TV Column: GUILT + CHILDREN IN NEED: GOT IT COVERED

This article was originally published in The Courier on 26th October 2019.

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

NEXT WEEK’S TV

GUILT

Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

In this new black comedy from Bob Servant creator Neil Forsyth, two brothers accidentally run over and kill an elderly man. When they try to cover it up, their lives become increasingly complicated. The brothers are a study in contrasts. Max (Mark Bonnar) is a rich, amoral lawyer. Jake (Jamie Sives) is a humble, sensitive record shop owner. Max’s plans to get away scot-free are compromised by his hapless brother’s pesky conscience and burgeoning relationship with the dead man’s niece. Guilt is great, a sharp farce-cum-thriller that confirms Forsyth’s status as one of Scotland’s best comedy writers. It’s also buoyed by an enjoyably demonic performance from the always reliable Bonnar, who’s positively Limmy-esque at times.

WHO ARE YOU CALLING FAT?

Monday and Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Britain is in the grip of an obesity crisis, but there’s a growing movement in favour of reclaiming what it means to be overweight. In this challenging two-part experiment, nine people who identify as fat or plus-size spend a week together under the same roof to share their experiences of living with obesity. Sharp differences of opinions ensue. That’s hardly surprising, as the participants include a pair of anti-diet, body-positive activists, a man who swears by his liposuction, a woman who’s ashamed of her body, and the CEO of a charity that regards obesity as a disease. It’s guaranteed to trigger debate and, alas, idiotic comments on Twitter. You know what people are like.

CHILDREN IN NEED: GOT IT COVERED

Wednesday, BBC One, 7:30pm

Earlier this year, ten well-known British actors assembled at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to record an album for Children in Need. Under the tutelage of a team including hit-making songwriter and producer Guy Chambers, these warbling novices were asked to choose songs that have personal meaning to them. Hence this rather pleasant documentary in which we’re treated to the unlikely spectacle of Jim Broadbent doing a countrified version of Blue Moon, Olivia Colman performing Portishead’s Glory Box with her Fleabag co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge on ukulele, and genuinely touching versions of Yellow by Coldplay and Sunshine on Leith by The Proclaimers performed, respectively, by Doctors Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant. Don’t worry, it’s not as luvvie-ish as it sounds. Cynics need not apply.

GET RICH OR TRY DYING: MUSIC’S MEGA LEGACIES

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

Hosted, with commendable dedication to maximum archness, by Ana Matronic from Scissor Sisters, this depressing, number-crunching documentary explains how the estates of superstar music artists continue to rake in billions posthumously. We meet a financially secure roster of producers, publicists, lawyers and family members, all of whom seem blissfully happy. Deceased legends and born again ‘brands’ under review include the Ramones, David Bowie, Bob Marley (“Sustainability was so important to him,” smarms the American businessman in charge of his estate), Prince and Elvis Presley, who laid the lucrative blueprint for the entire so-called legacy industry. The King has been dead for 42 years and currently has over 14 million followers on Twitter. It’s what he would’ve wanted.

LAST WEEK’S TV

TRAVEL MAN

Monday October 21, Channel 4

The relentlessly ironic Richard Ayoade began his latest series of supposedly affordable 48-hour travel breaks in Dubrovnik, Croatia. His celebrity companion on this occasion was Stephen Merchant. I’ve never understood the point of Travel Man, it’s so lightweight you never get a satisfying sense of the destinations it visits. That’s sort of the point, but so what? Come back Cliff Mitchelmore, where e’er you may be.

TV Review: THE REPLACEMENT + BROADCHURCH + PRIME SUSPECT 1973

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 4 March 2017.

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

THE REPLACEMENT: Tuesday, BBC One

BROADCHURCH: Monday, STV

PRIME SUSPECT 1973: Thursday, STV

Never trust overbearingly friendly, helpful people. That’s the important public service message behind THE REPLACEMENT, an uncomfortably gripping psychological thriller about a successful Glasgow architect gradually being usurped by the mentally unstable woman hired to cover her maternity leave.

When Ellen (Morven Christie) becomes pregnant, she initially welcomes the ultra-capable and seemingly empathetic Paula (Vicky McClure) to the fold. Paula is a doting mother, or so she claims, but her interest in Ellen’s pregnancy is acutely inappropriate. She tries to not-so-subtly undermine her colleague with physically invasive behaviour and passive-aggressive advice.

Ellen gradually develops a dislike for her. She becomes suspicious of her motives. But is she merely in the grip of hormone-addled paranoia? Of course not. We’ve all seen Rosemary’s Baby.

