MARTIN CLUNES: ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC + ANDY WARHOL'S AMERICA + THE GREEN PLANET

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th January 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Martin Clunes: Islands of the Pacific – Thursday, STV, 9pm

TV’s Martin Clunes is one of the reigning travelogue supremos. And for good reason: he’s very good at his job. Naturally witty, charming, respectful and empathetic, he’s like a sort of idealised foreign ambassador. I’d vote for him. 

This week he natters with some tribesmen who live in the shadow of an active volcano and breaks bread with a tribe who believe that Prince Philip is their God. Some of the elders briefly met him once and they exchanged banal pleasantries. So that’s a relief. 

Clunes also travels to Tonga, an ostensibly conservative Christian nation with a surprisingly tolerant and admirable attitude towards gender fluidity. It’s not an entirely progressive utopia of course, but hats off to Tonga anyway.

Geordie Hospital – Monday, Channel 4, 8pm

Newcastle is home to one of the UK’s biggest NHS hospital trusts. Its personable and dedicated staff are the stars of this new series, which rarely dwells upon the pressures and frustrations of their job. The mood is upbeat, it’s a big ol’ cuddle of a programme. 

Any celebration of Britain’s most essential institution is tacitly political, of course it is, but Geordie Hospital elects to focus exclusively on positive stories. That’s a statement in itself.

Tears and anxieties rear up at times, but even a potentially upsetting segment involving a little boy with a heart defect turns out fine. I for one welcome this warm gust of positivity.

Kelvin’s Big Farming Adventure – Monday, BBC One, 8:30pm

The former Emmerdale actor and Strictly Come Dancing winner Kelvin Fletcher recently bought a farm in the Peak District. A lifelong urbanite, he has no farming experience whatsoever. But if we know one thing about Fletcher, it’s that he enjoys a challenge. 

His agent must’ve been delighted when they heard the news, as a television series following this life-changing development was absolutely guaranteed. And if that sounds cynical, well that’s showbiz. 

We’re all familiar with this formula by now: a celebrity and their family get to grips with renovating barns and stockpiling eggs. Mild setbacks ensue. There is nothing remotely objectionable about this series. It merely exists. I recommend it to fans of tractors, fencing and sheep.

The Secret Life of Our Pets – Tuesday, STV, 8pm

This diverting litle series spotlights the cute side of cognitive animal behaviour research. This week’s theme is emotional intelligence and the powerful bond of trust that exists between domesticated animals and their humans. 

The slightly alarming highlight involves a visit to Switzerland, where we encounter a BASE jumper who enjoys nothing more than parachuting from the edge of massive cliffs with his border collie harnessed to him. 

And while you could question the ethics of placing an animal in that position, the dog doesn’t appear to be remotely distressed. He trusts his thrill-seeking comrade. 

We also learn that goldfish can ‘recognise’ human faces, rats really enjoy playing Hide and Seek, and parrots have an innate sense of rhythm.

Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile – Tuesday, STV, 9pm

The convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is currently facing a custodial sentence of up to 65 years. A key confidante and enabler of the paedophile sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison under mysterious circumstances in 2019, Maxwell’s entitled circle of friends included the thoroughly disgraced Prince Andrew. 

This report, which for obvious reasons was still being edited as I write these words, features contributions from some of Epstein and Maxwell’s victims. It also promises to examine damning evidence from Maxwell’s trial, as well as Prince Andrew’s alleged involvement in this hideous scandal. It seems increasingly likely that he will face a civil court case. 

Your host is Good Morning Britain’s Political Editor Ranvir Singh.

Toast of Tinseltown – Tuesday, BBC Two, 10pm

Are things looking up for the belligerent, oafish and perpetually thwarted ham actor Steven Toast? During the latest stage of his Hollywood odyssey he’s invited to audition for the role of a butler in an unnecessarily ambitious and expensive movie. He only has one line, but if he impresses the tyrannical director then he could secure a first-class ticket on the gravy train.

