THE RESPONDER + THE NILSEN FILES + I, SNIPER: THE WASHINGTON KILLERS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd January 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Responder – Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

Martin Freeman delivers a career-best performance in this queasy drama about an urgent response police officer struggling with mental health issues. 

Desperately overworked, he’s had enough. His beat on the mean streets of Liverpool feels futile. “I want to be normal,” he sighs to his therapist. But he’s somehow in the pocket of a local drug dealer (Ian Hart), and hopelessly trapped in a nocturnal odyssey of violence and death. 

Despite that sombre premise, The Responder is liberally peppered with amusing gallows humour: an existential howl of nervous laughter.

Written by former policeman Tony Schumacher, it’s unsentimental yet compassionate in the Jimmy McGovern vein. It feels painfully authentic, so much so that it won’t go down well in police recruitment circles.

Bradley & Barney Walsh: Breaking Dad – Monday, STV, 8pm

I like Bradley Walsh, but he is now officially the most ubiquitous man on television. It’s ridiculous, he’ll probably be presenting Newsnight next. 

But I can’t deny the simple pleasures of this series, in which Walsh and his affable son roam the globe in their massive RV. This week they’re in Hungary. Naturally, Walsh does the “no thanks, I’ve had breakfast” dad joke; it would be disappointing if he didn’t. 

Highlights include a visit to a museum dedicated to one of Hungary’s most famous sons, Harry Houdini. Walsh actually re-enacts the great escapologist’s straitjacket stunt, which involves him hanging upside down from a slowly burning rope, 150 feet above the ground. I kid you not.

The Nilsen Files – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

In 1983, after dismembered human remains were discovered in his flat, the serial killer Dennis Nilsen confessed to claiming the lives of up to 16 young men. This sensitively handled series gives voice to his victims and their families. 

A stark document of early 1980s Britain, it reveals how those men weren’t just victims of Nilsen, but also of mass unemployment, rising homelessness, police indifference and systemic homophobia. They fell through the cracks of a society which, according to Thatcher, didn’t exist. 

Bolstered by impressive research, the programme features contributions from police officers, journalists and a homelessness outreach worker (pictured) who knew one of the victims. Her kindness stands in sharp contrast to the shocking attitudes we encounter elsewhere.

I, Sniper: The Washington Killers – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Twenty years ago, a random spate of sniper attacks occurred in the Washington D.C area. Ten people were killed and three were critically injured. The perpetrators were Lee Malvo, who was seventeen at the time, and US Army veteran John Muhammad. 

This grimly absorbing series attempts to explain what motived them to commit such a heinous crime. Not that their motivations will ever make any kind of rational sense, but episode one presents Muhammad as a charismatic yet deeply disturbed individual who seemingly radicalised his vulnerable surrogate son. 

Audio recordings of Malvo being interviewed in prison offer some disquieting insight into his psyche. Other interviewees include two of Malvo’s relatives and some of the victims’ devastated family members.

Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51 – Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

Jay Blades, the genial presenter of TV favourite The Repair Shop, left school without any qualifications. He’s been told by experts that he has the reading age of an 11-year-old. 

In this programme, he endeavours to improve his literacy skills with assistance from a charity who offer one-to-one coaching. 

Preview copies weren’t available in time, but this sounds like a worthwhile piece of television. It is reported that over eight million adults in the UK, including half of all prisoners, struggle with their reading. 

Blades meets up with people who share his difficulties, while revealing how he runs a successful upholstery business and presents television programmes without any recourse to the written word.

Katie Price’s Mucky Mansion – Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

Time now to follow Katie Price as she renovates her dilapidated 19-room mansion in the Sussex countryside. Price has abandoned it, hence why it’s fallen into such a severe state of uninhabitable disrepair. The interior resembles the aftermath of a furious showdown between the Hulk and at least five werewolves. 

“I’d probably be better off knocking it down and starting again,” she sighs. Or making a television series about doing it up. There are always options. 

Renovating the mansion is, according to Price, a psychological process. Its sorry state is a symbolic manifestation of her turbulent private life. That’s the framing device anyway. I wish her nothing but the best, but this is hardly riveting television.

