HORIZON SPECIAL: THE VACCINE + GREAT BRITISH GARDENS WITH CAROL KLEIN + TIME

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 12th June 2021.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Horizon Special: The Vaccine – Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

“We knew it was going to happen, it was just a question of when.” 

So says a leading medical expert at the start of this report on the urgent yet painstaking development of the COVID-19 vaccine. Its humble stars are the pioneering scientists from all around the world who toiled incessantly to combat an unprecedented pandemic. 

The last eighteen months have been awful, devastating; hats off to these backroom geniuses for rolling out a vaccine in record time. At the risk of sounding sentimental, we must never take a single thing for granted. Stay safe.

Great British Photography Challenge – Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

If you’ve not been following this series, the set-up is simple: top photographer Rankin mentors six talented snappers as they’re “pushed to their creative limits”. It’s a standard format, terribly straightforward, but anyone with an interest in photography and/or portraiture will probably enjoy it. 

This week we’ve reached the final. Rankin isn’t a natural host, he’s quite timid and awkward; clearly a man who would rather stay behind the camera. Nevertheless, it’s quite refreshing to see a competitive TV talent show entirely lacking in aggression and spite. Give me Rankin’s mildness over Ramsay’s bullying any day. 

Sure, it skirts with hipster pretension – that goes with the territory – but this is basically a sincere celebration of creativity.

Great British Gardens with Carol Klein – Monday, Channel 5, 9pm

Carol Klein, a Gardeners’ World stalwart, has a highly distinctive presentation style.  She always sounds like she’s on the verge of breaking into fits of uncontrollable giggles, as if she can barely contain her utter glee when it comes to topiary and architecture. More power to her elbow, I say, she’s a charming presence. I’d love to be that happy. 

Her latest series kicks off, ever so gently, with a four seasons visits to Arundel Castle in West Sussex. Its spectacular gardens are rather dreamlike and theatrical; an eccentric work of art. 

It’s all very “Sing Hosannah for this green and pleasant land!”, but not in an egregious way. This is a verdant tuft of comfort viewing.

Between the Covers – Tuesday, BBC Two, 7:30pm

In the final episode – for now – of this cosily quarantined series, host Sara Cox asks another panel of celebrity guests to opine about some books. 

Her prose-guzzlers this week are Good Morning Britain presenter Ranvir Singh, comedians Sophie Willan and Reginald D. Hunter, plus Micky Flanagan, a sweaty man who just says things into a microphone for coins (in all seriousness, I hope he’s okay; during this episode he looks like a haggard and bewildered Donovan after three days trapped in a shipping container). 

Anyway. They review a small heap of tomes as usual. It’s all quite pleasant. I’ll get back to previewing more substantial television once the usual summer drought is over. Thumbs up emoji!

The Hotel Inspector – Thursday, Channel 5, 9pm

Alex Polizzi has been hosting this series for thirteen years. You can tell. Her whole shtick – a ‘cruel to be kind’ expert who revives the fortunes of struggling hoteliers – was always dubious, but it’s even worse now that she’s clearly bored with it all. 

The latest series begins in a traditional Dorset pub owned by Yvonne and James. They come across as nice people, but Polizzi takes issue with their appearance. Yvonne and James are overweight, and apparently that just won’t do. 

I don’t think Polizzi genuinely intends to come across as rude, she’s clearly playing a role, but I’m not a big fan of vulnerable people being belittled by solvent television personalities. Perhaps I’m just old-fashioned that way.

Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr – Friday, Channel 5, 9pm

“Art, not politics, is the greatest passion of my life.” Which is fair enough, Andrew Marr, but maybe you should’ve been making programmes like this all along instead of failing to properly challenge Michael Gove (I am aware that Andrew Marr isn’t actually reading this). 

