CRACKER: WHITE GHOST (TV) (UK, 1996) **
Distributor: ITV – Independent Television; Production Company: A&E Television Networks / Granada Television; Release Date: 28 October 1996; Running Time: 100m; Colour: Colour; Sound Mix: Dolby Stereo; Film Format: 16mm; Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1; BBFC Cert: 15.
Director: Richard Standeven; Writer: Paul Abbott; Executive Producer: Sally Head, Delia Fine; Producer: Hilary Bevan Jones; Director of Photography: Dick Dodd; Music Composer: Rick Wentworth; Film Editor: Tony Cranstoun; Casting Director: Andrew Hall, Marilyn Johnson; Production Designer: Chris Wilkinson; Art Director: David Butterworth; Costume Designer: Tudor George; Make-up: Sue Milton, Anastasia Shirley; Sound: Nick Steer.
Cast: Robbie Coltrane (Fitz), Ricky Tomlinson (D.C.I. Wise), Barnaby Kay (Dennis Philby), Freda Foh Shen (D.C.I. Janet Lee Cheung), Michael Pennington (Commander Gordon Ellison), Rene Liu (Su Lin Tang), Benedict Wong (Peter Yang), Glen Goei (Dr. Frank Sunny), David Bradley (Frank Carter), Pik Sen Lim (Wei Wei).
Synopsis: A British businessman operating in Hong Kong has feelings of inferiority and turns to murder when he faces bankruptcy.
Comment: The first post-series Cracker special suffers from its location transfer to Hong Kong. Whilst this adds a sense of international scale, the production lacks the gritty northern interplay between the cast and is based around a storyline that is pure genre formula. Fitz again too easily comes up with the right deductive answers and this is a problem for maintaining any level of authenticity or dramatic tension. Tomlinson’s appearance is a token gesture and largely played for comedic effect – devaluing the character. This would be the last appearance of Coltrane as Fitz for ten years, until 2006’s CRACKER, which saw the return of creator and scriptwriter Jimmy McGovern.