Meanwhile, he hurls himself into a strange relationship with a clinical sexologist, and records a voiceover on the hottest day there has ever been in L.A. 

It’s not the funniest Toast episode, but spending time in the deeply silly world of series creators Matt Berry and Arthur Mathews is always a peculiar source of comfort.

Andy Warhol’s America – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

The final chapter of this absorbing gaze into Warhol’s reflection of American culture begins in the 1970s and ends with his death in 1987. His preoccupation with death and disaster is a recurring theme throughout. 

After surviving an assassination attempt in 1968, he essentially had a second chance at life; a fact that haunted him thereafter. He became even more avaricious, while simultaneously providing support for marginalised groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, homeless people and the LGBTQ community. 

But, the programme asks, was that support tainted by self-interest and exploitation? He was, to say the least, a complicated cat. 

As with previous instalments of this excellent series, Warhol’s Zelig-like story encompasses several fascinating historical detours.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Green Planet – Sunday 9th January, BBC One

In the latest series from David Attenborough, his estimable team use an advanced time lapse camera system to unearth the secret life of plants. It observes the world from their perspective while examining their relationship with animals and humans, and the vital role they play in our ecosystem. Naturally, it’s fascinating. 

That remarkable footage of plants in action occasionally resembled lost outtakes from Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors; an alien landscape thriving on Earth. 

It’s a stellar example of Attenborough’s unerring ability to sculpt absorbing narratives from unlikely sources. Who knew there was so much drama in the global plant community? 

And it was lovely seeing the great man delivering some unflaggingly enthused pieces to camera.

Life on the Bay – Sunday 9th January, BBC Scotland

Pettycur Bay Holiday Park on Fife’s coast is one of Scotland’s biggest caravan enclaves. This breezy new series – a summery balm for these dark winter days - observes the daily demands of running what is effectively an idyllic miniature town built and run by three generations of a hands-on local family. 

In episode one we met a genial maintenance man who’s worked there for so long, he remembers when his boss was a little boy: “He was just a wee bloody pest! But a good pest…” 

Guests included a new arrival who joked about the possibility of getting cabin fever and going berserk like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. As far as I’m aware, that hasn’t happened.

RULES OF THE GAME + THE TOURIST + FOUR LIVES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 8th January 2022. 

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Rules of the Game  – Tuesday and Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

Maxine Peake stars in this timely new thriller about a workplace environment dominated by awful, sleazy alpha males. 

She plays Sam, the manager of a successful family-run business. Sam initially comes across as cynical and assured, but it gradually transpires that she’s just as vulnerable as every other female employee. 

An intimidating culture of secrecy has formed around this toxic fiefdom, but that begins to unravel when an awkwardly sincere yet highly capable HR director starts asking too many difficult questions. 

Writer Ruth Fowler lasers in on the ways in which powerful men can exploit their position to abuse women, especially when they think they’ll never be held to account. The results are necessarily uncomfortable. 

Art on the BBC – Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

The latest episode of this delve into the BBC archives focuses on the life and work of Vincent Van Gogh. 

The de facto definition of the supremely gifted yet tortured artist, Van Gogh is an enduring source of fascination, hence why he’s inspired numerous BBC documentaries and dramas over the years. Art historian Kate Bryan highlights some of the more notable examples. 

It’s an effective way of separating fact from fiction – has any artist been mythologised and misrepresented more than poor old Vincent? - while also serving as a celebration of British television and the way in which it’s helped to democratise so-called high culture. 

Your archival guides include Sister Wendy Beckett, David Hockney and Simon Schama. 

Couples Therapy – Monday, BBC Two, 10pm

At first glance, this new series from US network Showtime feels like a mockumentary. But no, apparently it’s real. 

It follows clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst Dr Orna Guralnik as she deals with various New York-based couples in need of relationship counselling. 

