MAX CLIFFORD: THE FALL OF A TABLOID KING + WHY IS COVID KILLING PEOPLE OF COLOUR?

This article was originally published in The Courier on 26th February 2021. 

THIS WEEK'S TV

Max Clifford: The Fall of a Tabloid King – Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

This excoriating documentary delves into the sordid cesspit of Clifford’s life. The now dead publicist was a vile human being: an amoral hypocrite, bully and narcissist; a psychopath; a pervert; a paedophile. Much like Savile, he hid in plain sight. 

Clifford revelled in power and the fear he wrought. A self-styled arch-manipulator, this arrogant media gangster thought he was untouchable. So no wonder we all enjoyed some schadenfreude when he was eventually exposed and incarcerated. 

But, via testaments from some of his identity-protected victims, the programme paints a bigger and far more important picture of an evil man who was kept afloat for years by our complicit media. It’s the antithesis of Clifford’s philosophy. It prints the truth.

Why is Covid Killing People of Colour? – Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

“As a 55-year-old black man,” says actor David Harewood, “I am three times more likely to die from Covid-19 than a white man of my age.” To find out more about the reasons behind this stark statistic, he talks to various doctors and scientists, as well as people of colour who have lost loved ones during the pandemic. 

It’s an angering expose of health inequality in Britain. 

“Race is a biological fiction,” says one doctor of Indian origin. Instead, this is a systemic sociological issue rooted in decades of economic and racial discrimination. People of colour are more likely to work in lower-paying frontline roles, where protective conditions are often woefully inadequate. A national scandal.

DNA Family Secrets – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

This touching series is basically ITV’s Long Lost Families in newly upholstered trousers. But that’s fine, it works. In recent years, the growing popularity of genetic testing has given us unprecedented access to our ancestry. 

In episode one, host Stacey Dooley meets Bill, a mixed-race man who has never met his African-American father, and Richard, who recently discovered that he’s not biologically related to the man who raised him. He also learns that he may have a half-brother. Bill and Richard gain some comfort from their findings, but some of the surprises are overwhelming. 

Dooley also meets Charlie, a young wife and mother with a 50% chance of inheriting her father’s Huntingdon’s Disease. It’s an emotionally-charged hour of television.

The Terror – Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Medals will be awarded to anyone who manages to endure episode one of this frost-bitten period drama for more than ten minutes. I had to watch the whole thing, because that’s what they pay me for. 

In 1845, two Royal Navy ships embarked upon a pioneering mission to navigate through the Arctic. They never returned. There’s a potentially interesting story here, but it’s (sigh) tragically capsized by a mannered, arid screenplay. There is no heart, no soul. Zero momentum, nothing to cling on to. It’s just an indistinct procession of liveried characters whispering at each other in gloomy gas-lit cabins. 

The only highlight is a scurvy-ridden crewmember suffering a sub-Lynchian hallucination. A tedious voyage of the damned.

The Pandemic at No. 47 – Wednesday, Channel 4, 10pm

Director Paddy Wivvel usually makes documentaries set in prisons and psychiatric hospitals. This time he focuses on his own privileged London neighbourhood during the first national lockdown. 

Despite its friendly outward appearance, this isn’t a cosy close-knit community at all. Most of Wivvel’s neighbours have never met each other before. As the programme unfolds, he talks to frightened people who have lost loved ones to Covid. He also pays lip service to the debilitating psychological effects of loneliness and isolation. 

But halfway through I began to suspect that it was a sly piece of social satire: a parody of upper middle-class foolishness. It is not. Honestly, some of the people Wivvel meets are like ridiculous characters from a sketch show penned by Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse.

LAST WEEK'S TV

Bloodlands – Sunday 21st February, BBC One

This ham-fisted thriller stars James Nesbitt in none-more-glowering mode as a policeman whose wife was murdered by a serial killer during The Troubles. Everyone he meets never tires of reminding him about this. He’s a haunted man. A. Haunted. Man. Got that? Good. 

The subject matter is deadly serious, I’m not making light of that at all, but Bloodlines makes a mockery of whatever its fundamental intentions were. Cliché is piled upon cliché: a deadpan Leslie Nielsen comedy without the jokes. 

I like Nesbitt. Give him a good script and he’ll deliver, but this is a turgid mess. Jed Mercurio of Line of Duty fame is one of the executive producers. It’s aiming for that sense of kinetic gravitas. It misses. It’s drivel.

Chris Packham’s Animal Einsteins – Sunday 21st February, BBC Two

Who are nature’s cleverest creatures? For too long dolphins have dominated the natural world’s mastermind rankings: now, via this lively fact-packed series, it’s time to celebrate their unsung rivals. 

Each week, using innovative scientific techniques, that nice Chris Packham and a dedicated team of researchers carry out a variety of intelligence tests. 

The undoubted highlight of episode one was the carefully controlled experiment which revealed that bees have enough brainpower to count from zero to five, a basic skill they use to their advantage in the wild. What’s more, their intelligence levels are flexible enough to understand the rudiments of football (sort of). 

