BEING MUM WITH MND + THE TERROR + THE OTHER ONE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 30th April 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Being Mum with MND – Tuesday, BBC Scotland, 10pm

Lucy Lintott was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) at the age of 19. Doctors told her she would never be able to conceive. Lucy and her fiancé, Tommy, are now the proud parents of two young children. 

She is believed to be one of the few people with MND to have given birth twice. It’s also highly likely that she might be the youngest person in Scotland to have been diagnosed with MND. 

This touching documentary allows Lucy and her family to reflect upon their situation. She talks candidly about living with a degenerative condition, but she’s almost always upbeat. That’s her inherent nature. It’s also a beautiful love story. Lucy and Tommy are good, kind, inspiring people.

DI Ray – Monday to Thursday, STV, 9pm

This is not your standard ITV cop drama in the sense that it has an interesting, socially conscious point of view. It hits all the necessary beats of a thriller while exploring an important issue: the systemic racism, whether casual or overt, that exists within society.

DI Ray is a highly capable Asian-British police officer who is dismayed to learn that her recent promotion to the homicide department was based on her supposed suitability for “Culturally Specific Homicides”. It’s a racially insensitive box-ticking exercise. 

While investigating two Asian brothers accused of murder, she’s forced to confront the stark realities of working inside an institution that’s prone to making harmful assumptions based on ill-informed cultural stereotypes.

Davina McCall: Sex, Mind and the Menopause – Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

During the production of this documentary, Channel 4 carried out a survey of premenopausal and menopausal women. Their findings were shocking. Natural symptoms such as vague memory loss are being used against women in the workplace. People have lost their jobs as a result of losing their hormones. 

Davina McCall wants to find out if anything can be done to challenge this injustice. She also investigates some of the latest advances in hormone therapy, while meeting with experts who have studied the complex neurological effects of the menopause. 

I haven’t seen this programme, dear reader, it wasn’t available for preview; I’m basing my recommendation on McCall’s previous and entirely responsible documentaries about the memopause.

Married to a Psychopath – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Malcolm Webster is one of the most notorious psychopaths of recent times. He murdered his first wife, Claire, in 1994. He attempted to murder his second wife, Felicity, in 1997. He also had a series of bigamous relationships with women who he psychologically abused for his own financial ends. 

Webster, who was finally imprisoned in 2011, is a hideously dangerous man. This two-part documentary is primarily told from the perspective of one Charles Henry, a rural Scottish detective with time on his hands who proved instrumental in the case against Webster. Henry’s efforts were tireless. Admirable. 

I recommend watching this in conjunction with The Widower, an above-par 2014 TV drama starring Reece Shearsmith as Webster. 

The Terror – Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

You may recall that the first series of producer Ridley Scott’s supernatural anthology revolved around the real-life mystery of a lost Arctic expedition in the mid-19^th century: historical fact combined with speculative fiction. Series two follows suit. 

It’s set in California during World War Two, when thousands of Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in concentration camps. They were law-abiding citizens who posed no threat to anyone. Their internment was a heinous human rights violation entirely borne of racial prejudice. 

The cast includes George Takei, who resided in one of those camps when he was a child. He also serves as a series consultant to ensure accuracy. Episode one is intriguing, eerie and, needless to say, sensitively handled.

The Other One – Friday, BBC One, 9:30pm

Series two of Holly Walsh’s sitcom continues the eventful story of two adult sisters, Cathy and Cat, who only found out about each other’s existence following the death of their father. 

They’ve become quite close. They’ve also just discovered that they might have a half-brother. Cathy snogged him a few hours before anyone concerned was aware of their kinship. Hardly ideal. 

We also catch up on the developing relationship between their mismatched mothers. This is a sharp, dry-witted yet ultimately rather warm farce populated by likeable, well-drawn characters. It revels in silliness and nice little details. A great cast too: it’s a proven fact that you can’t go wrong with Siobhan Finneran and Rebecca Front.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Peacock – Monday 23rd April, BBC Three

I was quite impressed by episode one of this new sitcom. Allan ‘Seapa’ Mustafa, the co-creator of People Just Do Nothing, stars as a personal fitness trainer in his mid-thirties. 

