Series / Hard Sun

Hard Sun is a British pre-apocalyptic crime drama series, written and created by Neil Cross, the man behind the similarly dark police drama Luther . It premiered on BBC One on January 6th 2018.

The series follows detectives DCI Charlie Hicks (Jim Sturgess) and DI Elaine Renko (Agyness Deyn), two polar opposite police officers who find themselves thrust into a conspiracy during the investigation of what appears to be the routine death of a hacker in London. They stumble upon proof that due to a mysterious cosmic event, the world is facing certain destruction in five years, a fact the powers-that-be would very much like to keep under wraps. The duo must use every bit of their ingenuity to protect themselves as they are pursued by MI5 operatives who are trying to silence them for good, in addition to dealing with the various crimes individuals begin committing with the knowledge their days are numbered.

Cross has revealed that he has sorted out plans for five seasons, which would detail what can happen in the show in a five-year arc. However, BBC announced that the show will not see another season in announcement made on August 2018.

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This show provides examples of:

• Accidental Murder: After discovering fellow hacker Lloyd Hammond gained access to GCHQ and obtained the Hard Sun file, Sunny Ramachandran and Hammond got into an argument as to what to do with the file. This resulted in them scuffling on his balcony, with Hammond eventually falling to his death and becoming impaled on a tree. Sunny then tried to make it look like Hammond had committed suicide as a result of feeling guilty over watching child pornography.
• Action Girl:
  • Renko is pretty tough, being able to gain the upper hand against Hicks in a fight (although she did have a knuckleduster and a baton). Throughout the series she is attacked, punched and stabbed by men much bigger than her, but is always able to get back up and deal with her injuries. She is also able to take down Angie Jones, a trained MI5 agent, with relative ease.
  • Grace Morrigan also shows herself to be capable of defending herself, especially for someone who appears to work in an office and have others do the dirty work for her. When her operatives betray her and try and take her into custody, she is able to disarm and incapacitate all three of them in a matter of seconds.
• Ambiguously Gay: It is strongly hinted that the man Daniel Renko goes to meet in the drug house when he escapes from hospital is an ex-boyfriend.
• Apocalypse How: It is not initially made clear exactly what Hard Sun is, only that it is an "extinction level event" associated with the sun that is due to take place in five years. The data on the file also contains information about predicted casualties, plans to implement martial law and set up internment camps. At the end of Season One, "Hard Sun" is revealed to be a black hole that has entered into a binary orbit with the sun, siphoning off its gas. As the sun is consumed, it will lead the Earth's orbit to decay, flinging it out into interstellar space if doesn't succumb to the black hole's gravitational pull as well. At the end of the opening credits, when the words "Hard Sun" are shown, you are looking at a black hole.
• Artistic License – Religion: Serial Killer Thom Blackwood confesses to Catholic Priest Father Dennis Chapman that he has committed murder and continues to kill afterwards, telling the priest that his motive is that he has had a Faith–Heel Turn, having lost his faith in God and daring the Almighty to stop his murder spree if he really exists. Father Chapman then becomes a public pariah because word gets out that he knows who the killer is but refuses to tell anyone because it was during a confession and his oath as a cleric prevents him from doing so... except, the Church has pretty strict rules and procedures in cases like this, and in the scenario presented Blackwood wasn't "confessing" anything nor asking for forgiveness, rather he was bragging, threatening and blaspheming, hence Chapman could have told anyone he liked with a clear conscience and not violated the rules of the Church at all.
• Badass Longcoat: Worn by spree killer Thom Blackwood, mainly because he can use it to hide a machete underneath.
• Bodyguard Betrayal: When Hicks and Renko successfully make it look like Morrigan has been selling state secrets behind her superiors backs, the group of operatives she was previously in command of turn against her, and remove her from police custody to face certain death. However, she is able to escape after disarming all three of them.
• Boyish Short Hair: The style sported by Renko.
• By-the-Book Cop: DI Elaine Renko for the most, which is fitting considering she is placed on Charlie's team to investigate him for the death of his partner. Nevertheless, as the series progresses and the stakes get higher, she also starts breaking protocol when necessary. She is also shown to carry a brass knuckleduster on duty, a weapon that is illegal to possess in the UK.
• Calling the Cops on the FBI: Played with a few times.