Politics aside, I do quite like Marr. He’s an amusingly emphatic presenter who is clearly in his element when hosting television he actually cares about. The Hay Wain by John Constable is his latest fave-rave subject, and he manages to convey his enthusiasm for that rural masterpiece in a quite contagious way.  It’s a decent little arts programme.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Tina Turner at the BBC – Saturday 5th June, BBC Two

Ideal Saturday night viewing, this tribute to Turner delved into the BBC archives. A blatant piece of cheap filler, but sometimes that’s all you need. 

It cleaved to the standard TOTP2 format: a panoply of clips accompanied by fact-packed streams of scrolling text. Turner, who is now in her eighties, retired from the spotlight over ten years ago, but this compilation served as a valuable reminder of her natural-born charisma: she clearly taught Mick Jagger everything he knows. 

The undoubted highlight was her supremely camp performance of Goldeneye on TOTP, during which she was flanked by a bunch of ridiculous male models in full Bond regalia. Turner was a true star. A fun and funky iconoclast.

Time – Sunday 6th June, BBC One

Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama isn’t an easy watch. It’s not supposed to be. I haven’t been so unnerved and engrossed by a piece of television in quite some time. In typical McGovern style, it’s relentlessly bleak and brutal while being deeply etched in compassionate shades of grey. 

Sean Bean plays Mark, a timid schoolteacher serving his first prison sentence. Mark has committed a terrible crime, but he’s sympathetic - a haunted man trapped in a terrifying environment. Stephen Graham plays a seemingly respectable prison officer struggling with his own personal dilemma. 

The entire cast is faultless, and McGovern has found the perfect setting in which to explore his recurring themes of guilt and forgiveness. Time is wounding. It lingers.

 

 

RED PENGUINS: MURDER, MONEY AND ICE HOCKEY + THE VICAR OF DIBLEY IN LOCKDOWN + SMALL AXE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 5th December 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Red Penguins: Murder, Money and Ice Hockey – Monday, BBC Four, 10pm

When the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990s, Russia struggled to deal with the sudden reality of becoming a free market economy. A playful Storyville documentary with a sinister underbelly, Red Penguins presents the bizarre saga of a short-lived American investment in Russia’s national ice hockey team as a symbol of rampant capitalism at its ugliest and most chaotic. The star of the show is one Steven Warshaw, a charismatic oddball who was tasked with marketing the team to a brave new world. His ideas included hiring strippers as cheerleaders and enlisting actual bears to serve free beer to fans. And then Disney got involved. The Russian Mafia moved in. There were fights, death threats, bedlam all around.

The Vicar of Dibley in Lockdown – Monday, BBC One, 8:50pm

I never had any time for The Vicar of Dibley. I’m all for Dawn French and I will defend, if pushed, some of Richard Curtis’ solo work, but Dibley was always white noise; the bland comedy equivalent of a Mail on Sunday advert for commemorative Diana tea towels. And now it’s back via three interminable ten-minute shorts in which Reverend Geraldine delivers awkward online sermons to the people of Dibley during the first national lockdown. In episode one she conducts a Zoom chat with some annoying children and entertains a pointless cameo from Hugo (James Fleet). None of the jokes land, it’s embarrassing, like a hastily cobbled-together DVD extra (remember them?) with ideas above its station.

Nadiya’s American Adventures – Thursday, BBC One, 8pm

Nadiya Hussein has always been fascinated by America, which is home to more immigrants than anywhere else on Earth. In episode one of this heartening culinary travelogue, she arrives in Louisiana to immerse herself in a banquet of sizzling soul food. A combination of African, Caribbean and European cuisine, soul food is a potent symbol of cultural identity and diversity. In New Orleans, Hussein – a charming, funny, empathetic guide - meets an optimistic Lower Ninth Ward grocery store owner who provides succour to his Katrina-scarred community, and a Mardi Gras bandleader devoted to helping local kids. She also dabbles in Cajun cooking. Hussein doesn’t ignore the hardship, the rank injustice, but this is ultimately a celebration of tradition and endurance.