Peacock is stuck in a rut. Single, lonely and riddled with anxieties, he’s fallen for a ridiculous notion of What It Means To Be a Man; but he’s clearly far too sensitive to embody that futile Alpha Male fantasy. 

The writers have a solid handle on their hapless protagonist. He’s an innocent, unworldly fool who means no harm, but his posturing need to be seen as something he’s not gets him into trouble. And from thence the humour and pathos arises. There’s a lot of promise here.

Searching for Michael Jackson’s Zoo with Ross Kemp – Wednesday 25th April, STV

Yep, I know. That title sounds like one of Alan Partridge’s ridiculous programme pitches. But Kemp’s documentary actually exposed some appalling animal cruelty. 

Michael Jackson’s Neverland zoo was always controversial. Even during his lifetime, investigations revealed that his ‘pets’ were treated unethically. Kemp’s M.O: whatever happened to the animals who survived? A dispiriting search ensued. 

Kemp is an inherently silly yet well-meaning man, but even in its clumsy tabloid TV way, the programme did tacitly confront the (pun half-intended) elephant in the room: Jackson’s love of animals was part and parcel of a calculatedly innocent Peter Pan image. You can join the dots from there.

COMEDIANS: HOME ALONE + CITIZENS OF BOOMTOWN: THE STORY OF THE BOOMTOWN RATS

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 30th May 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

COMEDIANS: HOME ALONE

Monday, BBC Two, 10pm

I wouldn’t blame you for being utterly sick of the sight of well-meaning celebrities broadcasting from their homes during lockdown, but this new series of fifteen-minute programmes is a cheerful distraction. A compendium of self-isolated sketches from various comedians, episode one features Kerry Godliman (who deserves a ticker tape parade for managing to escape from Ricky Gervais’ dire Derek and After Life with her dignity intact) playing a bored mum who’s getting through this by drinking white wine to excess, and Bob Mortimer as ‘Train Guy’, a beautifully observed parody of an obnoxious businessman conducting Facetime conversations with his colleagues: “We need a Zoom womb to incubate initiatives with potential going-forwardness.” Bob also provides some daft names for cats. Nice.

CARDINAL

Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Series four of this frostbitten Canadian crime drama begins with detectives John Cardinal (not, alas, played by a man called John Actor) and Lise Delorme investigating the sudden disappearance of a local politician’s husband. I don’t have much time for sombre police procedurals; it’s a genre sculpted almost entirely from clichés. Cardinal is typical in that it’s well-shot and atmospheric - a show so thickly mired in snow, it makes Fargo look like the Club Tropicana video – and benefits from nicely understated central performances, but we’ve seen it all before. The sonorous score, the sad detectives with boringly complicated private lives, the never-ending trudge from plot point A to plot point Z. You know the snore.

THE OTHER ONE

Friday, BBC One, 9pm

The great Rebecca Front stars in this promising new sitcom about a middle-class widow who gains a bitter lease of life when she discovers that her late husband was a philanderer with a secret working-class family. Co-written by Holly Walsh (check out Dead Boss, an unjustly forgotten sitcom she wrote with Sharon Horgan), The Other One is populated by mildly dysfunctional characters who are gently ribbed but never sneered at. It’s warm, benign, well-observed and contains actual proper jokes. Walsh stirs echoes of Victoria Wood with lines such as this one from Front’s character: “Can you ask Marcus to Sky + Masterchef: The Professionals for me, please?” The banal specificity of that really tickled me. It’s very good, folks. You should watch it.