  • When Hicks and Renko are first being pursued by a large group of MI5 agents intent on killing them, Hicks starts making a lot of noise on the street to attract attention, and shouts to people in their houses to call the police on the operatives.
  • Later, when Morrigan and her operatives attempt to kidnap DI Renko and put a gun to her head, Hicks informs them that an armed response team is on the way (it was responding to another call at the same address), and if they see the plainclothes agents with a gun to a police officers head, they will immediately gun them down. Cue Morrigan and her cronies angrily leaving with their tails between their legs.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: When the MI5 agents ambush Renko and Hicks as they are taking Ramachandran and his buyer back to custody, they use a signal jammer which prevents Hicks from being able to call for backup.
• The Cracker:
  • Sunny Ramachandran hacks into various corporate and government databases, and sells the information he gathers to order and for profit. However, he expresses concern when a fellow hacker breaks into GCHQ and obtains the Hard Sun file, knowing that the British government will not respond kindly to such action.
  • Lloyd Hammond, the hacker who gains access to the GCHQ database and obtains the Hard Sun file.
• Creepy Monotone: The way Grace Morrigan speaks, even when she is about to order her operatives to shoot a pregnant woman in the stomach.
• Dirty Cop: DCI Charlie Hicks. Although he is highly respected by his colleagues, and even comes across as a Gentleman Detective to most people, he is first introduced committing armed robbery, and is later shown to have executed his colleague and partner in cold blood. However, some of the corrupt activities he engages in can be seen as having noble intentions, such as the money he steals in the opening of the first episode being from a criminal syndicate and he gives it to the widow of his deceased partner.
• Easy Evangelism: For some reason upon looking at the video people seem to instantly believe that its contents are true.
• False Friend: DCI Charlie Hicks and his boss DCS Roland Bell appear to have a good professional and personal relationship with one another. However, it is revealed that Bell despises Hicks, and suspects he was the one behind the murder of DCI Alex Butler. He wants Hicks to go down so bad he even attempts to go against orders from MI5 to hand Grace Morrigan over, attempting to remove her from the police station as she promises she can deliver him Hicks on a platter.
• Fictional Media: Although the real life BBC is shown several times throughout the series (this being a BBC show), the rest of the news publishers and channels in the show are fictional. These include: Paladin News Group and London Broadcast News.
• Fire-Forged Friends / Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hicks and Renko have a complicated relationship to say the least. He resents her for being the officer investigating his involvement in the murder of DCI Alex Butler, and also clashes with her as to what to do with the Hard Sun file (Hicks wants to hand it back to Morrigan in exchange for protection for his family), and she views him as a morally bankrupt and corrupt officer. This results in them frequently, and rather violently fighting with one another. However, they are the only two who know the truth about the conspiracy, and eventually decide the bigger enemy is not eachother, but the powers that be such as Morrigan and the security services.
• Frame-Up:
  • Sunny Ramachandran tries to make it look like Lloyd Hammond killed himself due to guilt from watching child porn. However, this is later proven by the detectives to be a stitch up, as the indecent images were downloaded to Hammonds computer only minutes before he died, there was no trace of semen on any items in the flat, and Sunny removed the password from Hammonds device to enable the police to more easily find the porn, despite the fact such a seasoned hacker would never leave his computer unguarded.
  • Renko and Hicks are successfully able to convince both their superiors and even MI5 that Grace Morrigan is dirty, and was going behind her superiors backs to sell state secrets. They do so by planting the gun Hicks used to murder his partner DCI Butler in her home, making it look like she killed him to cover her own tracks.
• Good Policing, Evil Policing: Or MI5 Evil, Metropolitan Police Good. Throughout the series the security services are shown to be sinister brutal operatives who have no problem killing whoever is in their way to prevent the information coming out, whereas the Met Police (or just Renko and Hicks) are shown trying to expose their treachery and inform the public of what is being hidden.
• Government Conspiracy: The world as we know it is going to end in five years due to an unspecified solar event. The British security services are aware of this, and are keeping to above top secret to prevent disorder and anarchy from erupting across the country and the world, and are willing to kill anyone who could potentially make it public. However, when Renko releases a part of the file to the media, it is then dismissed as a hoax/conspiracy, equivalent to that of the Hitler diaries.
