Luther/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation: The grey hero of the series, DCI Luther. True Cowboy Cop who is on the edge and will stop at nothing to make sure that the worst of the worst are stopped? Or is he a burnt out cop unable to feel for the victims driven to win by his sense of self worth? A man so apathetic to all the horror that the only person he can relate to is a cold-hearted killer.
  • Alice Morgan, a cynical genius whose outlook on the Universe — how everything and anything can be rendered into pointless nothing — led her to murder her parents after years of hidden resentment. Or a brilliant young woman shaped by being seen yet unseen who relishes her time with Luther as he knows her real self. And will do anything to help the closest thing she has to a friend. Including, as of episode four, Murder Henry Madsen.
• Awesome Ego: Alice Morgan.
• Complete Monster: The series has an extremely high Complete Monster to character ratio:
  • Kicking off the series, we have Henry Madsen who abducted women and children and tried to force them to be his family and if they defied him, he simply killed them and repeated the experiment. His Moral Event Horizon came when he sold one of the girls he had abducted into prostitution.
  • Next we have Terry Lynch, a disgruntled soldier who was dishonourably discharged for his violence. An abusive father on a grand scale, Terry used to beat his son Owen for wetting the bed and brainwashed him into being a terrorist and murderer and said that he didn't care if his son was killed. Caring for nothing but indulging his own love of violence, Terry was nothing but a vicious thug who felt more comfortable in prison than in the army as he was surrounded by other violent criminals.
  • Then there's Lucien Burgess, a sadistic devil-worshiping serial killer who abducts mothers from their homes, threatening to murder their children in order to blackmail them into accompanying him so that he can slowly exsanguinate them and drink their blood. A self-entitled Spoiled Brat who showed psychopathic tendencies from an early age, Lucien revelled in media publicity and was obsessed with gaining respect. Seeing Luther punch his lights out and ultimately set him up was extremely satisfying.
  • Along with Madsen, Toby Kent has to be the most disgusting example in the series. He's deeply sadistic and sexually perverted, hammers a nail through John's hand in his first appearance and attempts to rape Jenny. His lunacy has been present since his childhood as he admits to cutting open a cat to see if it had any kittens inside when he was a boy. He's worse than Joffrey!
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The title theme "Paradise Circus" by Massive Attack, and happens to be a pretty good summation of Luther's character.
• Fridge Logic: Why would Mark believe Luther's claim that he's innocent of Zoe's death, especially when he's working in cahoots with the woman who was behind him being beaten up?
• Nightmare Fuel: The pin in the ear scene.
  • In episode three a satanist has a thing for writing in human blood. Thing is, he tends to write whole novels at a time.
• Magnificent Bastard: Luther and Shenk.
• Magnificent Bitch: Alice.