They’re disconcertingly earnest in that uniquely American way; everyone looks and sounds like an actor. We’ve finally reached a stage in human evolution where some people are so hopelessly attuned to the rhythms and cadences of scripted dialogue, they can no longer communicate in a convincingly spontaneous manner. 

But once you get used to that disconcerting novelty, all you’re left with is a bunch of navel-gazers yammering on about their personal problems. It’s simultaneously boring and bizarre.

Party Island: Summer in Zante – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

There was once a time, not so long ago, when the entire point of shows such as this was to sneer at the booze-addled youth of Britain as they make fools of themselves abroad. 

But this one takes a more sympathetic view; I’d even go so far as saying that it recognises the gnawing pathos of carefree kids labouring under the illusion that they’ll be friends forever. 

Set on the Greek island of Zante, it follows a gang of inoffensively bantering lads and some similarly bantz-tastic influencer girls hawking deluxe burgers on Instagram. 

They’re just a bunch of nice-enough kids having fun before the crushing weight of adulthood destroys their hopes and dreams forever. Good luck to ‘em.

The Adventure Show – Thursday, BBC Scotland, 8pm

This week, intrepid journalist and broadcaster Amy Irons scales a sheer sea cliff on the slippery southern edge of the Orkney mainland. As waves crash dramatically below her, she remains resolute in her daunting endeavour. 

Irons also makes the encouraging point that, even if adrenalized adventuring isn’t for you (or me), there are a multitude of delights to savour in Orkney. It’s a rugged wonderland full of lighthouses, caves, puffins, seals, affordable hostels, picturesque bicycle routes and glorious sunsets. 

We also meet a marine scientist devoted to the welfare of stranded dolphins. Now in its seventeenth series, The Adventure Show is a stalwart source of rural Scottish comfort. Maybe it really is a wonderful world after all. Happy 2022, everyone.

Iain Robertson Rambles – Thursday, BBC Scotland, 8:30pm

In which the affable River City actor continues his epic yomp along the Southern Upland Way.

 A reminder that you’re never more than three feet away from a celebrity filming a scenic walk, this immersive series cleaves to a winningly familiar formula: armed with a 360-degree camera, our tireless rambler provides an informal and ruminative assessment of their surroundings while exploring a little bit of local history. 

Robertson is a natural guide, his passion for the healing powers of rambling is palpable. “Just keep trudging on,” he advises metaphorically, “one foot in front of the other, and the next thing you know that thing that was miles and miles away on the horizon, all of a sudden it’s within your grasp.”

Well, let's hope so. 

Andy Warhol’s America – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

The inherent violence and chaos of American culture explodes to the forefront in chapter two of this vivid essay. 

Warhol presented himself in public as a blank canvas, but it’s clear from his work that he was engaged with the turbulent world around him: proof that irony and compassion aren’t mutually exclusive. 

Nevertheless, he wasn’t exactly a people person. This episode confirms what I’ve always felt: being part of Warhol’s Factory clique must’ve been pretty damn miserable. Living your life behind an affected facade of glib amphetamine cool isn’t healthy. No wonder there were so many casualties. 

Like all Warhol documentaries, this one is populated by silly people saying silly things. We’d feel short-changed if it didn’t.

LAST WEEK’S TV

The Tourist – New Year’s Day and Sunday 2nd January, BBC One

Blatantly inspired by Hitchcock, Fargo and Steven Spielberg’s Duel, this entertaining pulp comedy thriller stars Jamie Dornan as an Irish tourist driving solo through the Australian Outback. 

When a menacing tanker truck forces him to crash, he wakes up in hospital with no memory of who he is. All he knows is that someone is trying to kill him. But why? 

Written by the sometimes needlessly prolific Harry and Jack Williams of The Missing and Baptiste renown, The Tourist milks its simple premise with a palpable buzz of enjoyably freewheeling self-indulgence.

Four Lives – Monday 3rd January to Wednesday 5th January, BBC One 

In 2014 and 2015, serial killer Stephen Port murdered four young gay men whom he met via dating and hook-up apps. This respectful and deeply angering dramatisation focused on the victims and their loved ones. 

