TV Review: SAFE HOUSE and W1A

This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th April 2015.

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

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.

TV Review: LUCAN and STEPHEN HAWKING: A BRIEF HISTORY OF MINE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 14th December 2013.

Lucan: Wednesday, STV

Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Mine: Saturday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

Despite its reputation as one of the most notorious mysteries of our age, the bizarre case of homicidal Freddie Mercury lookalike Lord Lucan had never been adapted for the screen prior to Jeff Pope's two-part drama, Lucan. That's possibly due to its lack of a neat, concrete ending: after bludgeoning his children's nanny to death in 1974, the man nicknamed “Lucky” by his aristocratic peers simply vanished into the ether, never to be found.

So while part two apparently provides a theory as to how Lucan evaded capture, episode one focused on the details leading up to the murder.

Pope, a writer/producer renowned for non-sensationalist factual dramas such as Appropriate Adult and See No Evil: The Moors Murders, delved into a decadent, fenced-off world populated by overgrown children drunk on a diet of arrogant entitlement.

At its centre lay the poisonous John Aspinall (Christopher Eccleston, sporting a distractingly mannered posh accent), a corrupt gambling club owner and moral supremacist whose skewed take on Darwinism – nature must yield to the strongest alpha male – was, according to Pope, a key influence on Lucan's decision to bump off his estranged wife in order to gain custody of their children.

In stark contrast to Aspinall's dominant personality, Lucan, as portrayed by Rory Kinnear, came across as an empty carapace and gullible fool with no discernible charm or charisma. Curiously, this goes against everything we've been told about Lucan: that he was a flamboyant character with sparkle to spare. The only mildly flamboyant aspect of Kinnear's performance was his luxuriant moustache, through which he muttered his lines like a quietly seething vampire.

Though I've no doubt that the decision to portray him as a cold-eyed fish paralysed with upper-class reserve was deliberate - Pope always carefully avoids glamorising his subjects - it did rather undermine the notion that he was driven to murder due to an all-consuming love of his children. Kinnear's inert, understated Lucan doesn't seem capable of committing a crime of passion.

But was paternal love actually his abiding motivation? Pope also suggested that this inveterate gambler, a man who'd been indulged his entire life, simply couldn't bear to lose. Just in case you missed this suggestion, Pope made sure that Aspinall/Eccleston spelled it out during several over-egged soliloquies.

Despite a sluggish start and some extraneous scenes set in the present day – it feels dramatically unnecessary to include author John Pearson, upon whose book the series is based, as a linking device – Lucan succeeds if only to satisfy our morbid curiosity about the case.

And yet the actual murder itself wasn't depicted gratuitously: that's not Pope's style. A recurring theme throughout his work is the chilling banality of evil, so although Lucan is characterised as a dispassionate bore, at least one doesn't feel the remotest tingle of titillation while watching this frosty account of his pathetic saga.

A documentary narrated by the subject themselves is usually a recipe for self-serving disaster. But Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Mine, in which the estimable scientist looked back over his remarkable life, avoided hagiography thanks to an overriding flavour of commendable candour and charming self-awareness.

Hawking, who was told he only had two years to live when diagnosed with motor neurone disease in the 1960s, emerged from this humbling, tasteful film as an extraordinarily indefatigable character whose lust for knowledge and experience is informed by an acute awareness of life's transience.