Snackmasters – Thursday, Channel 4, 8pm

I’m ever so slightly fond of this knowingly trivial series in which Fred Sirieix presides over a bunch of Michelin-starred chefs tasked with cracking the sacred ingredient codes of cheap, popular everyday snacks. In this episode, they have to manufacture some Quavers: “the snack equivalent of Brigitte Bardot” according to Fred, who has presumably never munched upon a Quaver in his life. The central gag, obviously, is that classy French Fred looks down on our unhealthy British obsession with salty potato snacks, while the ludicrously competitive chefs are overqualified and out of their depth. But it never feels sneering, the whole thing is delivered with a cheery wink. It’s a deep-fried bucket of nothing, it means no harm.

New Elizabethans with Andrew Marr – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

Chapter two of Marr’s social history essay is slightly more coherent than his rambling opening salvo. He continues to highlight some of the notable public figures who have, for better or ill, helped to shape British society since the Queen ascended the throne in 1952. This week’s heroes and villains include David Attenborough, Tony Benn, Bob Geldof, Colin ‘Mad Mitch’ Mitchell, Louis Mountbatten and Eric Clapton’s idol Enoch Powell, but the most diverting segments are devoted to the lesser known likes of Mediterranean cuisine proselytizer Elizabeth David, the game-changing strike leader Jayaben Desai, and the heroically dedicated Greenham Common protestor Helen John. Power to (some of) the people. Marr, as always, presents with his usual mix of gravitas and impishness.

The Sound of TV with Neil Brand – Friday, BBC Four, 9pm

As this delightful series continues, Brand examines some of television’s most memorable jingles, idents, beds and stings. He meets Roger Greenaway, co-author of I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, that pseudo-hippie anthem designed to shift gallons of Coke (and which will now be forever associated with Mad Men). He also talks to Linda November, who has sang over 2,000 jingles during her highly successful yet more or less invisible career. Brand’s overarching point is that this music, no matter how banal it may seem, isn’t just thrown together without any thought. Deceptive simplicity is key to its psychological effect on viewers/consumers. That 1980s Shake n’ Vac ad may be rather daft, but you remember it fondly don’t you?

LAST WEEK’S TV

Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel – Saturday 28th November, BBC One 

Is BBC One trying to start a Saturday night gameshow turf war? If so, I’m backing Danny Dyer’s weirdly mesmerising The Wall over this lacklustre confection. Dyer’s permanently hungover disinterest is so much more appealing than McIntyre’s hyperactive jollity. The premise: seven celebrities are seated on the outer rim of an oversized roulette wheel guaranteed to trigger motion sickness. They claim to be experts in a particular field, but the contestants seated in the centre of the wheel are at the mercy of its randomness. Joey Essex, for example, won’t be much help in answering a question about World War II. The best gameshows are often the simplest, but The Wheel is far too repetitive. Round and round it spins into oblivion. 

Small Axe – Sunday 29th November, BBC One

Steve McQueen’s latest film told the true story of Leroy Logan (John Boyega), a young black man who joined the police in the 1980s, believing that he could challenge institutionally racist attitudes from within. Logan eventually became the first chair of the National Black Police Association, but McQueen focused on his horrific early days in the force. It highlighted how terribly alone he felt. Logan endured racist abuse from white colleagues and suspicion from within his own community. Yet despite his anger and frustration, he never gave up hope. Featuring excellent performances from Boyega and Steve Touissant as Logan’s proud, conflicted father, this episode confirmed what I’ve said from the beginning: show Small Axe in schools, embed it within the curriculum.

 

THE SOUND OF TV WITH NEIL BRAND + SMALL AXE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 28th November 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Sound of TV with Neil Brand – Friday, BBC Four, 9pm

The best television theme tunes are indelibly embedded within the national psyche. The ones we grew up in particular with invoke a Proustian rush unlike any other. Neil Brand, that estimable composer and pop culture enthusiast, knows this only too well. His latest series is an embarrassment of riches in which he celebrates the enduring spell of television music. He offers eloquent insight into how and why the best theme tunes work, with highlights including a visit to Portmeirion, where he dissects el maestro Ron Grainer’s dynamic theme from The Prisoner, and a meeting with Dick Mills of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, who analyses the great Delia Derbyshire’s ground-breaking electronic arrangement of Grainer’s Doctor Who theme. It’s all wonderful.