Packham, a naturally engaging teacher, is in his educational element here.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

SMALL AXE + A SPECIAL SCHOOL + THE HIJACKER WHO VANISHED: THE MYSTERY OF D.B. COOPER

This article was originally published in The Courier on 21st November 2020. 

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Hijacker Who Vanished: The Mystery of D.B. Cooper – Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

In November 1971, a man who came to be known as D.B. Cooper hijacked a commercial flight, demanded a $200,000 ransom, then made a daring escape via parachute. No trace of him was ever found. It is the only unsolved case of air piracy in aviation history. This absorbing Storyville documentary is inevitably inconclusive, we will probably never know who Cooper was and what became of him, but that doesn’t really matter. The mystery surrounding him is so strange, it sustains dramatic interest. We meet a woman who claims that her husband confessed to being Cooper on his deathbed, a couple who insist he was transgender, and a retired FBI agent who is convinced that Cooper was a decorated Vietnam veteran. Or was he all of the above? Answer: no. But it's quite a saga.

Hospital – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

As this exemplary series continues, Royal Free London’s staff are gradually recovering from the first Covid wave while preparing for the second. Under normal circumstances, their transplant unit deals with 12 cases a month. At the moment, due to massive delays caused by the pandemic, they’re dealing with 20. If the unit is forced to close down again, the effects could be catastrophic. The programme spotlights seriously ill patients in urgent need of treatment, as doctors, nurses and consultants struggle to surmount the restrictions placed upon them. The reciprocal healthcare system has saved millions of lives, but Brexit legislation is threatening the influx of vital organs and medication from Europe. Still, at least we won’t have to worry about any more misshapen bananas.

Return from ISIS: A Family’s Story – Monday, BBC One, 10:45pm

A few years ago, Samantha Sally, her husband Moussa and their two young children left a comfortable life in America to join ISIS in Syria. Samantha, who is now in prison, has always claimed Moussa tricked her into believing they were moving to Morocco. In this troubling Panorama report, Sally initially comes across as an innocent victim. But the deeper it digs, the murkier it becomes. Sally and her children eventually escaped, but Matthew, now 13, is in therapy to help him deal with the trauma. Brainwashed by his father and seemingly encouraged by his mother, Matthew was used as a propaganda tool. The stark video footage of him assembling a suicide belt – “my new toy” – will haunt you. 

Sofia Coppola: A Life Cinematic – Wednesday, BBC Four, 10pm

This intermittent series of specials in which filmmakers discuss their biggest influences continues with the arthouse writer/director best known for Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides. The interlocutor is Edith Bowman, who comes across as more passionate and insightful than her subject. Coppola seems perfectly pleasant, but she doesn’t have much to say about the films she’s chosen. Her work is often accused of being all style and no substance; it’s quite telling that sound design and art direction are the aspects of filmmaking she’s most comfortable with during this semi-informal interview. Excellent choices, though. Films under mild review include Brief Encounter, Do the Right Thing, Fish Tank and In the Mood for Love.

Saving Britain’s Pubs with Tom Kerridge – Thursday, BBC Two, 8pm

During the final stage of his nationwide mission, Kerridge tackles the disastrous effects of the pandemic on an already ailing industry. During lockdown, he stays in touch with the various landlords he’s been assisting since last November. In order to stay afloat, most of them have set up takeaway services for local residents in need. Kerridge has always argued that pubs provide a vital community service, and it’s hard to disagree. As always, he’s full of sound, friendly advice. When the pubs eventually reopen, he assures their owners that social distancing measures needn’t destroy the convivial atmosphere that customers have come to except. With regards to his own pub, he says, “We practice physical distancing, but we’re socially close.”

A Special School – Friday, BBC Two, 7pm

In the final episode of this touching series about Britain’s biggest school for children with additional learning needs, motorbikin’ head teacher Chris Britten – an abundantly lovely man – gets ready for Christmas. We meet the school hairdresser, the home economics teacher and a team of nurses, all of whom exemplify the school’s humbling philosophy. This is an environment defined by unconditional love and acceptance, where children are encouraged to discover their self-esteem and a sense of independence. The rock school programme, a free creative outlet, is a perfect example. “It makes me happy,” says Rhiannon, who sings in the band. “I just love to let my voice out. It has helped my anxiety, I feel more myself when I’m singing.”

LAST WEEK’S TV

Small Axe – Sunday 15th November, BBC One

This excoriating drama from Oscar-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) told the hitherto shamefully underexposed true story of Frank Crichlow, a West Indian man whose Notting Hill restaurant was repeatedly raided by police in the late 1960s and 1970s.

When Crichlow and his friends, including the activist Darcus Howe, mounted a peaceful protest against this racial discrimination, they were met with more police brutality and thrown in jail. The ensuing trial, a black power triumph, exposed the systematic racism coursing through British society. But their victory, while significant, was fleeting.