The Mind of Herbert Clunkerdunk – Wednesday, BBC Two, 10pm

Surreal comedy is a difficult art to pull off. For every successful example such as Monty Python or Vic & Bob, there are a million pretenders who mistakenly think that throwing a load of ‘random’ ideas at the wall will suffice. 

Enter comedian Spencer Jones and his zany alter ego, Herbert Clunkerdunk. Spending time in his mind is like being trapped at an office joker’s power-point presentation. A relentless torrent of self-conscious whimsy and weirdness, it’s utterly exhausting. 

I admire the intent, at least he’s attempting to do something a bit different and unpredictable. He tries very, very hard to please. And that’s the problem, his eccentricity never feels organic. There’s nowt much worse than forced nonsense.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Sue Perkins’ Big American Road Trip – Sunday 16th, Channel 4

You’d be forgiven for sighing at the prospect of yet another famous person enjoying a scenic journey in a campervan, but this new series is actually quite interesting. 

It spotlights a growing subculture of Americans who have swapped their houses for motorhomes. They’ve opted for a life of glorious freedom (while posting about it on social media). 

Perkins’ journey began in California, where she met a young van-lifer who earns a living from vlogging, and a genial hippie Santa who heads an enormous grassroots movement of people who’ve found salvation in this alternative lifestyle. It was quietly inspiring. 

Also, Perkins is a funny and personable traveller who’s interested in finding out about people. A good-natured vehicle.

Dragons’ Den – Thursday 20th January, BBC One

In the latest instalment of this never-ending entrepreneurial fever dream, we met a couple dressed as boy scouts (always enter the Den with a strong visual gimmick). They pitched an idea for the UK’s first summer camp for adults. Alas, the Dragons weren’t impressed by their shaky business plan, so that wacky game of dress-up was pointless. 

Other pitches included a vegan handbag range. The novel twist? Each bag contains some erotic fiction written by the entrepreneurs themselves. They failed to secure an investment.

Believe it or not, Dragons’ Den has actually become a little bit ‘nicer’ of late, possibly because viewers have tired of watching members of the public being belittled by millionaires. I live in hope.

 

 

IT'S A SIN + AN ENDLESS PROCESSION OF CELEBRITIES WANDERING AROUND BRITAIN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 13th February 2021.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

It’s a Sin – Friday, Channel 4, 9pm

Over the last five weeks, I’ve taken the unprecedented and quite frankly maverick step of choosing the same show as my highlight of the week. That’s because nothing has come close to It’s a Sin, the Russell T. Davies-penned drama about a group of friends dealing with the AIDS crisis. 

And now it comes to an end. 

Ritchie (Olly Alexander) is seriously ill at home on the Isle of Wight. His formidable mother (a strikingly nuanced turn from Keeley Hawes) struggles to cope with her pain, anger and confusion. A near-continuous shot through the corridors and wards of a hospital where patients are dying of AIDS is breath-taking. It’s a Sin will linger for a very long time.

Jay and Dom’s Home Fix – Monday, BBC One, 3:45pm

During the pandemic, I’ve become mildly obsessed with the increasingly obvious ways in which TV has been forced to operate. This new series is a case in point. 

It stars the genial Jay Blades and Dom Chinea from The Repair Shop, as they beaver away in their socially distanced workshop. Their M.O: provide some practical money-saving DIY advice, which is apparently easy to follow for viewers who aren’t, like me, incompetent Frank Spencer types. 

But their segments are padded out with a compendium of emergency archive clips from gently hands-on lifestyle shows such as Flog It!, Gardener’s World and Monty Don’s Big Dreams, Small Spaces. Yet despite its blatantly cobbled-together nature, it’s a perfectly pleasant distraction.

Joanna Lumley’s Home Sweet Home: Travels in My Own Land – Tuesday, STV, 8pm

This week’s travel-heavy schedules feel like a sadistic joke orchestrated by a phalanx of ostensibly inoffensive celebrities hell-bent on reminding us of the wonderful world outside our hermetic lockdown bubbles. 

