This article was originally published in The Courier on 21st December 2013.
The
Great Train Robbery: Wednesday
and Thursday, BBC1
The
Call Centre Christmas: Tuesday,
BBC3
Paul
Whitelaw
After being dramatised in Phil
Collins vehicle Buster and more recently in Jeff Pope's ITV
series Mrs Biggs, is there anything left to say about The
Great Train Robbery of 1963? Written by Chris “Broadchurch”
Chibnall – a man better known to Doctor Who fans as the
show's most desperately mediocre writer – the BBC's two-part
dramatisation of this notorious crime was hobbled by a general
feeling of redundancy.
Episode two, which focused on the
less familiar efforts of the Flying Squad to bring the robbers to
justice, was, admittedly, marginally more revealing. Yet despite
being competently executed and reliably anchored by Jim Broadbent as
shrewd copper Tommy Butler, it was, beneath the agreeable period
trappings, little more than a pedestrian police procedural: Heartbeat
with hair on its chest.
Chibnall's attempts to draw
comparisons between the methodical endeavours of Butler and
unflappable criminal mastermind Bruce Reynolds were rather pat and
cursory (he's not a writer of any great depth or nuance). The
unconvincingly fictionalised scene towards the end in which the two
men confronted each other to quietly share their philosophies just
stopped short of Reynolds espousing that hoary old cliché, “You
know, despite being on opposing sides, you and I are very much
alike.”
But at least Chibnall resisted the
temptation to romanticise Reynolds and his gang. Rather than being
portrayed as lovably naughty geezers, they instead came across as a
rather inept bunch of thugs – their propensity for violence
thankfully wasn't ignored – who pulled off the heist more by lucky
accident than design.
Reynolds in particular was depicted
as a slightly desperate fantasist, who fooled himself into justifying
his actions as an heroic attack against the establishment. His choice
of apparel during the robbery was, apparently, an army uniform: he
may have seen himself as a capable general overseeing a mission run
with military precision, but, as Chibnall dryly observed, in reality
his army career amounted to four days of National Service before
going AWOL.
Reynolds' half-baked idealism was
further undermined by the over-familiar yet commendably unflinching
re-enactment of the robbery itself. Without recourse to melodramatic
flourishes, director Julian Jarrold captured how terrifying the
experience was for the train guards, drivers and tellers. The lives
of driver Jack Mills and his young colleague, David Whitby, were
ruined by Reynolds and his cosh-wielding gang, and it's to Chibnall's
credit that he didn't shy away from this uglier side of the story.
Nevertheless, this was still a
production which, while adequately diverting in its undemanding way,
didn't really need to exist. Though Chibnall can't be be blamed for
failing to shed new light on such an overexposed case, one wonders
why he bothered to tackle it in the first place. Still, if the likes
of this and Broadchurch keep him busy and away from Doctor
Who, then we should thank heaven for humongous mercies.
An uncompromising advocate of
“morale-boosting” sing-songs, it's little wonder that call centre
CEO Nev Wilshire is a big fan of Christmas. The Call Centre
Christmas caught up with the overbearingly genial Nev, whose
often inappropriately hands-on approach to team leading turned him
into a reality TV star this year. Yet compared to 2013's other
documentary smash, Educating Yorkshire, Nev's star vehicle
feels awfully drab and inconsequential. The vaguely unsettling
novelty of his bumptious personality can only go so far before it
palls.
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