LAST WEEK’S TV

CITIZENS OF BOOMTOWN: THE STORY OF THE BOOMTOWN RATS

Saturday 23rd May, BBC Two

A mediocre bunch of absolute chancers fronted by an insufferable shabby narcissist, The Boomtown Rats were unique in that they somehow managed to convince The Youth that naff sub-Springsteen pomp had anything whatsoever to do with punk and new wave. This laughably self-regarding documentary was founded on the false premise of Geldof and co being somehow important; a hollow piece of brand management packed with enabling buffoons such as Bono and Sting making absurdly extravagant claims on the band’s behalf. It was undeniably interesting, but only because all pop stories are interesting. Geldof, contrary to his posturing self-image, came across as a charmless opportunist who conveniently organised Live Aid when his moment in the sun was beginning to fade. Still, the piano arrangement on I Don’t Like Mondays is nice, isn’t it? Geldof didn’t write that.

BAKE OFF: THE PROFESSIONALS

Tuesday 26th May, Channel 4

The latest series of this pointless spin-off may as well have launched with a repeat. No one would’ve noticed. The mildly amusing contributions from camp co-host Tom Allen fail to rescue a format which fundamentally misunderstands the Bake Off mothership’s appeal: viewers enjoy watching ordinary people messing about with pastry and cream, it’s no fun at all when everyone involved is tediously skilled.

TV Review: DOCTOR THORNE + THE ALIENS + STOP/START

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12th March 2016.

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

Doctor Thorne: Sunday, STV

The Aliens: Tuesday, E4

Stop/Start: Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

Paupers! Mourn ye not for the demise of Downton Abbey, for oleaginous Tory apologist Lord Julian Fellowes hath returned with another luxury bauble of frock-coated period drama! Let joy be unconfined.

An adaptation of a 19^th century novel by Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne stars Tom Hollander, looking for all the world like a limited edition Victorian Lego man, as a kindly physician struggling to protect his sweet, penniless niece from a whirling community of money-obsessed snobs.

Fellowes, an awful snob himself, does at least ridicule their grasping aspirations; if he wasn't working from another writer's text, he'd almost certainly ask us to sympathise with them in some way. 

With its ludicrously heightened summer colour palette and near-impenetrable conversations involving the surnames of characters we hadn't met yet – Fellowes dumps exposition with all the finesse of a blunderbuss - the first half of episode one felt like a silly French & Saunders spoof of This Sort Of Thing.

But when the simple narrative eventually became clear – unbeknownst to anyone but Thorne, his niece is the heir to a fortune owned by Ian McShane's entertainingly crude Lord of the manor - it revealed itself to be a fairly diverting social satire elevated by a fine cast.

The Americans will love it, which is the main thing as far as ITV are concerned.  

An aggressively unfunny black comedy with ham-fisted allegorical pretensions, The Aliens

depicts a 21^st century Britain identical to our own, except for the presence of humanoid beings from another planet who are forced to live in a fortified urban ghetto.

This vilified underclass are pejoratively known as “Morks” (geddit?) and, having presumably replaced travellers, immigrants and benefit claimants as society's knee-jerk victims of choice, fulfil the nasty human urge to blame someone else for our problems.

It's a premise more or less stolen from the superior South African sci-fi film District 9, but whereas that had something valuable to say about racism, The Aliens strikes a weirdly reactionary tone for a show that presumably hopes to promote an anti-prejudice message.

Its stained with sniggering homophobia and a general meanness of spirit which not even the likeable hang-dog presence of This Is England and Being Human star Michael Socha can alleviate.

He plays a border patrol guard whose bigotry will obviously be challenged following his discovery that – in a twist visible from space – he's half-alien. This pivotal plot point is typical of how poorly conceived the show is: he's somehow survived into his twenties without realising he's half-alien, despite the fact that he's the only member of his team who's physically incapacitated by the technology they use to keep aliens in their place.

Socha deserves better than this. So do we.   

Written by and starring Jack Docherty of Absolutely fame, Stop/Start is the latest promising pilot from  the Comedy Playhouse strand. It's a Glasgow-based post-modern sitcom in which three couples in varying states of dysfunction share their inner monologues via direct-to-camera asides.