Aside from a climactic death scene – which naturally sends Ellen into labour - writer/director Joe Ahearne avoids overt thriller flourishes in favour of a more insidious approach. It’s very effective.

Christie and McClure are both excellent, the latter in particular. She succeeds in portraying Paula’s manipulative clamour while appearing outwardly pleasant and self-effacing. A plausible monster.

The end, at last, is in sight for BROADCHURCH, the Cluedo-like whodunit that squandered the buzz of its first impressive, attention-grabbing series. Can this third and final outing atone for the redundant mess of series two?

Well, this new case involving a traumatised victim of sexual assault is sensitively handled and more or less divorced from the original storyline. So far at least, it’s a respectable piece of drama, seemingly based on careful research into rape crisis management. Well I never.

Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess, but I hope it proves that writer Chris Chibnall – the journeyman tasked with ruling Doctor Who after the great Steven Moffat retires at Christmas – isn’t merely a hack who once caught lightning in a bottle.

Flushed with the success of Endeavour, ITV have taken the cynical – sorry, natural – step of producing a prequel to another one of their much-loved crime dramas.

Awash with rain and wistful recordings by Joe Cocker and Cat Stevens, PRIME SUSPECT 1973 charts the nascent career of Jane Tennison, originally played by Helen Mirren, as a young police constable entering a world mired in violence and murder.

Blandly earnest, she's nowhere near as interesting as the older Tennison, which is possibly why her creator Lynda La Plante left the project during pre-production. Even allowing for her youth, there's nothing to suggest that she's the same character. Why, it's almost as if ITV didn't have the nerve to launch a '70s-set cop show without tying it to the safety net of an established "brand".

However, it does a decent job of capturing the brown-upholstered fog of early 1970s Britain, without too much reliance on the self-conscious period signifiers common to other dramas of its type. There’s not a single spacehopper to be found.

While the twin discomforts of institutionalised sexism and police brutality are both present and politically incorrect, they don’t feel overcooked. Writer Glen Laker has a fairly convincing feel for the period.

Indeed, the sombre approach of the original Prime Suspect is successfully carried over into this surprisingly diverting piece of anti-nostalgia. 

TV Review: FLOWERS + THE SECRET

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 30th April 2016.

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

Flowers: Monday to Friday, Channel 4

The Secret: Friday, STV

Destined to be dimly recalled in years to come as “that rubbish with Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt”, Flowers was a black comedy misfire which somehow managed to be overcooked and under-powered simultaneously.

Channel 4 trailed it as an ambitious piece of event television, hence why they stripped all six episodes throughout the week. But I suspect the real reason for that was to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

A sort of rural British Addams Family, it followed a dysfunctional brood as they fell apart in a claustrophobic country house. Spending time in their company was immensely trying. Black comedy characters don’t have to be likeable, but they need to be interesting. This lot were miserable bores who it was impossible to care about.

Barratt, who’s very good at looking lost, played the depressed author of a popular range of children’s books. His failed suicide attempt came back to haunt him throughout the series, leading to a comical misunderstanding involving a child and a “secret magic snake” with a punchline so blatantly sign-posted it was visible from space.

Writer/director Will Sharpe tried far too hard to present Flowers as weirdly subversive, but the weirdness felt incredibly forced. It wasn’t funny enough to succeed as comedy, and too alienating to work as a serious study of clinical depression. He did manage to conjure a pleasingly gloomy bucolic atmosphere, but his script was an overbearing, tonally confused mess.

And what on earth was going on with the wacky Japanese houseboy/illustrator? A borderline dubious racial stereotype, his jarring presence was typical of Sharpe’s tendency to overdo things in the wrong direction. Sharpe, who is English/Japanese, actually played this character himself, but despite some laboured attempts to imbue him with pathos, the performance didn’t work. Almost nothing in Flowers did.

Its sole saving grace was a typically superb performance from Dame Olivia Colman. Making full use of her wonderfully expressive face, her beaming mask of sunny desperation was constantly under attack from her cracked inner turmoil and passive-aggressive undertow. Performing on the verge of hysteria is something she excels at, but in this case her brilliance far exceeded her tiresome material.

Fact: you’re only ever five minutes away from yet another brooding drama starring James Nesbitt. His latest salvo of grim intensity is The Secret, a superior thriller set in Troubles-era Northern Ireland in which he (and his fascinating hair transplant) plays a seemingly respectable pillar of his local Baptist Church. But as he embarks on an affair with another married member of the church, his true psychotic character gradually becomes apparent.

