CORONATION STREET ICONS + THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th August 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

CORONATION STREET ICONS

Wednesday, STV, 8:30pm

And here we go again, yet another piece of emergency Covid schedule filler. Still, archive clips of Corrie are always a fun distraction. Episode one pays tribute to Ken Barlow, the longest-serving character in TV soap history. It reminds us that Ken, the street’s resident Guardian-reading paragon of righteous sense and virtue, a soft leather elbow patch in human form, has actually experienced his fair share of brawls and romantic entanglements over the years. No one who's never seen Corrie before will watch this programme, but if they do they'll be left with the impression that Ken has spent the last six decades embroiled in a never-ending orgy of mindless sex and violence, alleviated only by the occasional slapstick scrape. A lord of chaos living on the edge of reason.

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: WHEN ART MEETS POWER

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. It’s also demographically the youngest continent, with six in every ten people being under the age of 25, and far more culturally diverse than anywhere else on Earth. In this enlightening new series, British journalist Afua Hirsch visits three African countries - Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya – to examine the ways in which they’ve reasserted their identities as leading cultural lights. The through-line in her opening essay is the extraordinary story of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, a powerful yet complex symbol of the country’s proud history of fierce independence. Hirsch also meets renowned artists who are keeping Ethiopia’s fecund cultural legacy and defiant spirit alive in the 21^st century.

MANCTOPIA: BILLION POUND PROPERTY BOOM

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

The Manchester skyline is in a state of flux. Expensive high-rise homes are popping up with such velocity, the city centre looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. Manchester’s population is set to double in the next few years. Manctopia, an incisive four-part series, examines the drastic impact this unprecedented regeneration is having on existing residents. We meet a local millionaire property developer, a man with a vested financial interest in eradicating homelessness, who plans to transform the red light district into a luxury residential hub, and a single working mum who can no longer afford to stay in the increasingly gentrified area she’s lived in all her life. The free market in action, folks.

UNREPORTED WORLD

Friday, Channel 4, 7:30pm

As you read this, billions of locusts are devouring crops and vegetation all across Kenya. As a result, farming families are starving and destitute. If this devastating plague continues, Kenya will be brought to its knees. The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the catastrophe. In the latest edition of this august foreign affairs series, reporter Sahar Zand travels to a country where agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population. She hitches an urgent ride with one of the teams responsible for spraying infested areas with pesticide. Seeing as most areas in Kenya appear to be infested – in one particularly horrifying scene, Zand visits a town where the walls are caked with locusts – their task is Herculean.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Sunday 9th August, BBC Two

The indigenous Australian football star Adam Goodes never set out to be an inspirational spokesperson for racial equality. All he ever wanted to do was play his beloved sport at a professional level. But as a prominent black public figure who has experienced blatant and casual racism throughout his life, he felt he had to make a brave stand and speak out. This intensely angering documentary examined the backlash he faced after forcing white football fans to confront the toxic vein of racism that has coursed through Australian society for centuries. And you don’t need me to tell you that institutional racism isn’t a problem specific to Australia. It’s all around us right now. Goodes’ message was clear: we need to talk, listen and learn. That’s our only hope of ever developing more empathy and understanding of what racism actually means. The film is still on iPlayer, I highly recommend it.

HOW TO BEAT… PAIN

Tuesday 11th August, Channel 4

Do you remember that late ‘80s/early ‘90s vogue for splicing kitschy old clips of public domain American films into contemporary TV documentaries? The geniuses behind this otherwise blandly presented health series certainly do. It’s as tiresomely unfunny now as it was then, a literally cheap trick.

 

 

CORONATION STREET: STORIES THAT GRIPPED THE NATION

This article was originally published in The Courier on 4th July 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

CORONATION STREET: STORIES THAT GRIPPED THE NATION

Monday, STV, 8:30pm

Over the last few months, the Corrie team have carefully rationed the phalanx of episodes they recorded before the world went to pieces. Production is set to resume soon, but this emergency package of compilations should help to bridge any potential gap in proceedings. It’s pure nostalgia, shameless filler, Just Another Clip Show, but there’s a lot to be said for that in times of crisis. Don’t ever underestimate the mild power of mindless escapism, especially when it involves the greatest soap ever baked. It begins with the explosive Mike, Deirdre and Ken love triangle. Of course it does. Mercifully, for once there are no superfluous talking heads, just loads of clips and some affectionate narration from Jason Manford.

THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS

Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm     

Agatha is a lonely supermarket employee who is about to give birth. She becomes obsessed with Meghan, a pregnant woman with a perfect upper middle-class lifestyle (she’s forever chopping vegetables on her kitchen island). Inevitably, Meghan’s world isn’t as peachy as it seems. This risible Australian psychological thriller – Peyton Place with delusions of grandeur - thinks it’s blowing minds with a series of massively signposted twists etched in flaming neon letters. Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith from Downtown Abbey) almost transcends her surroundings with a fairly sensitive performance, but there’s no getting around the fact that Agatha embodies the offensive stereotype of people with mental health issues as figures to be pitied and feared. It’s 2020, we’re supposed to be better than this. 

BEING BEETHOVEN

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Ludwig Van Beethoven was a child prodigy, a natural born genius who was never given the opportunity to be anything else. That’s the poignant theme of the first instalment in this insightful series, which strips away the layers of myth to reveal the human being underneath. An estimable symphony of classical musicians and musicologists rake over Beethoven’s traumatic childhood. One of them, with affection, describes him as “a tiny, friendless, grubby kid who was somehow always in a world of his own all the time.” Fans of that other notable pop genius, Brian Wilson, will recognise the contours of this story: Beethoven’s dad was an aggressive alcoholic and frustrated musician. Peter Capaldi narrates passages from the great man’s jottings.  

