GEORGE MICHAEL: OUTED | KATHY BURKE: GROWING UP | FUNNY WOMAN

This article was originally published in The Courier of 4th March 2023. 

NEXT WEEK’S TV

George Michael: Outed – Monday and Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm

In 1998, George Michael was arrested for committing a so-called lewd act in a Los Angeles public toilet. That scandal could’ve ended his career, but instead he turned it into a landmark moment for gay liberation. He owned it. 

This comprehensive two-part documentary places George’s highly publicised outing in acute sociohistorical context. 

He shot to fame in the 1980s, when the tabloids exploited the AIDS crisis to create a virulently homophobic moral panic. His private anxiety was emblematic of fears within the entire gay community. 

A valuable social document, the programme illustrates the blatantly unethical ways in which certain powerful portions of the media persecute minorities for their own political gain. Its timely subtext is clear.

A Special School – Monday, BBC Two, 7pm

In the final episode of this current series, the staff and pupils of Ysgol Y Deri are nearing the end of summer term. 

Sport’s Day is back for the first time since the pandemic. Egg and spoons abound. As one staff-member notes, these fun little memories will hopefully be something the kids will cherish in their adult lives. 

It’s also time, after months of rehearsal, for the big summer production of Aladdin. 

As always, A Special School illustrates the importance of gently encouraging children with diverse needs towards creative and active endeavours which may allow them to project hitherto untapped facets of their personalities. 

If you’ve seen this show before, then you’ll understand why I repeatedly wax lyrical about it.

Jamie’s £1 Wonders – Monday, Channel 4, 8pm

Cost of living crisis be damned, here comes big-hearted millionaire chef Jamie Oliver to give us some advice about how to survive on a meagre budget. 

The problem with Jamie is that he probably does mean well, but he’s a fundamentally silly man utterly lacking in self-awareness. So ostensibly good-natured ventures such as this always come across as blunderingly offensive. He has no real idea of how much we’re all struggling. 

Anyway. In episode one, he faffs about with some chickens, pizzas and pancakes. He also calls upon his old pal Gennaro Contaldo to share some tips on traditional Italian cooking. Those tips don’t involve toast and baked beans, so I found myself lost from the outset.

Kathy Burke: Growing Up – Wednesday and Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm

Kathy Burke, like most decent people of sound mind, would balk at being described as a national treasure. And ‘balk’ is a polite way of putting it. Nevertheless, Burke is rightfully beloved. 

She doesn’t project a cynically contrived persona, she’s a genuinely frank, funny, kind and inquisitive person who has no time for narrow-minded nonsense. Hence why she’s carved a successful career in semi-retirement as the host of documentaries such as this, in which she challenges negative stereotypes about people old and young. 

While confronting the realities of ageing and death, she examines the inherent difficulties of young adulthood in the 21^st century. It’s a typically insightful and humane essay, shorn of all the usual clichés.

Cold Case Detectives – Thursday, STV, 9pm

Carol Ann Stephens was murdered in Cardiff in 1959. She was six-years-old. Her killer has never been found. This new series attempts to find some justice for Carol at last. 

I’m generally disinclined to recommend programmes of this nature, as they’re quite distressing for obvious reasons. So with that in mind, please tread carefully. 

In episode one, we’re introduced to a detective who was childhood friends with Carol. We also follow, throughout the series, cold case detectives and forensic experts as they revisit old crime scenes, interview new witnesses and unearth crucial pieces of information. The team also investigate some other historic murders. 

Funny Woman – Thursday, Sky Showcase, 9pm

Based on the novel by Nick Hornby, this likeable comedy-drama stars Gemma Arterton as Barbara, a mid-1960s Blackpool beauty queen who flees to Swinging London. Inevitably, she discovers that London only swings for those who can afford it. 

Barbara is determined to do something with her life, but has no real idea of what that might be. She idolises Lucile Ball. Perhaps she could be Britain’s answer? 

Adapted by that great comic actor and writer Morwenna Banks, Funny Woman is a warm, witty, charming tribute to our estimable comedy heritage. Arterton proves once again that she’s a talented comic performer, and Rupert Everett has an absolute whale of a time as an ageing showbiz impresario.

Becoming Frida Kahlo – Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

Frida Kahlo is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of the 20^th century. But that wasn’t the case during her lifetime. This beautifully-made three-part profile pays homage to a truly transgressive artist. 

It begins at the beginning, with a young Mexican girl growing up in a time of revolution. Those formative experiences inspired her uncompromising independence and iconoclasm.

Programmes of this nature often rely on lazy platitudes, they tell the stories of ‘icons’ in a superficial way, but this one is different. It’s curated by people who understand why Kahlo was so important. They never forget that she was an actual human being, not just some sort of symbolic legend. 