Based on a horrifying true story, this righteous attack on religious hypocrisy works because it manages to fuse its underlying ire with a bleakly compelling storyline and morally complex characters. Largely shorn of incidental music, its queasy hand-held quality creates an unforgiving sense of realism.

Without being overdone, the Troubles backdrop exacerbates the sense of a world in which violence and murder are a means to an end.

It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Nesbitt’s role, as it fully exploits his ability to appear outwardly charming while masking a dark, disturbing core. The great Jason Watkins also stands out as a creepily controlling pastor/cult leader.

The BBC have led the way with drama this year, but The Secret should be a deserved hit for ITV. Despite its bland, forgettable title, it’s an impressive piece of work.

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. 

TV Review: THE 7:39 and SECRETS OF THE LIVING DOLLS.

This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th January 2013.

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

The 7:39: Monday and Tuesday, BBC1

Secrets of the Living Dolls: Monday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

A Ray Davies song in waiting, David Morrissey's Carl was your typical commuter: an unremarkable middle-aged businessman sleepwalking through his drably unchanging routine. Grey of suit and beard – even his facial hair looked tired – he had the unassuming demeanour of a melancholy bear, a gentle soul both lost and harmless. 

Which was just as well, as his behaviour in romantic drama The 7.39 could easily have come across as sad and creepy: a stalker in sheep's clothing.

Instead he emerged as a likeable, if foolish, character whose whirlwind affair with Sally, a younger woman and fellow unsatisfied commuter played by Sheridan Smith, tore at the heart of this affecting little two-part saga.

Despite raking over very familiar territory – the concept of thwarted drifters gaining a new lease of life from a fleeting romance has informed everything from Brief Encounter to Lost in Translation – it was saved by mature, sensitive writing from David Nicholls and sweetly underplayed performances from Morrissey, Smith and, in her stock role of unfairly maltreated spouse, Olivia Colman.

Nicholls toyed with our allegiances by sketching each of his principal characters in a sympathetic light. Even Sally's fiancée, an overbearing fitness buffoon played by a suitably dense-looking Sean Maguire, was essentially well-meaning. This triggered an interesting subversion of the usual demands of romantic fiction, where we root for the starry-eyed lovebirds and hope they stay together at the end. Instead I found myself hoping their flirting would lead nowhere, and that Carl would see sense and return to the bosom of his lovely wife and kids.

It's testament to the quiet depth and pull of Nicholls' writing that I was actually angling for two hours of drama during which nothing remotely dramatic or untoward happened. It was like a Bizarro EastEnders: I didn't want anything bad to happen to these nice, ordinary people. She may be renowned for her extreme sobbing skills, but I doubt even the most sadistic viewer actually yearned to witness the inevitable tear-sodden scene of Colman discovering her husband's infidelity.

While it never added up to anything more meaningful than “the grass isn't always greener”, The 7.39 engaged with its themes in an entirely believable and unpretentious way. Buoyed by Nicholls' ear for natural-sounding dialogue and the informal strength of his cast, it was a touching study of human frailty and the runaway madness of the heart.

Despite being produced by the geniuses responsible for such dire point-and-gawp travesties such as the Big Fat Gypsy franchise and The Man With the 10-Stone Testicles, Secrets of the Living Dolls was a surprisingly inoffensive documentary about yet another subculture that most of us have never heard of.

The subjects in this case were a selection of men who enjoy transforming themselves into women via skin-tight rubber masks and flesh suits. Why? The only vague reasons given ranged from mere escapism to the need to feel young, attractive and special. Whether they gained any sexual satisfaction from their largely secret pursuit remained curiously unclear. 

Despite fleeting references to the anatomical accuracy of the suits, it was if the director, stricken by an unforeseen rash of prudishness, had little interest in exploring this phenomenon beyond its most superficial layer.

Instead we were simply presented with a group of harmless hobbyists whose only demand was for society to judge them kindly. And that was that. It was as bland and impassive as the sex-doll masks worn by the men, and while one could arguably applaud the programme's essentially neutral, non-judgemental approach – I never got the impression that anyone was being mocked – it isn't merely enough to present an unusual subset of society without any kind of deeper insight.

“Cuh, what do you think of that then?” is hardly the most profound authorial comment. 

TV PREVIEW: Mayday, Broadchurch, Bluestone 42

This article was originally published in The Scotsman on 2nd March 2013.

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/tv-and-radio

MAYDAY

Sunday to Thursday, BBC1, 9pm

BROADCHURCH

Monday, STV, 9pm

BLUESTONE 42

Tuesday, BBC3, 10pm

Paul Whitelaw

Typical. You wait ages for a British drama blatantly influenced by series one of The Killing, and two come along at once. In a shattering week for fictional close-knit communities, independent production company Kudos stands back and watches as BBC1 and ITV pitch their thematically identical Whoddunnits up against each other. Who will win? YOU decide.

