THE SISTER + LIFE + HAIR POWER: ME AND MY AFRO

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 24th October 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

THE SISTER

Monday to Thursday, STV, 9pm

This spooked pulp thriller is written by Neil Cross of Luther renown/infamy, which should give you some idea of what to expect. It’s knowingly daft and engulfed in histrionic murk. Typical Cross hokum. Russell Tovey stars as a man with a seemingly perfect life who is secretly haunted by his involvement in the death of a young woman several years ago. The only other person who knows what happened that night is Bob, an eccentric paranormal expert played by the shamelessly scene-stealing Bertie Carvel (he has the mien of a creepy, druggy Dickensian weirdo). To say any more would spoil the fun, but Cross does a good job of building tension as he gradually peels away the layers of his mystery. 

LIFE

Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

In the penultimate episode of this superior drama from Mike Bartlett, Gail (Alison Steadman) returns to her terminally ill husband Henry (Peter Davison) after a much-needed period of freedom. Henry is a self-centred bully, but Gail decides that, after 50 years of marriage, she should be by his side when he passes away. He’s a lucky man. Meanwhile, Belle’s (Victoria Hamilton) continuing struggles with alcohol leads to yet another excruciating scene. Bartlett is obviously more invested in the Gail, Henry and Belle storylines – the others are basically subplots – but he deserves praise for his compassionate excavation of the pain, fear, loneliness and disappointment of everyday life. A barrel of laughs it is not, but that’s Life. Sorry.

HAIR POWER: ME AND MY AFRO

Tuesday, Channel 4, 10:15pm

Now this is great. As part of Black History Month, academic and writer Emma Dabiri explores the vast cultural significance of afro-textured hair through the ages. For people of colour, to embrace the beauty of natural kinks and curls is an empowering form of self-expression. Dabiri meets people who grew up under pressure to conform to a Eurocentric ideal: straight hair equals good hair. Generations of kids felt compelled to attack their scalps with scorching chemical products. That’s yet another form of systematically racist oppression. Dabiri also examines the social significance of barbers and salons within the black community, while highlighting various forms of micro-aggression, unconscious bias and cultural appropriation. It’s a fascinating and rather beautiful essay.

DAMILOLA: THE BOY NEXT DOOR

Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

20 years ago, 10-year-old Damilola Taylor was stabbed and killed mere yards from his home. In this moving tribute, Yinka Bokinni, who is now a successful radio DJ, speaks about her late friend and neighbour for the first time. She paints a vivid portrait of a funny, bouncy, carefree kid whose life was tragically cut short. She also challenges the media-led view that her Peckham estate was Hell on Earth. Yes, there was crime and poverty, but it was a tightknit multicultural community. Bokinni makes a hugely important point: when you shovel people into substandard housing, you can’t just wash your hands of them. That’s a convenient way of ignoring the wider issue of cause and effect.

POWERING BRITAIN

Thursday, BBC Two, 7:30pm

Hornsea One, the world’s biggest offshore windfarm, is situated 75 miles off the Yorkshire Coast. In the first episode of this stats-encrusted series about the hardworking pros who answer to Britain’s energy demands, presenter Keeley Donovan meets some of the men and women responsible for running a hugely impressive eco-friendly project. With good reason, she marvels at this aquatic conurbation of massive turbines, each one taller than the Gherkin and wider than the London Eye (Donovan’s breathless claim that they’re wide enough to accommodate an adult elephant is inadvertently and pleasingly Chris Morris-esque). Mild peril warning: if you’re prone to claustrophobia and vertigo, you may be triggered by Donovan’s ascent of one of the turbines.

THE TRUMP SHOW

Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

As this grimly compelling series concludes, we come right up to date. By January 2019, Trump had sacked everyone in his administration who’d tried to reign him in. His behaviour became even more bizarre and messianic. When his chief of staff admitted that the Ukranian government had been blackmailed into smearing Joe Biden, the Democrats seized their chance to remove Trump from office. The impeachment process failed in large part because Trump managed to intimidate Republican members of the Senate into supporting him. Then came Covid and the murder of George Floyd. Trump’s blind mishandling of these situations has been utterly catastrophic. America, you know what to do next month. This pathological liar, this gangster narcissist, is utterly unfit for office.

MAXXX

Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm

Maxxx is a former boyband superstar who has fallen on hard times. He’s a desperate mess, an insecure buffoon who struggles with various personal issues. He’s also quite likeable, despite his many flaws. This new comedy actually made me chuckle. That, I assure you, is a ringing endorsement of sorts. Writer/director/star O.T. Fagbenle understands that failure is funny, but only when leavened with a bit of pathos. The latter isn’t overdone, it’s naturally ingrained within Maxxx’s character. He’s lonely, heartbroken, lost. All he wants to do is make a comeback and restore his flimsy sense of self-worth. Maxxx is a fairly sharp farce and Fagbenle inhabits his creation with just the right amount of oblivious arrogance.    

