GET ON UP: THE TRIUMPH OF BLACK AMERICA | SUCCESSION | CELEBRITY HUNTED

This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th March 2023.  

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Get On Up: The Triumph of Black America – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

The British actor David Harewood has lived and worked in America for just over a decade. He’s witnessed first-hand the vast influence of African American culture on popular culture all around the world. 

In this insightful and uplifting two-part series, he pays tribute to several game-changing African American artists. 

It begins in the 1960s, the decade of his birth, when Sidney Poitier and Motown crossed over into the mainstream. Pioneers, they challenged racist stereotypes with their talent, dignity, elegance and tacitly political defiance. They made a difference. 

Harewood also delves into the uncompromising artistry of 1970s Blaxploitation cinema and speaks to actor Jon Amos, who played the adult Kunta Kinte in that landmark TV miniseries Roots.

Succession – Monday, Sky Atlantic, 9pm

So here it is, the fourth and final series of Succession. This scabrous saga is almost over. We’ll miss these compellingly awful people when they’re gone. 

I don’t have access to preview copies, as they are at present buried in a secret lead-lined desert vault owned by Logan Roy, so all I can tell you is this: media conglomerate Waystar Royco is still on the verge of being bought up by a rival tech billionaire. Naturally, this triggers all-out war among the grasping ranks of the Roy dynasty. 

Succession is a bleakly amusing and all too convincing study of the filthy rich villains who corrode our planet. It is, like all great satire, fuelled by anger and despair.  

Bear Grylls Meets President Zelenskyy – Tuesday, Channel 4, 8pm

Grylls may seem like an odd choice of host for a documentary about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but he was actually invited to participate by the Ukrainian President himself. And he does a pretty good job. 

Mercifully, he doesn’t treat his three tense days in Ukraine like one of his usual action man survival missions. This is a sombre and respectful journey into the heart of a country living under the constant threat of missile attacks. 

Prior to his thoughtful encounter with the commander in chief, Grylls talks to several ordinary Ukrainian citizens who explain what life is like for them on a daily basis. Despite the enormous hardships they’ve been forced to endure, they – and their elected leader – remain defiant.

This World: Murder in Mayfair – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

In 2008, Norwegian student Martine Vik Magnussen was murdered at her home near Mayfair in central London. The prime suspect is the son of one of Yemen’s richest men. He fled the UK before the police had a chance to question him. 

In this sensitive documentary, Yemeni-British BBC journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi tracks him down. Their telephone conversations are grim. What happened that night? And why hasn’t he made any attempt to contact the police? 

During the course of her investigation, Al-Maghafi also meets with Martine’s father, who has spent the last fourteen years campaigning for justice for his daughter. The BBC has, quite rightly, fallen under fire of late, but this is an exceptional piece of journalism.

Celebrity Hunted – Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm

If you’ve seen Hunted before, then you know the frantic drill. But just in case: ten ersatz prison escapees – celebs in this iteration, as it’s all in aid of Stand Up to Cancer – go on the run while being tracked by an expert squad reading from a terribly laboured ‘quip-filled’ script. The fun side of state surveillance. 

Our fugitives have no money, phones or access to the internet. The ersatz authorities have just fourteen days to catch them. 

It’s a mildly entertaining exercise in which the comedians James Acaster and Ed Gamble effortlessly steal the show. They won’t split your sides, I’m sure, but you may find yourselves amused by their refusal to take the whole thing seriously. 

The Dog Academy – Thursday, Channel 4, 8pm

Fact: every television programme ever made would be instantly improved with dogs as its primary focus: I, Dog; Doctor Dog; Tales of the Unexpected Dog; Only Dogs and Dogs; Dog. I really could go on. 

So no wonder The Dog Academy is such a pleasing distraction. Various canine behavioural experts get to grips with their four-legged patient’s ailments while chatting to their vaguely troubled bipedal housemates. 

It’s basically a gentle session of relationship counselling, in which the ups and downs of human cohabitation are shown to have a direct impact on the animals we live with. Now, we already know that, but there’s no harm in providing a reminder. 

A good-natured show. And the pooches are delightful, obviously.

Taskmaster – Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

The fifteenth series of this enjoyable breeze of concentrated silliness plays host to comedians Frankie Boyle, Jenny Éclair, Ivo Graham, Mae Martin and Kiell Smith-Bynoe. 

In episode one, they have to choreograph a silent disco wedding dance with chief Taskmaster Greg Davies’ co-conspirator Alex Horne. Will you be able to guess what songs they’re listening to on headphones? Well no, of course you won’t, but that’s all part of the fruitless fun. 