Putting aside the curious question of why Kudos produced two such similar dramas simultaneously, we first come to MAYDAY. Stripped throughout the week for maximum “event TV” impact, it's a broiling cauldron of grief and paranoia in which a picturesque English village fails to adequately keep it together following the abduction of its teenage May Queen (She's abducted on May Day. Hence the distress signal “Mayday”. Clever, no?).

Given the pagan trappings, it's inevitably doused in flecks of The Wicker Man. Written by the team responsible for Whitechapel, it also boasts a slightly heightened, skewed atmosphere, milking the underlying dread of the balmy British sunshine for all it's worth.

Like The League of Gentleman without the (intentional) laughs, it delves forensically into a rural community full of dysfunctional locals, including an unhappily married middle-aged couple, a teenage “weirdo” in love with the missing May Queen's emo sister, a cruel, smarmy git played by – who else? - Aidan Gillen (I swear he gets these parts based on his smirk alone), and a man with mental health issues who enjoys climbing trees.

Within hours of the girl's disappearance, the latter's blowhard brother inevitably gathers a vigilante posse – consisting of Phil Mitchell and Hairy Biker lookalikes - and it's not long before escalating torrents of suspicion are aroused behind twitching curtains and the surrounding woods. Why are the menfolk behaving so strangely? What's their connection to the missing girl? Why does the wine-guzzling misanthrope have a hugely symbolic model village in his attic? What's going on?!

Despite over-egged moments of contrived weirdness – dismembered doll parts and leering slow-motion feature heavily – Mayday is a sharply-written, atmospheric pot-boiler bolstered by high-calibre performers such as Sophie Okonedo, Peter Firth and, especially, Lesley Manville.

Despite its flaws, Mayday outdoes its close cousin, BROADCHURCH, in which David Tennant's taciturn beard and Olivia Colman's soggy orbs investigate the murder of a child in a sleepy Dorset community riven with suspicion.

Written by no-one's favourite Doctor Who scribe Chris Chibnall, it makes good use of its coastal location, with the camera sailing ostentatiously over precipitous cliffs, and vast blue skies gazing down at the despair below. Like The Killing, it focuses – albeit rather thinly – on a grieving family and the emotional involvement of the investigating officers. It also tries to say something meaningful about the importance of faith and trust in a Godless universe. If anyone can carry that off, it's Chris Chibnall.

New in town, Tennant's troubled character is strictly by the book, whereas Colman's local police officer is warm and empathetic to a fault. Why, it's almost as if they're a deliberate study in contrasts. The friendly locals, meanwhile, aren't as they seem, which is par for the course in dramas of this nature.

Stretched over eight episodes, Broadchurch does tend to dawdle at times, whereas Mayday assaults the same subject matter with more pace and precision. And with a cast which includes the likes of Pauline Quirke, Vicky McClure, Andrew Buchan, Arthur Darvill and David Bradley, it sometimes feels like a star-studded tourist video for its Dorset setting (tragic murder element notwithstanding, obviously).

Is the war in Afghanistan a suitable topic for comedy? Well, of course. Everything is a suitable topic for comedy, depending on how its handled. The problem with BLUESTONE 42 – a new sitcom about a British bomb disposal unit based in Helmand Provence – isn't that it's offensive, it's that in going out of its way to avoid causing offence it ends up as just another bland, obvious, middling sitcom. That is, unless you're deeply offended by the very idea of an apolitical comedy about an illegal war.

As if eager to get the troubling issue of death out of the way as quickly as possible, it kills off a character within the first five minutes. But he's very deliberately portrayed as a roaring idiot who the rest of the team don't really know or like, thus fudging the issue of whether we're supposed to acknowledge the horrors of war or not. Otherwise, Bluestone 42 is a determinedly light affair focusing on the team's efforts to amuse themselves while stationed at camp.

The amiable Gary: Tank Commander has been here before, of course, as has the estimable M*A*S*H. Suffice to say, Bluestone 42 isn't M*A*S*H. The lead character is a hapless, cocky Prince William/Ben Fogle clone who thinks nothing of exploiting his rank and supposed hero status to clumsily woo the attractive new female padre. A sweary Scotsman and a tough, straight-talking woman are also involved. It all adds up to very little.

But given that it fails to portray “Our Boys” as selfless saints, it will doubtless upset Daily Mail types across the land. So that's something, at least.