This article was originally published in The Courier on 2nd April 2022.
NEXT WEEK’S TV
House of Maxwell – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm
The media tycoon Maxwell dynasty has always been mired in scandal and corruption. It finally collapsed for good last year when Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of grooming and trafficking underage girls.
This riveting three-part series, which plays out like an epically horrific thriller, examines the relationship between Robert Maxwell and his daughter: two utterly disgraced people who exemplify the toxic brutality of extreme wealth and power. Those white collar criminals felt they were entirely above the law.
Episode one focuses on Maxwell Senior, a megalomaniacal gangster who ‘mysteriously’ fell off his luxury yacht and drowned in 1991. The programme boasts access to secret recordings – paranoid Maxwell bugged his own phones – and a revealing wealth of hitherto unaired footage.
Cadbury Exposed: Dispatches – Monday, Channel 4, 8pm
Cadbury: a much-loved confectioner you can trust. Or so you and I thought until Dispatches came along with this undercover report.
Legal disclaimer: for tedious technical reasons I haven’t seen the programme, so please, Cadbury, don’t sue me or DC Thomson for what I’m about to write based on the official Channel 4 press release. Thanks.
Filmed in Ghana, the report exposes child labour in Cadbury’s supply chain. We hear from exhausted farmers who earn less than £2 a day, and children who have been injured while working long hours in searing heat conditions. Cadbury pride themselves on being an ethical company.
This sounds like an important piece of journalism, hence why I’m bringing it to your attention.
Travel Man – Monday, Channel 4, 8:30pm
For obvious reasons, Travel Man took an enforced sabbatical in 2019. Now it’s back. Original host Richard Ayoade has been replaced by fellow comedian Joe Lycett, but the format remains the same: Lycett spends 48 hours in a foreign city alongside another professional mirth-maker. Shallow fun ensues.
Lycett is joined this week by James Acaster (check out his Netflix stand-up specials, he’s great). Their destination is the Spanish part of the Basque Country. As always, it’s an affable diversion, but wouldn’t it be nice if Travel Man occasionally deviated from the same old roster of podcast/panel show guests? Imagine 48 Hours in Zagreb with Julian Cope. Or Ruth Madoc. We’d all watch that.
Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm
In the concluding episode of this excellent series about the censorious busybody, we arrive at Whitehouse’s imperial phase – if only in terms of her prominent public profile.
It suggests that, while this self-appointed moral guardian was presumably sincere in her clueless crusade against the permissive society, she also really enjoyed being famous. Whitehouse craved power and celebrity, but I daresay the irony of that ambition never occurred to her. This was not someone troubled by nuance of thought.
The programme does attempt some balance, with more even-handed decency than perhaps she deserves, but the abiding impression is one of a fearful, guilt-ridden person who went to her grave convinced that she was right. And we were all wrong.
A Believer’s Guide to… – Tuesday, BBC One, 10:35pm
Regardless of your faith or lack thereof, this warm-hearted series is a gentle force for good. It follows people from various religious backgrounds as they experience pivotal moments in their lives.
This week’s stars are Grace and Jess, a young gay Christian couple who are engaged to be married. They’re also about to move into their first home together: a canal boat. Their extended family is fully supportive, but they need to find a similarly inclusive new local church. And that, alas, isn’t straightforward.
Naturally, they start to question their commitment to Christianity. “I can’t change loving Grace,” says a tearful Jess, “but I can change my faith to suit me, to have a better life, a richer life.”
The Great Home Transformation – Wednesday, Channel 4, 8pm
Imagine the meeting at Channel 4 HQ. They’ve made every home renovation show you could ever possibly conceive of. But they need to make more. They absolutely have to make more. The beast must be fed. But are there any gimmicks left, any extra layers of froth on the formula?
Agonising minutes of silent brainstorming ensue. And then, at last, the Eureka moment: Hey! Why don’t we hire a massive lorry stocked with emergency furnishings and some specialist heat-mapping technology? Which will, I dunno, somehow help people to declutter their homes while filling several hours of airtime?
A reigning TV executive smiles quietly and nods. Make it so. Meanwhile, a TV critic files some heavy-handed satire.
Nikki Grahame: Who Is She? – Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm
I’m recommending this programme with caution. Please bear in mind that previews weren’t available, but one hopes that it will pay sensitive tribute to the Big Brother contestant who died from anorexia nervosa last year.
Grahame was the ‘breakout’ star of the Big Brother series she appeared in; an endearing, funny person prone to verbose emotional tantrums. Viewers, myself included, really liked her. But it was blatantly obvious that she should never have been selected for Big Brother in the first place. She was far too vulnerable.
Whether Channel 4 are capable of
making a programme that admits to their culpability remains to be seen. All I can
say for sure is this: Nikki Grahame’s story is terribly sad.
LAST WEEK’S TV
Chernobyl: The New Evidence – Saturday 26th March, Channel 4
Well this is timely. Chillingly so. And presumably by somewhat pure coincidence.
A two-part series, it seeks to reveal the KGB cover-ups surrounding a catastrophic disaster. As we all know, in 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine suffered a horrific meltdown. 26 years later, the site is still highly radioactive.
Episode one unpicked the tangled chain of events which led to that disaster. It also laid bare the ongoing political ramifications of something that could have easily been avoided. And here we are in 2022, frightened and appalled by the news we see around us.
This is a solid piece of reportage, but allow me to recommend HBO’s 2019 miniseries, Chernobyl, as a vital companion piece.
Long Live My Happy Head – Sunday 27th March, BBC Scotland
Scottish comic book artist Gordon Shaw was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour at the age of 32. Doctors gave him an average life expectancy of two to three years. Gordon, who is now 40, shared his story in this touching and ruminative feature length documentary.
Gordon calls his tumour Rick, a character who features heavily in his autobiographical work. A lovable, witty, self-deprecating person, Gordon attempted to explain how it feels having the ever-present spectre of death hanging over you.
He also extolled the therapeutic virtues of writing and drawing. Art can’t cure us, but it can make some sense of what we’re going through. It can help.
A beautiful film, I thoroughly recommend it.
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