• Impersonating an Officer: Angie Jones and other MI5 agents working for Morrigan pretend they are colleagues of Hicks to lure his wife into their car, where they almost kill her on Morrigans orders.
• Insane Equals Violent: Daniel Renko, who has a habit of harming both himself and anyone in his immediate vicinity with razor blades.
• Jack The Rip Off: Thom Blackwood's killing spree inspires another man to attempt the same, whilst dressed in identical clothing. However, when the copycat tries to attack a young couple in their home, he is stabbed to death with a kitchen knife by the woman.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Charlie Hicks. He may be a corrupt bastard who is cheating on his wife and murdered his former police partner, but he is fiercely protective over both his colleagues and children. Even when Elaine's psychotic son (who previously attacked him and stole the Hard Sun file) is about to be killed by Morrigan and her team, he changes his mind and comes back to take down Morrigan and help the Renko's.
  DCI Charlie Hicks: I don't care who you are, you do not get to kill children.
• Just Before the End: The series takes place 5 years before a massive solar event codenamed Hard Sun is due to wipe out humanity. However, at the end of the first series it is suggested that they actually have much less time, with what appears to be a massive solar flare emanating from the sun being shown before cutting to black. When seen in HD, the "Solar Flare" is the accretion disk around the Event Horizon of a singularity. Over time, the increase in gravity will cause the orbit to decay, with the Earth heating up in the process.
• Karma Houdini: Averted with Grace Morrigan. Although when she is initially arrested DCS Bell laments that they will never see a prosecution as she is MI5 and they "take care of their own", it later transpires that her superiors, who believe the frame up orchestrated by Renko and Hicks, plan to kill her to keep her quiet.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Morrigan and her team think they have it in the bag when they apprehend Renko and leave her son to die of a heroin overdose in a drug house, assuming that Hicks doesn't care what happens to her given that she was investigating him. However, Hicks returns and holds them at gunpoint, telling them that a police armed response team is incoming, and if they see the plainclothes agents holding weapons on detectives, they will be gunned down. Infuriated, but realising they have been beat, Morrigan and company release Renko and make haste.
• The Mentally Disturbed:
  • Daniel Renko, Elaines institutionalised son who appears to suffer from severe psychosis, often resorting to self harm and seriously harming others (the show opens with him trying to kill his mother by burning her alive during a psychotic break).
  • Chris Chaplin, the crazed serial killer who brutally rapes and murders those who he feels have wronged him, as well as members of his ex-wifes family simply to make her feel the pain.
  • Thom Blackwood, a mentally ill lapsed Catholic obsessed with the Hard Sun "conspiracy" who resorts to going on a murder spree throughout London to try and invoke a response from God so he can affirm his existence.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Elaine and Daniel Renko look more like siblings than mother and son. This is both due to Elaine's fairly youthful appearance (she is played by model Agyness Deyn), and the fact she gave birth to Daniel at 14 after being raped by one of her teachers.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Plenty throughout the series.
  • The first episode opens with DI Renko being attacked, beaten and stabbed in her home, before being dowsed in petrol and left for dead as the perp sets fire to the building. It is later revealed the attacker was her own son.
  • When Morrigan offers Hicks and his family protection in exchange for retrieving the file from Renko, the two end up beating the crap out of eachother on a dirty beach by the Thames when she refuses to hand it over, with Renko eventually getting the upper hand due to being armed with a baton and knuckleduster.
  • Renko gets the crap beaten out of her when she tries to take down Chris Chapel. Hicks then proceeds to taser and nearly beat Chapel to death, only to be stopped by Renko as the mans young son is watching.
  • Hicks and Renko fight eachother again over the drive when Renko's son Daniel is in possession of it and she tries to protect him. This time, Hicks gains the upper hand, anticipating her moves having been previously bested in their first fight.
• The Paralyzer: The MI5 agents preferred method of incapacitating people on the rare occasion they dont just gun them down. DCI Hicks also arms himself with a police issue Taser when he and Renko are in pursuit of Chris Chapel.
• Public Execution: Thom Blackwood executes a news reporter and his crew on air whilst they are covering a candlelit memorial for the first person he killed. Although it was on a crowded street, the rest of the public was too terrified to intervene.