They’re also tasked with unwinding a ball of string against the clock, hooking as many rubber rings as possible while haphazardly steering a barge along a narrow canal and, in the final round, throwing bricks, balls and other alliterative items into large clay pots.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Challenge Anneka – Saturday 18th March, Channel 5 

A Saturday night staple in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Challenge Anneka lifted the nation’s spirits with its charitable against-the-clock endeavours. 

And now it’s back, with not one iota of the original format altered. Rice is even reunited with trusty Dave the cameraman. If it ain’t broke etc. 

In episode one, Rice was tasked with refurbishing a canine rescue farm. Reader, she succeeded. 

Rice is a natural broadcaster, an engaging pro, and if you can ignore the fact that television personalities shouldn’t have to support ailing charities and small businesses, then this revival will work its entirely well-meaning magic.

The Great Celebrity Bake Off for Stand Up to Cancer – Sunday 19th March, Channel 4

Channel 4’s annual Stand Up to Cancer campaign continued with this spin-off from one of its most popular ‘brands’. 

Round one involved Matt Lucas welcoming various celebs to the tent. Chief among them, of course, being David Schwimmer. Fellow contestant Jesy Nelson was under no illusions: “I know I won’t win it, I’m just here to see Ross from Friends!” 

I’ll never truly understand the appeal of this abundantly harmless series. It is, like Thursdays, New Order and the actor Martin Jarvis, something that’s objectively tolerable and inoffensive. Something that’s just there. But I’m not the target audience, it’s not for me. 

Now, The Great British Crisp Off, that’s a show I could get behind.

TV Review: BOOMERS and ALMOST ROYAL

This article was originally published in The Courier on 16th August 2014.

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

Boomers: Friday, BBC One

Almost Royal: Sunday, E4

Paul Whitelaw

I magnanimously welcome the idea of a sitcom aimed at older viewers, but I'd prefer a funnier example than the lacklustre Boomers. Set in a quiet seaside town inhabited by pensionable baby boomers, it contains nary an original bone in its body.

The setting for this first episode was a funeral, which in more capable hands can be a fecund source of black comedy and pathos. Unfortunately, such pleasures are beyond the reach of writer Richard Pinto, whose most notable credit to date is the bland Citizen Khan.

I can't argue with the quality of Boomers' all-star cast – including Alison Steadman, Stephanie Beacham, Russ Abbot and Phil Jackson – but I can easily take issue with Pinto's second-hand script. Unforgivably light on gags, whenever it does attempt a funny line, e.g. Paula Wilcox saying of the deceased, “Most of my memories of Jean are mainly power walking-based,” they come across as self-consciously sculpted and clumsy.

Pinto also made the schoolboy error of building up a character before he arrived on screen, with inevitably anticlimactic results. That character is Mick, an ageing lothario played by Nigel Planer who was the subject of every conversation within the first ten minutes. The subtext was: wait 'til you get a load of this guy, viewers. Someone even described him as “a real character”.

Of course, when Mick finally arrived he was a mid-life crisis stereotype with – God help us from this knackered cliché – a much younger eastern European wife. Does Pinto really think this is an original, funny character? Even the dire Little Britain based some sketches around an older British man with a mail order bride, and that was nearly ten years ago.

Still, at least Mick's wife gave the ever-reliable James Smith, alias Glenn from The Thick of It, a chance to perform his repressed bumbler shtick. It was the only mildly amusing highlight.

The problem with Boomers is it's gentle to a fault. Low-key character pieces of this kind require the wit and observational depth of an Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood. Pinto has all the right pieces in place, but he lacks the inspiration to crank them into life.

The cast are as solid as you'd expect, but they provide the only hint of sparkle on an otherwise dull and unremarkable trinket.

Funnier by far is Almost Royal, a Borat-style comedy in which comedians Ed Gamble and Amy Hoggart pose as aristocratic British siblings on a mission to bamboozle America. But whereas Sacha Baron Cohen was partially concerned with exposing the prejudices of those he encountered, there's no real point being made here. Free of malice, it's simply an excuse for a welter of daft gags delivered by two nimble comic actors.

While it gently exploits America's love of all things British, no one is made to look foolish. The pleasure comes from watching real people indulge the sublimely naïve Georgie and Poppy Carlton with a mixture of confused politeness and amusement.

The admirably straight-faced Gamble and Hoggart never miss a chance to misunderstand or question their patient hosts. I particularly liked Georgie innocently asking a car dealer, “Where does this car go?” and later, while observing production on daytime soap The Bold and The Beautiful, saying to one of its stars, “Is this set in a different world?”.

It's a neat, breezy twist on the innocents abroad formula.