THERE SHE GOES

Thursday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

The daughter of writers Shaun Pye and Sarah Crawford was born with an extremely rare, severe and undiagnosed learning disability. They’ve funnelled their experience into this admirably honest and entirely unsentimental comedy-drama, which first appeared on BBC Four in 2018. Series two picks up the story eighteen months later. As before, occasional flashbacks are employed to place their situation in ever-changing context. David Tennant and Jessica Hynes are low-key convincing as the parents of a child whose very existence makes well-meaning people feel uncomfortable. But There She Goes gains its strength from a determined refusal to preach or judge. Life isn’t etched in black and white, it’s strange, sad, difficult and funny. Profound, I know.

LAST WEEK’S TV

COMEDIANS: HOME ALONE

Monday 29th June, BBC Two

One day, probably next year, we’ll be treated to a compilation of clips from programmes made during the Covid-19 pandemic. An important historical document. Footage from this hastily cobbled-together sketch show will almost certainly be included. Future generations will look back in confusion at that strange time when bedraggled famous faces broadcasting pointless froth from the lockdown safety of their own homes was briefly normal; like that scene towards the end of Threads, when post-apocalyptic children gaze uncomprehendingly at crackly VHS footage of Words and Pictures. The penultimate episode featured contributions from the witless Russell Kane and those insufferably smug My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast dullards. World’s Funniest Man Bob Mortimer solemnly providing a list of silly cat names (Gustav Hosiery; The Gift of Barry; Brigadier Knickers) was the sole highlight. God help us if there’s an actual war. 

TV Review: HAPPY VALLEY + ANNABEL'S NIGHTCLUB: A STRING OF NAKED LIGHTBULBS

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 13th February 2016.

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

Happy Valley: Tuesday, BBC One

Annabel's Nightclub: A String of Naked Light Bulbs: Saturday, BBC Four

If it's not too late, can we install Sally Wainwright as the new Doctor Who show-runner?

One of TV's finest dramatists, the writer/director behind multi-award-winning crime drama Happy Valley would be a better replacement for Steven Moffat than new boss Chris Chibnall, the journeyman writer who scored a fluke hit with series one of Broadchurch, before destroying that good will with its dreadful, superfluous sequel.

It's an apt comparison. After all, Broadchurch and Happy Valley both gripped the nation a few years ago. They each felt like self-contained pieces in no need of a sequel. In the case of Broadchurch, that was agonisingly true. But when Happy Valley returned last week, it was immediately clear that Wainwright wasn't treading water.

The grimly compelling saga of tough, compassionate police sergeant Catherine Cawood and her murderous nemesis, Tommy Lee Royce, is far from over. Unlike Chibnall's mess, this follow-up feels necessary.

The opening episode was a master-class in assured plotting and smooth exposition as Wainwright reintroduced Catherine and co, plus some promising new characters.

Set eighteen months after the traumatic events of series one, it found Catherine (the magnificently deadpan Sarah Lancashire) trying to get back to normal while Royce languished for life in prison. Inevitably, her peace didn't last longer than a blackly comic prologue involving acid-addled sheep rustlers, which climaxed with her discovering a decomposing human corpse in a garage.

This, it transpired, was what remained of Royce's alcoholic mother. There was no love lost between Catherine and the deceased, hence why she's now a suspect. That family haunts her, even in death.

Meanwhile, Wainwright skilfully established a new sub-plot involving a married senior police officer (Kevin Doyle, alias Molesley from Downton) trying to extricate himself from an affair with a woman (the always impressive Amelia Bullmore) who refuses to go quietly. Prediction: this mire of blackmail won't end well.

We also met the unsettling, birdlike presence of Shirley Henderson as a woman seemingly infatuated with Royce, who in the versatile hands of War & Peace heartthrob™ James Norton continues his reign as TV's most convincing psychopath. A shaven-headed knot of pent-up fury, his simmering intensity is far more frightening than the kind of swivel-eyed scenery-chewing one normally associates with characters of this type.

Wainwright's sensitive underlying themes of grief, trauma, family dysfunction and women being abused in an aggressively male-dominated world continue to elevate Happy Valley far beyond its cop show peers.

Why does it reside in the upper echelons? Because of its dry wit, sharp dialogue, strong performances from a host of interesting actors and the way it fuses understated, character-driven realism with taut thriller conventions. Any budding screenwriter would benefit from studying Wainwright's impeccable work here.

Apparently the only nightclub the Queen has ever visited, the forbiddingly sophisticated Annabel's in London has been a discreet haven for the filthy rich and famous for over 50 years.

Its utter fabulousness was celebrated in Annabel's Nightclub: A String of Naked Light Bulbs, an unquestioningly affectionate documentary seemingly aimed at the kind of cosseted toffs who'd consider it a badge of honour to frequent such a rankly elitist dungeon.

Still, I did chuckle at some of the colourful anecdotes peppered throughout this glistening tribute. The one about a roaringly drunk John Wayne causing borderline actionable mayhem was topped only by the one about Shirley Bassey being banned for life after kicking the maître d' up the backside.

As a forelock-tugging outsider, I found it impossible to feel the same warmth towards Annabel's as its staff and regulars – far easier to summon rancorous disdain – but despite my better judgement I can't deny that there's something vaguely charming about a ridiculous fantasy world where the five-star bathrooms once contained ticker tape machines spewing stock market info.

That's despite the fact that Annabel's 53-year-old guest list must surely include some of the worst human beings to ever draw breath. Viva le revolution.