• Refuge in Audacity: When Hicks and Renko are cornered on both sides of a residential street by MI5 operatives trying to kill them, Hicks takes out his baton and starts smashing car windows, setting off alarms which alert the residents to their presence. He then loudly shouts that they are police officers being attacked, and that the residents should call the police. It buys them enough time to hotwire a car and briefly escape.
  DCI Charlie Hicks: *smashes window* My name is Charlie Hicks! I am a police officer! I am unarmed, and I am under attack! Call the police, tell them officers Charlie Hicks and Elaine Renko are under attack! *smashes window* Take note of these people, photograph them if you can, commit their description to your memory! *smashes window*
• Scars Are Forever:
  • DI Elaine Renko has multiple scars on both her arms from when she was attacked with a razor blade by her son, Daniel. After her encounter with Chris Chapel, she also sports a scar on the bridge of her nose throughout the rest of the series.
  • Daniel Renko has two small circular scars under his right eye, after his mother tried to stab him with a carving fork in self defense (but couldnt bring herself to) when he was attacking her.
  • After Renko punches him in the face with a brass knuckleduster, DCI Hicks sports several small scars around his left eye for the rest of the episodes.
• Serial Killer: Although dismissed by the government as a hoax, the Hard Sun "conspiracy theory" brings lots of crazies and psychos out of the woodwork, who go on killing sprees knowing or believing their time is numbered.
  • Chris Chapel, a disgruntled divorced and unemployed father who decides to exact revenge on those who have wronged him and kill his children as a form of kindness to prevent them from being exposed to the chaos and more horrific death of Hard Sun. He first beats the man who his ex-wife cheated on him with and breaks all of his limbs with a hammer, before making him watch as he rapes his wife before bludgeoning them both to death. He them breaks into his ex-wife's house and slits the throats of her parents and sister, whilst facetiming it live to her. Finally, he tries to euthanize their children, but luckily is unable to before Hicks and Renko intervene.
  • Thom Blackwood, a mentally ill lapsed Catholic who is struggling with his faith after witnessing horrors as an aid worker, and knowing of the impending doom that will be brought about by Hard Sun. Wanting to see a sign of intervention from God to reaffirm his faith, he goes on a brutal killing spree throughout London, targeting innocent people and those he deems as "good Samaritans".
• Sharp-Dressed Man:
  • DCI Charlie Hicks is pretty much exclusively seen wearing fancy suits, overcoats and leather shoes. This contrasts to DI Elaine Renko, who conversely is seen in T-shirts, bomber jackets and hoodies with black trainers.
  • Mr.Weiss, the serial lobotomiser who kidnaps DS George Mooney when the latter attempts to arrest him alone.
• Straight Gay: DCS Roland Bell, Hicks and Renko's stern faced superior officer. It only becomes apparent when he casually references his husband in a conversation with a colleague.
• Suicide is Shameful: The view of Mr. Weiss, another one of the crazies who comes out of the woodwork due to the Hard Sun "conspiracy". He befriends those who want to kill themselves, tricking them into thinking he will help them to so. However, he actually kidnaps and lobotomises them, which he believes allows them to live a happier existence instead of killing themselves.
• Time Skip: A month passes between the events of episode one and two. In this time, the information on Hard Sun given to the press by Renko has been dismissed as a hoax by the government, with Will Benedetti having lost his job at Paladin News Group over it and the majority of the public believing it is too far fetched to be true.
• Turbulent Priest: Father Dennis Chapman, who refuses to break the code of confessional confidentiality to help the police track down a killer who confessed to him, despite knowing his name.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: How Morrigan views herself. True, she has no problem with gunning people down, trying to kill police officers and even threatening to have one of her men shoot a pregnant woman in the stomach in order to contain the Hard Sun file, but she views it as a better alternative to the chaos and anarchy that would plague the world if the information got out.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Strongly averted.
  • The series opens with DI Elaine Renko being beaten, stabbed and left for dead, and she is later hit again multiple times in her various fights with DCI Charlie Hicks.
  • Chris Chapel brutally murders both the wife of the man who slept with his ex-wife, as well as his sister and mother in law.
  • Thom Blackwood kills Jamie Unwin, a woman who worked at a suicide hotline, and later tries to stab a young girl and DI Renko before he is apprehended.