Hospital – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

Filmed just a couple of months ago, the latest episode of this urgent frontline documentary follows staff at Barnet Hospital in London as they treat elderly patients while dealing with a bed shortage exacerbated by the pandemic. The hospital, which is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, is situated in a borough with nearly one hundred care homes. The A&E department has been pushed to its limit. Winter, a time when older people are at their most vulnerable, is looming. Covid-19 is on the rise again. The point of this series couldn’t be clearer. No amount of well-meaning public applause and utensil-banging can compensate for the government’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic.

Paul O’Grady’s Great British Escape – Wednesday, STV, 8pm

This week, the nationally treasurable O’Grady reads some Chaucer to his pigs as a prologue to a sojourn in Canterbury. While there, he checks up on the major renovation of Canterbury Cathedral (“Good job I had a stent put in,” he quips while scaling its heights), pops into the cosy country pub where Ian Fleming wrote You Only Live Twice, takes a ride on a vintage steam train, and visits an endangered big cat sanctuary (they’re very keen on Calvin Klein-infused catnip, apparently). This is, quite simply, a nice series. It may not add up to much in the grand scheme of things, but God knows we need some fleeting escape from the grand scheme of things sometimes.

New Elizabethans with Andrew Marr – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

Marr’s latest essay is a scattershot dud. His stated aim is to illustrate how British society has changed dramatically during Liz II’s lengthy time on the throne – the second Elizabethan age. To that end he’s chosen a handful of notable public figures who reflect that transformation. A sound idea in theory, but Marr spends far too little time on each of his nominations. The result is a superficial overview, a smash and grab advert for his tie-in book. You simply cannot do justice to the fascinating likes of (deep breath) Graham Chapman, Diana Dors, Ruth Ellis, Tracey Emin, Darcus Howe, Roy Jenkins, Alan McGee, Nancy Mitford, Jan Morris and Mary Whitehouse in the space of an hour. It’s pointless.

Grayson’s Art Club: The Exhibition – Friday, Channel 4, 8pm

Earlier this year, Grayson Perry delivered some emergency lockdown cheer via his Channel 4 series in which he encouraged people to express their hopes and fears through the democratic medium of art. In this one-off special, Perry and his equally splendid wife, the psychotherapist Philippa Perry, host a socially distanced Manchester Art Gallery exhibition of the work they curated during that series. Preview copies weren’t available, the show is still being edited as I type these words, but I can pretty much guarantee that it will fleetingly restore your faith in human nature. The Perrys aren’t pretentious, they’re arty egalitarians. C4 have assured us that, once lockdown is lifted, Grayson’s Art Club will make a triumphant return.

Waterhole: Africa’s Animal Oasis – Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

In this enlightening series, Chris Packham and biologist Ella Al-Shamahi examine the life-threatening impact of climate change on the African ecosystem. They’re on a protected wildlife preserve in Tanzania, where the BBC’s Natural History Unit have built a waterhole discreetly rigged with cameras. Their aim is to study the ways in which these vital sources of water manage to support so many competing species. Episode one is liberally stocked with buffalo, warthogs, elephants, leopards, lions and zebras, who eye each other suspiciously like rival gangs in a pub carpark. But peace is maintained by their overriding need to sup from the waterhole whenever the chance arises. Some of the footage, most of it filmed at night, is extraordinary.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Fela Kuti: Father of Afrobeat – Saturday 21st November, BBC Two

The Nigerian musician Fela Kuti was a revolutionary artist, a radical political activist, a countercultural hero. He was also an enigma. By the end of this frustrating documentary, I felt no closer to understanding him than I did at the start. It succeeded in illustrating Kuti’s fearlessness when it came to standing up against a dictatorial regime in the 1970s and 1980s – he risked his life in the name of personal freedom – but it skirted coyly around the subject of his communal compound, which was full of young women at his beck and call. Some of them, it hinted, may have been underage. No one had a bad word to say about him, but an uncomfortable subtext simmered throughout.