LAST WEEK’S TV

ROADKILL

Sunday 18th October, BBC One 

Hats off to the BBC for commissioning a slyly scathing political drama in which the central character is a thinly disguised hybrid of Johnson and Farage. Roadkill makes no bones about how manipulative and dangerous these self-styled ‘LOL legend’ charlatans are. Written by David Hare, this isn’t a cosy centrist satire. It has bite. Hugh Laurie is perfect as a philandering, superficially charming government minister who blithely assumes he can get away with anything. It began with him successfully suing a newspaper for libel, but the journalist who went after him refuses to back down. Hare is clearly enjoying himself as he spins several plates at once. Let’s just hope they don’t all come crashing down. Roadkill is promising. Of course, the BBC is largely responsible for the rise of Johnson, they helped him to cultivate his disingenuous persona, so in that sense Roadkill is too little too late. The damage has been done. But I will accept it as a form of atonement. Big of me, I know.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Monday 19th October, BBC One

In this particularly interesting episode, David Walliams discovered that his great grandfather, who served during WWI, suffered from severe PTSD. He spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital, or ‘lunatic asylum’ as they were known in those very different times. His tragic story illustrated just how valuable this show can sometimes be as a sensitive piece of social history. On a much lighter note, Walliams was delighted to learn that his great-great grandfather was a travelling showman who eventually escaped from poverty via the fairground business. Cynical caveat: WDYTYA proves that celebrities with a hitherto weirdly incurious attitude towards their family history will suddenly develop a deep and solemn interest when there’s a fee involved.

 

 

 

 

 

TV Review: THE NIGHT MANAGER + STORYVILLE: THE BLACK PANTHERS

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 27th February 2016.

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

The Night Manager: Sunday, BBC One

Storyville: The Black Panthers: Sunday, BBC Four

Like a bar of luxury soap sliding inexorably down a bidet bowl, The Night Manager is a slick and slow affair.

Adapted and updated from John La Carre's 1993 novel of the same name, it's an inertly glossy thriller starring Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier on a covert mission to destroy billionaire arms dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie fulfilling his Bond villain fantasies).

When we first met Pine, a charming cove, English “to the core”, he was working as the night manager at a luxury Cairo hotel while the Arab Spring raged outside. As dutifully dedicated to the welfare of his guests as he is to Queen and country, he found himself acting as gallant protector to the glamorous mistress of the hotel's corrupt owner.

Presumably on account of his approachable cheekbones – even allowing for standard spy thriller intrigue, character motivation is sketchy - she chose to show him some documents containing conspicuous evidence of an arms deal involving Roper.

Shortly after sharing this explosive information with the British embassy, he found himself in bed with the woman, despite there being no chemistry between them whatsoever. Lonely nights in Cairo, I suppose. Seeing as she spoke entirely in flirtatious riddles consumed with fatalistic portent, it was hardly surprising when she wound up dead.

The action, and I use that word advisedly, then span forward four years to find Pine working in a remote Alpine hotel, where his inexplicably grief-stricken flashbacks were rudely interrupted by the arrival of Roper.

Laurie appears to be enjoying himself playing “the worst man in the world”, but by the time he and his amusingly unpleasant henchman (Tom Hollander) turned up, it was too late. Even the presence of the perpetually pregnant Olivia Colman as a cardigan-clad spy with an indeterminate northern accent can't inject any life into such a soulless confection.

A good thriller poses intriguing questions which keep us watching in the hope of surprising, satisfactory answers. Yet despite the theoretically high stakes on offer, I see no reason why we should care about the players, let alone the outcome, of this dreary game of cat and mouse.

A gripping and propulsive feature-length documentary, Storyville: The Black Panthers strove to reclaim the oft-misunderstood story of the African-American revolutionary party who boldly took on the establishment in the late '60s and '70s.

Set against a tense backdrop of police brutality and racism, it traced the rise and fall of a militant black movement borne of righteous frustration. Despite their gun-toting image – an edgily symbolic pose, at least initially - their fundamental goal was the dismantlement of a system that actively suppressed equal rights in housing, healthcare and education for, not only African-Americans, but any victim of poverty. 

One of their most successful initiatives was a free breakfast programme for children. No wonder they were branded as terrorists by the FBI; for a while at least they were a galvanising force to be reckoned with.

But as soon as they became a respectable folk hero force within the black community, the government made damn sure that their civil liberties went out the window. Victims of incessant raids, arrests and, in one horrifying instance, cold-blooded assassination, their radical socialist manifesto didn't stand a chance in Nixon's America.

When their steadfast vow to defend themselves by any means necessary was put to the test, the body count rose, the party started to split, and the revolution was put on indefinite hold.

Despite the sizzling funk vibrancy of his stylistic approach, director Stanley Nelson refrained from romanticising the Panthers disproportionately. The rock 'n' soul power of their media-savvy image – dark glasses, berets, afros and leather jackets – remains ineffably cool, but that's hardly the most important facet of their legacy.

Nelson focused instead on insightful contributions from several former Panthers, who related their story with a fluctuating mix of pride, humour, anger and sadness. He also gained access to FBI documents laying bare their insidious campaign to divide and destroy a party already riven with contradictions.

The result was a sympathetic yet unsentimental study of a political awakening destroyed by ideological differences, personal demons and the insurmountable might of The Man (an enemy embodied by the wizened toddler scowl of crackpot FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover).

The film's underlying sense of tragedy and wasted potential was compounded by an unspoken yet powerfully tacit, sobering truth: the struggles at its core are still relevant today.

The radicalism of the Panthers is dead, possibly forever, even though we live in a world where the odds are more stacked against The People than ever before. Fight the power, pay the consequences.