's murders of three intelligent young men destroyed their own futures, while Thatcher and her austerity programs destroyed the future for the entire British youth.]]

* FingerFraming: A character in one story did this a lot; he was somewhat autistic and fixated on movies. Someone else commented on it at a funeral that included the quote "We see the world through a glass, darkly": "You don't see the the world through a glass, darkly. You see it through your fingers."

* WickedCultured: Albie in "To Be a Somebody". Part of his motive; he resents being mistaken for an inarticulate hooligan when he's smart enough to identify a Bach piece from a few bars.

* NotSoDifferent: Alluded to in ''To Be A Somebody'' in the interrogation scene with Fitz and Albie. Unusually for this trope, Fitz is the one who points it out and Albie denies it. A rare case of the hero giving this point to the unwilling villain when it's usually the other way round. Though Fitz is [[AntiHero only a hero]] [[DefectiveDetective in a narrow sense.]]

* AccentRelapse: When Fitz gets ''very'' drunk or ''very'' emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie.

* AbusiveParents: Several of the criminals are victims of these

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: In-character version: When Fitz gets ''very'' drunk or ''very'' emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie. Interestingly, this is actually an inversion out-of-character, as Robbie Coltrane is a scion of the fairly prominent Howie family and went to [[BoardingSchool public school]], and as such actually spoke in ''[[AhPea RP]]'' until he was at the Glasgow School of Art (he quickly ditched the RP in favour of an accent much like Fitz's "educated" one after being ridiculed there for sounding like Prince Charles). His ability to do a fairly flawless Glaswegian accent is therefore pretty impressive acting.

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: In-character version: When Fitz gets ''very'' drunk or ''very'' emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie. Interestingly, this is actually an inversion out-of-character, as Robbie Coltrane is a scion of the fairly prominent Howie family and went to [[BoardingSchool public school]], and as such actually spoke in ''[[AhPea RP]]'' until he was at the Glasgow School of Art (he quickly ditched the RP in favour of an accent much like Fitz's "educated" one after being ridiculed there for sounding like Prince Charles).

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: In-character version: When Fitz gets ''very'' drunk or ''very'' emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie. Interestingly, this is actually an inversion out-of-character, as Robbie Coltrane is a scion of the fairly prominent Howie family and went to [[BoardingSchool public school]], and as such actually spoke in ''RP'' until he was at the Glasgow School of Art (he quickly ditched the RP in favour of an accent much like Fitz's "educated" one after being ridiculed there for sounding like Prince Charles).

* OohMeAccentsSlipping: When Fitz gets ''very'' drunk or ''very'' emotional (or both), his educated Scottish English turns into full-on Weegie.

* DrinkBasedCharacterization: Fitz will have a Scotch and dry. Make it a double if someone else is paying.

* ExpressLaneLimit: "To Be a Somebody" had Fitz get into an argument with a cashier while trying to use the express. His argument was that he technically only had two items (larger and some kind of junk food): he just just had multiple examples of each item.

* ArentYouGoingToRavishMe: Played seriously in "To Say I Love You" where Tina's spree is motivated by the fact that she was the only one of her family '''not''' molested by her father (because, as Fitz points out at the end, her father realised she was likely to tell someone about it, whereas her sister wouldn't out of shame).

* KavorkaMan: Fitz.

* OpenMystery: ''To Say I Love You'' from the first series and every story from the next two, though ''Brotherly Love'' plays with it in three ways as it features [[BigBadEnsemble three distinct criminals]]; the first murderer is played straight as we see him committing the crime; the second [[spoiler: is also seen, but only during her second killing midway through the second episode]], and the third is the rapist who attacked Penhaligon in the previous serial, whom Fitz and everyone else is sure is [[spoiler:Jimmy Beck]] but who has been strenuously and convincingly denying it since the end of the last series, is never actually seen committing it, and whom the audience can never be ''quite'' sure is guilty, especially since Fitz has got it horribly wrong before, even though he's the obvious suspect.[[spoiler: Turns out it really was him.]]

* StalkerWithACrush: Janice

* ThenLetMeBeEvil: Albies stated motive in ''To Be a Somebody'' - "Treat people like scum and they start acting like scum!".

* YourCheatingHeart:
** Fitz and Judith are both adulterers. Judith is inclined to get rather sanctimonious about Fitz' adultery.
** The adulterous behaviour of DC Giggs, Michael Trant and David Harvey are all significant plot points.

* FreudianExcuse: Deconstructed. Most of the murderers are very damaged and shown some sympathy by Fitz but he also makes it clear to them that they are still responsible for their crimes.