LAST WEEK’S TV

Endeavour – Sunday 26th February, STV

Here we are then. It’s the final series of this Inspector Morse prequel, which began way back in 2012. Naturally, some Morse fans were sceptical at the time. Do we really need a detailed backstory for this quietly enigmatic detective? Aren’t some mysteries best left unsolved? 

Well, I’m no Morse purist, but from where I’m standing Endeavour never sullied the legacy of one of TV’s most beloved coppers. It was made with evident care and respect for, not only John Thaw’s iteration of the character, but for the quietly ingenious spirit of Morse creator Colin Dexter. 

Youngish Morse’s latest case, which took place in 1972, was a typically diverting and elegant piece of superior Sunday night clue-sniffery.

The Women Who Changed Modern Scotland – Tuesday 28th February, BBC Scotland

Chapter two of Kirsty Wark’s enlightening essay travelled through the 1980s and 1990s, a bold new era of opportunities for women. Or so they were told. In fact, the struggle for equality was far from over. Sexism, misogyny, harassment and domestic abuse were still rife. 

Wark’s interviewees included the daughter of Jean Porcelli, who fought a landmark sexual harassment case which changed the law for women across Britain, and Karen Koren, the Gilded Balloon artistic director who encouraged so many women to blaze a trail through comedy. 

Wark also told the story of Anne Hepburn, whose feminism shaped her quest for more inclusivity in the Church of Scotland. 

All three episodes of this excellent series are currently available on iPlayer. 

TV Review: DAMNED + THE FALL + THE LEVEL

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 1 October 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

Damned: Tuesday, Channel 4

The Fall: Thursday, BBC Two

The Level: Friday, STV

  

There was once a time, not so long ago, when Jo Brand was negatively pigeonholed as a sardonic comedian who joked about nothing apart from chocolate and how rubbish men are. Yet in the last few years, quietly and assuredly, she’s recast herself as the tragicomic queen of socially conscious sitcom.

Having tackled the thankless lives of NHS nurses and community care assistants in the wonderful Getting On and its recent sequel Going Forward, she now turns her attentions to social workers in Damned. Like Getting On, it’s a sympathetic yet unsentimental comedy inspired by her own experience – a former psychiatric nurse, she’s the daughter of a social worker – in which harassed carers strive to do their best under trying circumstances.

The title comes from the apt observation that social work is an unfairly vilified occupation in which employees are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. It’s set in a Children’s Services department where the lifts, toilets and especially the people who work there, are knackered.

Brand’s character, Rose, is the spiritual twin of Nurse Kim Wilde from Getting On, a caring professional whose jaded surface belies a genuine desire to help.

Her similarly careworn friend and co-worker Al (Alan Davies) is the only other “normal” member of a staff which includes Peep Show’s Isy Suttie as a bafflingly exuberant temp, Himesh Patel as an ex-policeman and humourless stickler for the rules, and the great Kevin Eldon, that always welcome Zelig of British TV comedy, as an endearingly innocent office manager.

It’s a classic workplace sitcom in many ways – long-suffering protagonists surrounded by “wacky” supporting characters – but it’s largely successful in its attempts to fuse traditional gags with unforced pathos. Despite the necessarily stark backdrop of abuse, neglect, illness and desperation, it’s a fundamentally warm, likeable show.  

Co-written with Morwenna Banks and Will Smith of, respectively, Absolutely and The Thick of It renown, Damned confirms Brand’s status as one of the most thoughtful writer/performers in TV comedy.

Back, unbidden, for a third series, exasperating thriller The Fall is a textbook example of a show that doesn’t know when to quit.

It began as a gripping, if questionably violent, cat-and-mouse drama about a detective hunting a serial killer, but gradually devolved into a self-indulgent, risible chore.

Its failings were epitomised by this opening episode, which was preoccupied by an interminable effort to rescue Paul Spector from death’s door. Why should we care if he dies or not? He’s a psychopathic, misogynist murderer, and a boring one to boot.

Whereas once she proved intriguingly aloof, Gillian Anderson now looks truly fatigued as DS Gibson. The Fall should be put out of its misery.  

Philip Glenister scored the easiest pay cheque of his career in The Level, a silly crime drama in which his character was murdered within the first 10 minutes.

He’ll presumably return in flashbacks/dream sequences, but the sound of him laughing all the way to the bank is the only note of joy in this drab account of a compromised detective trapped in a mild nest of intrigue while self-medicating her preposterously lenient gunshot wound with ibuprofen and gauze.

You know you’re watching a redundant thriller when the scenery – Brighton in this case – is more engaging than the story.

And how’s this for dialogue?

“The boss says you used to be school friends.”

“Yeah, when we were kids.”

The ideal age to be school friends, I find.