Small Axe – Sunday 22nd November, BBC One

The second film in Steve McQueen’s anthology of dramas about London’s West Indian community was an immersive ode to youth in all of its intensity, romance, confusion and defiance. It took place at a house party in 1980, a time when young black people weren’t welcome in predominantly white nightclubs. McQueen’s camera lingered fondly (not creepily) over kids on the verge of adulthood as they sang, danced, smoked, drank and fell for each other. But this was no rose-tinted celebration. A woman was raped. Racism circled the building. The party represented an oasis of escape set against an encroaching backdrop of violence. McQueen, with characteristic eye for vivid detail, captured all the joy and pain. A magnificent piece of work.

 

TV Review: TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK + ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME

This article was first published in The Dundee Courier on 18 February 2017.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK: Saturday, BBC Two

ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME: Tuesday, BBC Two

Human beings are frighteningly vulnerable. Even the sharpest minds among us can be assaulted without warning by the cruel lottery of fate. Two programmes last week shone defiant glimmers of hope into mortality’s glowering visage.

They focused on robust and somewhat eccentric characters who dealt with serious illness – one fatal, the other life-threatening – with humour, pragmatism and a healthy lack of sentiment.

The phenomenally successful fantasy author Terry Pratchett died of Alzheimer’s in 2015. He’d lived with the degenerative disease for eight years, during which he continued to write until he was no longer able.

His final project was a memoir recorded with the assistance of his PA. Pratchett never lived long enough to complete it.

Enter TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK, a charming tribute which sought to tell the story of his life in fittingly irreverent fashion.

Wearing the guise of a mischievous narrator, actor Paul Kaye, aka the prankster formerly known as Dennis Pennis, rescued the Discworld creator from the philosophical clutches of Death (coincidentally the most popular character from Pratchett’s novels).

Armed with trademark wizard’s beard, black fedora and nasal rhoticism – the result of a childhood accident which, in Pratchett’s words, left him sounding like “David Bellamy with his hand caught in an electric fire” – Kaye’s affectionate impersonation would, one presumes, have delighted the man who inspired it.

He led us through a prolific life and cynical/compassionate worldview forged by a childhood in which Pratchett was told he’d never amount to anything, hence why his distinctive form of satire was driven by an angry intolerance of hypocrisy, snobbery and injustice. An indelible streak of “I told you so” remained with him until the end.

But if Pratchett could be cantankerous, an essential sense of decency was his abiding characteristic. He never lost his amused yet sincere fascination with the human condition, even when he was eventually felled by the kind of unjust act of fate he always railed against.    

Andrew Marr is a kindred spirit. When he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013, the respected political journalist refused to kowtow to self-pity – which he describes as “the most nauseating human quality of all” – in a way Pratchett would’ve appreciated.

Despite clinging to the celebrity-fronted “personal journey” blueprint so beloved of modern television, ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME was, thanks to the wryly no-nonsense nature of its star, refreshingly free of stage-managed catharsis. Marr’s journalistic eye ensured that he never became the whole story. 

 Through the prism of his own experience, he examined the available recovery options and various neurological effects of the biggest cause of disability in Britain (the inclusion of a post-stroke Marr interviewing former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith wasn’t accidental).

“I’m nothing special,” he insisted, as he met stroke survivors who made him look relatively lucky.

Marr believes two years of excessive work caused his stroke, but he appears to be working as prolifically as ever. Slowing down just isn’t an option for this intensely driven broadcaster, who cites painting as one his few sources of solace. In one revealing moment, he expressed regret that he never attended art school. A fear of failure sent him on a different course.

Yet despite his candour, Marr’s Celtic stoicism remained admirably intact.

“I know the BBC has a special contract where I have to burst into tears at one point,” he smiled, “but I can’t do it. I come from Dundee.”