Written and produced by seasoned true-crime artisans Jeff Pope and Neil McKay, Four Lives was essentially a sensitive study of grief; a theme embodied by the excellent Sheridan Smith as the mother of Anthony Walgate, one of Port’s victims. 

But it was also an absolutely damning indictment of the incompetent police investigation, which was depressingly ill-informed by crass and institutionaly prejudiced attitudes about gay people. This entire endeavour was driven by compassion and despair.

Port was played by Stephen Merchant in his first dramatic role. It was a surprisingly effective performance; an understated and unsettling distillation of the banality of evil.

A truly important piece of television. I urge you to watch it. 

 

 

TV Review: CAPITAL and ARENA: NIGHT AND DAY

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 28 November 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Capital: Tuesday, BBC One

Arena: Night and Day: Sunday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Like a sinister live-action Pigeon Street, Capital unfolds on a single London street populated by residents from various economic and ethnic backgrounds. Modern Britain in microcosm.

One morning they each receive a mysterious postcard through their letterboxes, bearing the stark legend: “We Want What You Have.” The sender of this subtly threatening missive had yet to be revealed by the end of episode one of this intriguing new drama, but whoever they are it's probably safe to assume that they're making a vigilante stand against rocketing property prices in the area.

Adapted by leading TV dramatist Peter Bowker from the best-selling novel by John Lanchester, Capital makes no bones about its satirical intent. Yes, it's occasionally heavy-handed – the closing montage of our miserable protagonists scored to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! was straight out of an EastEnders Christmas special – but that's surely intentional.

Credulity may have been stretched by the closing shot of “We Want What You Have” daubed in enormous letters along the length of the street, but only if we approach Capital as an earnest piece of social realism. It's not. It's a tragicomic polemic.

That layer of discomfiting humour is typified by Detectorists co-stars Toby Jones and Rachael Stirling as an investment banker and his spendthrift wife. Owners of a multimillion pound property that would've once been home to lower middle-class families, their unhappy, sterile existence is a nightmare vision of success. Their children are just another accessory, an achievement on a par with their house extension.

Upon being informed that he'd received less than half of his promised £1m bonus, a furious Jones delivered the key, soul-shrivelling line: “What use is £30,000 to anybody?!”

Neighbours include Gemma Jones as an elderly widow with a terminal illness who's witnessed decades of change first-hand, a Zimbabwean refugee living under a false identity, a Polish builder tasked with building dream homes for his employers, and a Muslim family with two adult sons, one righteously devout, the other more measured in his beliefs.

However it pans out, it's refreshing to see a primetime TV drama tackling immigration, greed and social inequality in a witty, thoughtful, timely manner. Despite being set in a city where, unlike anywhere else in recession-hobbled Britain, property prices continue to soar, its themes strike a chord nationwide.

A harbinger of quality, that bobbing neon Arena bottle scored to Eno's Another Green Day is the most weirdly moving ident in British television history. Arena: Night and Day paid suitably esoteric tribute to its record-breaking 40-year reign as our greatest arts strand.

Introduced by John Lloyd as “an evocation” of its irreverent, witty spirit, this new film was a beautifully edited, dawn-to-dusk archive mosaic starring such diverse luminaries as Orson Welles, Poly Sytrene, Francis Bacon, Tony Hancock, Kendo Nagasaki, Gerald Scarfe, Yoko Ono, Mel Brooks, Sister Wendy and Elvis Presley's personal cook.

Its diversity was illustrated via highlights such as a massed ukulele recital at a George Formby convention in Blackpool, Andy Warhol and William Burroughs schmoozing at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, a politely baffled Mick Jagger being introduced to every single member of a Moroccan drumming troupe, and Jeffrey Bernard avoiding deadlines while boozing with Tom Baker in Soho.

A mere best-of compilation wouldn't have done justice to Arena's unconventional vision. This charming celebration was the perfect birthday gift.