McQueen’s point was clear and powerfully conveyed: racism may be less blatant in this supposedly enlightened age, but it still exists in a more insidious form. It is everywhere. This vital, relevant film should be shown in schools as part of the curriculum.

God knows I find it difficult to defend the BBC sometimes, but hats off to them for showing such an important and uncompromising piece in a primetime slot usually reserved for period dramas about privileged white people. There are four more films to follow in the series.

Ronnie’s: Ronnie Scott and His World Famous Jazz Club – Sunday 15th November, BBC Two

Part celebration, part requiem, this beautiful feature-length documentary about the legendary London jazzman struck several potent chords. Throughout his colourful life, Scott was known to the public as the genial co-owner of Britain’s hippest jazz club. He was a self-effacing clown who, for over 30 years, told deliberately bad jokes while playing host to the cream of international jazz talent. In private he suffered from depression, and lamented the fact that he was, generally speaking, better known as a comedy emcee than as a talented musician in his own right. And yet he never lost his passion for music. No wonder. The film was packed with electrifying live performances, all of them facilitated by the great man himself. 

 

 

 

ITALY'S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR'S DIARY + THE LUMINARIES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th June 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

ITALY’S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR’S DIARY

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

This stark documentary was filmed inside an overstretched hospital at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. It follows A&E doctor Francesca Mangiatordi as she struggles to care for an escalating influx of infected patients. A shortage of beds has left staff with no choice but to park patients in corridors, sometimes for days. Mangiatordi is exhausted, candid and eloquent. She repeatedly questions the worth of her role in the face of such overwhelming suffering: “When you remove someone’s dignity, you leave them with nothing.” Gradually, some of her colleagues succumb to the virus. Their experience of treating Covid patients naturally makes them more fearful about their own chances of survival. Meanwhile, Mangiatordi frets about the prospect of a devastating second wave.

THE HIDDEN WILD OF THE MOTORWAY

Tuesday, BBC Four, 9pm

Britain’s busiest road, the M25, is a vast loop of soulless concrete. But look closer and you’ll find that the natural world has adapted to coexist around it. Inspired by J.G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad, naturalist Helen Macdonald takes a thoughtful stroll around the M25’s perimeter in this hauntological documentary. She discovers pretty woodlands and waterways scored to a background roar of traffic; some songbirds have had to alter the pitch of their calls in order to be heard. She also reveals how fungi studies could help to solve the problem of traffic congestion. An enthusiastic, softly-spoken scholar finding hidden wonders in mundane areas we take for granted, this is a quintessential BBC Four joint. We’ll miss it when it’s gone.

THE SECRET MEDITERRANEAN WITH TREVOR McDONALD

Tuesday, STV, 9pm

You could argue that sunny foreign TV travelogues are the last thing we need to see at the moment. They’re a cruel reminder of an increasingly distant time when, finances permitting, we could hop on a plane and relax our blues away on holiday. On the other hand, the sight of genial Sir Trev in sunglasses and an open-necked shirt might provide a fleeting distraction from the misery of life as we currently know it. Which sounds fine in theory, but according to the synopsis – preview copies weren’t available – episode one involves Trev boarding a superyacht once owned by Aristotle Onassis and later witnessing a bout of camel wrestling. That doesn’t sound like fun to me. Tastes may vary.

HUEY MORGAN’S LATIN AMERICAN ADVENTURE

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

In this vibrant new series, the BBC 6 Music DJ drops his usual tiresome wise-guy act to engage sincerely with the turbulent history of Latin American popular music. His perspiring odyssey begins in Brazil, where ecstatic Samba rhythms continue to represent the defiant voice of oppressed working-class people (Brazil is currently governed by ‘the Trump of the Tropics’). This is protest music in its purest most transcendent form; grooving community action. He also covers the bossa nova boom and examines the anti-capitalist politics of the tropicalia movement via interviews with the great Gilberto Gil and, from the magnificently far-out Os Mutantes, Arnaldo Baptista. These musicians challenged the jackboot status quo with some the greatest music ever made.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE LUMINARIES

Sunday 21st and Monday 22^nd June, BBC One

This turgid adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel (which I’ve never read and never will) succeeds only as a showcase for some decent production design. It looks good, but the story, the characters, don’t engage at all. It’s set on New Zealand’s South Island in 1866. Various folk converge to pan for gold. It glistens with a hallucinatory sheen of opiated sweat and grime. The performances are fine and the setting is potentially interesting. There’s something to be said here about colonialism, racism, misogyny and greed. The Luminaries somehow manages to crush that potential into mulch with its awkward pacing and structure. An alienating mess.

THE CHOIR: SINGING FOR BRITAIN

Tuesday 23^rd June, BBC Two

Gareth Malone is a smarmy little creep, a tweedy child with an orchard full of apples for teacher. Hats off to every frontline worker involved in this experiment, you’re all brilliant, lovely people, but keep a close eye on Malone. He’s a government-sanctioned Minister of Music in waiting who can barely disguise his contempt for pop music behind that faux-groovy piano teacher facade. He makes Gary Barlow look like Che Guevara.