Representation of Genders within Luther

The first scene of the first episode of Luther opens with a strong, black
man(DCI John Luther) chasing a white man(Henry Madson) around a warehouse
building to be concluded by Luther allowing Madson lose his grip and fall down
several stories in the warehouse. Skip to modern day Luther has just been
cleared for duty after spending 7 months in a mental hospital he is first greeted
by his superior authority DSU Rose Teller who welcomes him briefly then throws
him into a case. The case involves a women (Alice Morgan) believed to be the
murder of her parents after Luther observes her for less then an hour. This idea is
supported by Luthers partner a youthful, enthusiastic DS named Justin Ripley.
Also introduced in the episode is DCSU Russell Cornish Roses Superior, another
DCI working in Luthers building Ian Reed and Luthers wife (Zoe Luther) who has
been cheating on him with Mark North thought out his suspension.

Luthers first episode features a cast of six men and three women,
completely unrepresentative of society in ratio but maybe correctly
representative of women in society within the law enforcement industry. The
ratio of men to women in the UK is 1.05 men to every one woman so an accurate
representation of gender in a cast consisting of nine people to do with numbers
would be four women and five men. This doesnt seem that different from the
current cast in Luther but when you notice that there is two men for every
woman the female characters are considerably outnumbered this could be
interpreted as saying that women are worse and less successful at law
enforcement careers. However the show could on the other hand just be trying to
accurately portray the police and have found real information about the amount
of women employed by the police so rather then them sending out a message of
how they think women would survive and exist with the law enforcement
industry they are just trying to stay true to how the world is and maybe even
expose the police for giving women less career opportunities.

Considering all of this above women are not poorly represented in Luther
with three strong well developed female characters. The first introduced and
most good of the three DSU Rose Teller the main characters boss a strong
female in a very successful level of her career. She is clearly a hard working and
intelligent women to have got to where she is; she seems to be a very successful
unit leader with Luther being under her supervision and him having quite a
reputation that a young new DS wanted to work with him. The character of DSU
Teller could easily be either gender, of any race or sexuality making it a good
well developed character that is not identified by there gender, race, sexuality,
or class. The next female character introduced was Zoe Luther that you gather is
in a very bad relationship with Luther that hasnt been functioning for months.
What you find about her in her short screen time is that she is also a strong
female character that makes her own decisions and has control of her life with a
successful career working in an expensive building somewhere within London.
But keeps a secret from Luther, she has and is having an affair possibly because
of Luther being aware for so long and his inability to sustain a healthy
relationship or possibly due to her being unfaithful as the audience you are torn
between making a judgement on which of the later is true. This is not revealed in
the first episode and makes you think she is not as nice as you would hope to
think. This character is not defined by their gender, sexuality, or race in my
opinion they could easily be portrayed as a person of a different race, gender or
sexuality. The fact that she the women in her heterosexual relationship is the
partner cheating on the other is vary rare to see in any media which makes for a
much more interesting possibly not explored before storyline to prevail seeing
how Luther will react and how she will get treated by other characters. The last
female character in the first episode is Alice Morgan a hugely intelligent; she was
a child prodigy who enrolled in Oxford University at age 13. She received her
Ph.D. in Astrophysics at age 18, for her study of dark matter distribution in disc
galaxies. The show presents her as a very psychotic person that likes to mess
with you brain. After her encounter with Luther you believe that she is the
murder of her parents and she did it because she hated what they did to her. The
character of Alice Morgan I feel could easily be a character of any race, gender,
or sexuality. The character is incredibly well developed with in the first episode
giving you an idea of how her life has ran its course, if you were told the
characters biography but not the gender you would presume it to be a nerdy
Indian man with glasses wearing tweed blazers or that is the stereotype for
physicians and child prodigies. So it is great to see the show portraying women
as the extremely intelligent people.