Sharp, funny and refreshingly unsentimental – some of its brutally frank observations elicited gasps from the studio audience – it's that rare beast: a middle-class, middle-aged relationship comedy with obvious popular and critical appeal.

Its central device could potentially annoy, but Docherty and a great cast including John Thomson, Kerry Godliman and Nigel Havers sell it expertly. More please!

TV Review: WAR AND PEACE + DEUTSCHLAND '83

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 9th January 2016.

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

War and Peace: Sunday, BBC One

Deutschland '83: Sunday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

The prospect of reading War and Peace is so notoriously daunting, its mythical reputation as an insurmountable literary Everest is probably more well-known than the contents of the book itself.

Most of us know the gist of Tolstoy's epic tome, thanks to endless references in popular culture. But have you actually read this gargantuan Napoleonic saga? I haven't. However, I've seen Woody Allen's hilarious parody, Love and Death, more often than I've seen my own reflection. Isn't that enough?

Even Andrew Davies, who adapts classic novels for breakfast, hadn't read it until the BBC asked him to write a six episode adaptation. Despite his trepidation, he eventually discovered that it wasn't an impenetrable chore after all, but a page-turner packed with romance, drama, action and satire. 

Of course, this will come as no surprise to anyone who's read it, but as we've established, no one ever has.

Davies is the ideal man for this ambitious task. He has a gift for condensing classic texts without sacrificing the essentials. His adaptations are accessible, but hardly dumbed down. The opening scene of this impressive production was a deft case in point. Set during a lavish drawing room ball, it introduced a banquet of characters without any fuss or confusion - unless you were playing familiar TV actor Bingo, in which case you probably missed most of the dialogue.

If a visiting alien were to switch on a TV at random, he'd be forgiven for thinking that the only working actors in Britain are Stephen Rea, Jim Broadbent, Tuppence Middleton, James Norton and Rebecca Front. They're all great, but must they appear in everything?

A refreshing presence among this plethora of ubiquitous faces was American actor Paul Dano as nebbishy hero Pierre. The illegitimate son of a wealthy nobleman, his liberal idealism is tested when he suddenly inherits a vast fortune. 

Played by Dano as a fretting, fumbling, bespectacled mouse caught in the sights of an oncoming lawnmower, Pierre contends with a scheming uncle – Rea, looking as always like a camel sucking a lozenge wryly – and an arranged bride (Middleton) who'd rather have his money than his milksop body. 

She's also having an incestuous relationship with her brother, a bizarre sub-plot which, according to Davies, is subtly implied in Tolstoy's novel. I'll take his word for that.

Despite his respect for his source materials, Davies is a mischievous adaptor. I can't be alone in detecting the ribald double-meaning of lines such as: “You need to let the old Count see you before he dies.” That's no accident, it's a cheeky Max Miller gag.

Director Tom Harper (This Is England '86; Peaky Blinders) also deserves credit for creating such a visually sumptuous, pacey treat. It doesn't drag in the slightest. A co-production with the Weinstein Group, no expense has been spared on striking costumes and palatial European locations. The grimly insane battle scenes, though presumably populated by just a few dozen extras, are a bold lesson in creative editing. Yes, the cast is over-familiar, but they fill their roles with aplomb. It's a stunning production oozing with charm, wit and class.

Old Tolstoy will be delighted by the boost in book sales.

Showing as part of Channel 4's admirable new commitment to foreign drama, Deutschland '83 is a Cold War thriller steeped in suitably pallid period detail. Unfortunately, it squanders an intriguing premise – a young East German solider is press-ganged into working undercover in the West – with a curiously superficial tone. It's so light and predictable, all potential tension is lost.

I'm usually a sucker for any '80s-based political drama stacked against the backdrop of nuclear annihilation, but even I must concede that Deutschland '83 is, at best, only mildly diverting.

A disappointment, but looking on the bright side there should hopefully be some gems in the rest of Channel 4's new overseas consignment. Onwards and upwards, as Brezhnev used to say.