This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th April 2015.
Safe
House: Monday, STV
W1A:
Thursday, BBC Two
Paul
Whitelaw
Christopher Eccleston, that esteemed
grand dame of heavyweight British drama, returned to our screens last week
in four-part thriller Safe House. He plays Robert, a former
police officer cautiously approaching a quiet new existence with his
wife in the Lake District.
Despite blaming himself for the death
of a female witness in his care, Robert misses his old life on the
force. So when his former boss suggested that their remote lakeside
home would make an ideal safe house, he spied a chance to redeem
himself. Though initially reluctant, his wife soon capitulated when
the story deemed it necessary.
Keen to prove he'd left the past
behind, Robert burned old newspaper cuttings about his murdered
witness in a heavily symbolic garden bonfire.
Within a convenient matter of days,
they were harbouring a family on the run from a creepily bearded
stalker in an army-style parka (the internationally recognised
uniform of a wrong 'un). “You're completely safe,” Robert assured
them. “No one knows you're here.”
He might as well have chucked them in
the lake himself.
While it's inevitable that old weird
beard will eventually track them down, that doesn't excuse Safe
House's fatal lack of tension.
Its shortcomings were encapsulated by
one particularly clumsy moment of false suspense. When the youngest
member of the family disappeared at the safe house, his anxious
mother went searching for him. Inevitably, he was just outside
playing football with Robert, safe from the clutches of an antagonist
we knew to be miles away at the time. So what was the point?
Some mild intrigue is provided by
hints that the family patriarch, also a policeman, might be involved
in shady dealings. What does his assailant want from him? Why does
the missing teenage son keep ignoring dad's calls? And how the hell
did our hirsute parka fiend discover this lad with an ease that's
eluded the police?
So far I'm not convinced that the
answers, when they come, will be worth the wait.
Calling to mind a slow-moving remake
of Cape Fear, this first instalment lacked the instant punch
of recent TV thrillers such as Happy Valley and The
Missing. Decent use is made of its beautifully gloomy location,
and Eccleston does what's required of him. Frown, mostly. But this
lukewarm potboiler is too mechanically calculating, too rote by half.
A spoof documentary set in BBC
Broadcasting House, W1A returned with a typically amusing
one-hour special in which our hapless team of media buffoons welcomed
Prince Charles (just about) and wrestled with the issue of whether
their Wimbledon coverage is “too white”.
While it could never be mistaken for
savage satire, John Morton's Twenty Twelve sequel takes
impudent delight in poking fun at its paymaster. It presents an
abundantly accurate vision of the BBC as a well-meaning yet
hopelessly gaffe-prone behemoth governed by desperate execs who don't
know what they're doing.
A particularly timely gag involved a
weekly damage limitation meeting about Jeremy Clarkson. Meanwhile,
the running thread of commissioning endless regurgitations of the
same celebrity-fronted, populist tripe reached farcical heights, i.e.
Wimbledon coverage “judged” by Alan Sugar and fused with Strictly
Come Dancing. Obvious? Sure. But still valid.
Morton's deliberately clumsy,
tautological dialogue often irritates – not in the way it's
supposed to – and I'll always be irked by W1A's rather cosy,
self-congratulatory air: “Look at us making fun of ourselves! What
great sports we are!”
But it'll do. For now.
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