Peter Weller

In Sons of Anarchy (2008), the bikes travel two by two and faces float above the clubhouse table in the low light. Peter Weller is one of several directors taking turns on Kurt Sutter’s series, so those images cannot be claimed as his signature. What we value in his directing is the attention to actors within tense, busy drama. He is a dependable television director whose interest in how people behave gives the action some weight.

The work began with Partners (1993), a short he wrote, directed and acted in. He then directed two episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) in the mid-1990s, before the television film Gold Coast (1997), adapted from Elmore Leonard. We were absorbed by Homicide, because Andre Braugher made its detectives as compelling as their cases. Its restless editing sometimes gets between us and performances worth watching without the extra fuss.

His directing work increased from the early 2000s, taking in both procedural and character-led television. In House (2004), Hugh Laurie’s sour humour and the friendships remain appealing after the medical puzzles grow familiar. Hawaii Five-0 (2010) has an agreeable cast and brisk action, though the central partnership’s bickering wears us down. Weller directed fifteen episodes between 2013 and 2020, a substantial run in a programme whose pleasures are modest but clear.

Weller directed eleven episodes of Sons of Anarchy between 2011 and 2014, and its feuds suit his interest in vengeance and responsibility. Cinematographers Paul Maibaum, Edward J. Pei and Jonathan Freeman shoot Charming in hard, flat daylight and keep the clubhouse dim. Editors Sidney Wolinsky and Hunter M. Via repeatedly cut towards song-backed closing montages, which work until their repetition becomes wearying. Weller’s ability to sustain tension within an episode cannot resolve the series’ habit of restaging betrayals across its last four seasons. Try it for the ensemble work, but expect to be asked to sit through the same grievance more than once.