Flushed with the success of prestige titles like Normal People and Peaky Blinders, the BBC has apparently decided to take a break from good taste and plumb the grisly depths of the British imagination on a Netflix budget.

For the uninitiated, Luther began as a crime procedural that ran for five seasons between 2010 and 2019, following the titular Detective Chief Inspector (Idris Elba) as he tangled with dastardly criminals, particularly unreptentant psychopath Alice (Ruth Wilson), who went from unlikely aide to enemy-with-benefits. Even seasoned viewers may have forgotten quite how loopy the show became, flinging its last shreds of real-life morality to the wind in favour of borderline-grindhouse plots with A-list actors.

Comparable to Sherlock in its magical-realist depiction of the criminal justice system, Luther posed a stark and insanely camp contrast to contemporary drama on either side of the Atlantic, particularly its stars’ meatier turns in The Wire and The Affair. And now, like a weird, creepy middle school ex popping up at your workplace, it is back.

Luther takes place in a very special version of London where certain tangible aspects — like the Metropolitan Police and the tube system — exist to serve our protagonist’s interests. Other aspects, like the many discussions about race and sexual violence that have taken place since 2010, do not appear to exist at all. Thus, we get a stab at a high-concept plot fusing Saw and Black Mirror, with a strapping, tweed-clad Elba dashing nonchalantly between Soho and the frozen North in pursuit of a perverted tech-villain-slash-serial-killer (Andy Serkis).

Even if you’ve seen the show, its five seasons of ludicrous intrigue have likely receded into the mists of memory by now; fortunately, the two-hour Netflix feature makes no attempt at justifying, let alone recapping, this backstory. All you need to know is that Luther is basically emo Austin Powers, and he demands the requisite level of suspended belief. After the exhausting realism and psychological depth of shows like Happy Valley or This Is Going To Hurt, it’s time to sit back and witness the full glory of the pulpy Bri’ish crime genre, which is equal parts soap opera and torture porn.

DCI John Luther starts off in the slammer, having been ‘framed’ by dastardly David Robey (Serkis) for the slew of extrajudicial killings he committed in the TV show. Robey, a sadistic, Jigsaw-esque serial killer with a taste for internet blackmail, causes havoc in people’s lives with a lazy assortment of tech bogeys: deepfakes, red rooms, hacked phones, all the stuff of boomer nightmares. When Luther inevitably busts out of prison using only a flaming mattress and his rippling pecs, former colleagues Odette Raine (Cynthia Erivo) and Martin (Schenk) vacillate between trying to catch him and aiding his search for the sicko.

Defiantly un-cinematic in its presentation, the film plays like an incredibly camp, ludicurous Christmas special; you can almost hear Luther creator Neil Cross rubbing his hands with glee at the prospect of a high-budget, low-class rampage. The trademark Netflix combination of stacks of cash and flawed editing comes in full force here, with a bizarre schlep between set pieces designed to pull the viewer on the whole spectrum of ‘WTF’ reaction: a mass suicide in Piccadilly Circus, a cavernous sex slash tattoo shop in Soho, and a totally unexplained jaunt over to Norway. It’s like watching a montage of tourist ads.

And even with all that said, for fans of either Elba or the pulpiest of British horror — expect exploitation of the gays, the girlies, and, uh, the disabled — Fallen Sun offers a heady dose of demented charisma.