This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 16th January 2016.
Jericho:
Thursday, STV
Beowulf:
Return to the Shieldlands: Sunday,
STV
Tracey
Ullman's Show: Monday, BBC
One
Paul
Whitelaw
By
virtue of its scant competition, Jericho has the distinction
of being the best British western since Carry On Cowboy. I can
think of no higher praise.
The
setting is an 1870s Yorkshire Dales shanty town full of rough and
tumble navvies toiling to construct a viaduct. All the standard
frontier archetypes are here – handsome hero, stoic heroine,
brothel madam with a heart of gold etc. - but they're written and
performed with enough charm to keep tiredness at bay.
Though
it sounds ridiculous in theory, series creator Steve Thompson
(Sherlock; Doctor Who) has managed to transpose the dusty
tropes of Wild West fiction to 19th century England
without making a dang fool of himself. It works because he playfully
acknowledges his obvious influences while avoiding outright pastiche.
It's a brisk, broad, enjoyable production.
Not
that it's perfect. Essentially a sanitised Deadwood by way of
Little House on the Prairie, it all looks far too clean. This
supposedly rough-hewn town reeks of IKEA-fresh timber. The costumes
bear not a speck of grime. Jessica Raine's wig looks like a plastic
Lego turban. No one ever swears.
Nevertheless,
I can't deny the intriguing, novel promise of a drama in which an
enigmatic African-American sheriff (the excellent Clarke Peters from
The Wire) presides over a white community of working-class
Victorian northerners. Loosely inspired by historical events,
Jericho, in its wholly escapist way, is more ambitious than
yer average period circus.
By
contrast, turgid fantasy drama Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands
is a hairy heap of grunting nonsense signifying zilch. A U-rated
Game of Thrones, this supposedly child-friendly romp suffers
from a flabby narrative and chronically dull, poorly defined
characters. The glowering Beowulf himself resembles a dazed Neil
Oliver wandering through a poorly policed battle re-enactment.
This
charmless non-adventure fills the early evening slot recently vacated
by the flawed yet far more likeable Jekyll & Hyde. A more
natural home would be a mouldering ditch.
You
get the slot you deserve. Despite being hyped as a triumphant return
to our shores after 30 years working in America, Tracey Ullman's
Show has been buried in a post-watershed graveyard trough. It's
as if the BBC, having procured the ex-pat comedienne's services,
forgot to provide her with a project worth returning for.
This
painfully thin confection of half-baked sketches suffers from a flat,
lifeless atmosphere that stifles whatever potential it may have had.
Ullman's impersonations of Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith are
impeccable, but without strong material to support them they're
little more than top-flight party tricks.
The Dench skits are typical
in that they take a very basic premise – Dame Jude exploits her
National Treasure status to get away with bad behaviour – without
bothering to build on it. A shrugging sense of “Will this do?”
hangs over the whole sorry enterprise.
Her depiction of Angela Merkel as a boozy, thin-skinned brawler who's
bought into her own beige sex symbol hype was mystifyingly weak. A
potentially damning musical number attacking Tory cuts proved utterly
toothless. A recurring sketch about a bemused woman returning home
after 28 years in a Thai prison worked only as a comment on Ullman's
long absence from British TV. It certainly wasn't funny.
She
should cut her losses and buy a one-way ticket back to the States.
Anything to escape from this misfire.
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