During the final leg of her entirely random sojourn around Britain, Lumley and her spectacular array of scarves, snoods and sou’westers visit a Victorian slate-mining settlement in the misty mountains of Snowdonia. She also meets the GoCompare opera singer. 

While travelling through Devon and Cornwall (more of which below), she observes some Dartmoor druids performing an incantation, before ending where she began with another member of the Windrush Generation. A 95-year-old former musician, he’s glad to have lived to see numerous positive changes in this country.

Grand Tours of Scotland’s Lochs – Wednesday, BBC One, 7:30pm

In which the permanently be-hatted, neckerchief-swaddled, backpack-laden and always engaging Paul Murton returns for another informative Loch-side ramble. 

He begins his latest series on the beauteous Isle of Skye, with ancient myths and legends coursing through his mind. He sows a neatly sprawling tapestry of plundering Vikings, ancient Highland bagpipe traditions, gruesome feuds and battles, and a beatific visitation from Donovan, who once owned three of the surrounding islands during his high Arcadian ‘60s heyday. 

Murton also touches upon the horrific story of the Hebridean slaves, that most extreme example of 18^th century Scots being forced to leave their homes while under the governance of despicable land barons. I’m looking at you, Norman MacLeod.

Cornwall and Devon Walks with Julia Bradbury – Wednesday, STV, 8pm

And those feet just keep on walking. This week, Bradbury’s never-ending hike takes her to a vineyard in Totness and a massive house in Dartmouth that once belonged to Agatha Christie. 

Yomping travelogues such as this have been parodied so often over the years - by Alan Partridge in particular – you would think they’d be dead in the water. But no, they march on undaunted, impervious to satire. 

What with this, Lumley’s programme and John Nettles’ preposterously narrated Channel 4 series, there can’t be a single square inch of Devon and Cornwall that hasn’t been explored on television by now. Enough already. 

The logical next step: Gregg Wallace floating alone in the infinite depths of space.

Extraordinary Escapes with Sandi Toksvig – Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

I wish I was making this up for hilariously satirical effect, but here’s yet another cosy jaunt around the British Isles. 

If you happened to read last week’s column, then you may dimly recall the drill: each week, Toksvig and a famous female pal visit remote British locations and stay in unusual lodgings. Toksvig provides a few pertinent historical titbits. Sometimes they drink cocktails. There is literally nothing more to it than that. 

Her minibreak companion this time around is Jessica Hynes. An affable duo, they luxuriate in a lovingly restored 19^th century windmill, an 18^th century farmhouse located in the middle of a nature reserve, and a stylish glass-fronted beach house. So that’s nice, isn’t it?

LAST WEEK’S TV

Forensics: The Real CSI – Tuesday 9th February, BBC Two

“Hello. I’ve just murdered my wife.” 

So began the latest series of this sombre study of crime scene investigators. It followed forensic specialists from Birmingham as they carefully pieced together an accurate report on a brutal domestic murder. The husband may have confessed during his initial call to emergency services, but they couldn’t guarantee that he would stick to his story. There were no witnesses. Inevitably, they got him in the end. 

I’m always in two minds about shows of this nature. They’re technically well-made and relatively sensitive. They provide compelling insight into how the police and forensic investigators operate. But they also feed off terrible tragedies, and I feel guilty for getting drawn in.

Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby – Thursday February 11, BBC Two

We really don’t need another series of this jet-setting trash in which MasterChef judge Monica Galetti and the vile journalist Giles Coren – a man in his fifties who still hasn’t learned how to eat with his trap shut – visit various five-star hotels. 

There’s no wry commentary a la Alan Whicker or Louis Theroux, no suggestion that this luxury is repugnant and deranged: it’s an uncritical celebration of how the 1% live. 

Oh, it pays lip service to issues such as the environment and the local economy, and the hosts briefly muck in behind-the-scenes, but their efforts are perfunctory and patronising: these factotums work jolly hard, don’t they? Now, let’s have a glass of morning champagne! 

Horrible, horrible television.