Aidan Gillen looks familiar, doesn’t he? Just look at his face on the DVD cover pictured right… He looks like a younger Geoffrey Rush, doesn’t he? That was my first impression, but then I realized that I had seen Gillen before, and not just because that photo made him look really similar to the King’s Speech star. I’d seen him as Thomas Carcetti in HBO’s The Wire! Yes, that was it. And then, just a few days after I got the set, I settled down to watch my Game of Thrones screener and found him staring back at me as Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish — one of my favorite characters from the series. Gillen’s performance there was pretty engrossing, and I found the same to be true of his role in Identity (on DVD from Acorn Media 5/3).
Identity seems the most like an American show out of all of Acorn Media’s DVDs that I’ve seen. That’s probably why it’s being remade for America, after all, though I have a feeling that I’ll end up liking this version better. It’s really sort of the typical procedural, complete with the prodigal-leading-man-with-a-dark-side motif that’s in so many American shows. In fact, the one complaint I would have about Identity is that it’s too run-of-the-mill. Oh, it’s pretty fun to watch, and it has a new topic (identity theft) that does put a new spin on it all. But at its heart, its gritty technological center, Identity is just the smarter, British cousin of CSI.
Save for Gillen, the cast is largely forgettable. In fact, Gillen is really the only magnetic thing about the show, save for the surprisingly good guest stars. Even the one strand of a continuing story that the show has is somewhat unnecessary. Yes, it’s Gillen supporting the whole show — but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the watch. Relatively, it’s one of the better procedural I’ve seen– probably due to its unique premise. Crime show fans will absolutely eat this show up, and with good reason: it’s got elements of what could make today’s cop shows better. An added bonus: if you get the show on DVD now, you’ll be ahead of the trend when the American remake rolls around in the fall.
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