THREE MINUTES: A LENGTHENING | EVERYONE ELSE BURNS | HAPPY VALLEY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 21st January 2003. 

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Storyville – Three Minutes: A Lengthening – Tuesday, BBC Four, 10pm

On Thursday 4^th August 1938, photographer David Kurtz captured some informal silent film footage of the Jewish community based in the small Polish town of Nasielsk. Those haunting three minutes form the basis of this documentary. 

Nasielsk had 7,000 inhabitants in 1938, 3,000 of whom were Jewish. Fewer than a hundred of them survived the Holocaust. 

The only voices we hear throughout the film belong to narrator Helena Bonham Carter, Kurtz’s eloquent grandson, an actor quoting from contemporary accounts, and, remarkably, a survivor who grew up in Nasielsk before it was invaded by the Nazis. He’s able to put names to faces. 

This fragment of film brings ghosts back to life, it preserves their memories. They existed.

Robson Green’s Weekend Escapes – Monday to Friday, BBC Two, 6:30pm

In this cosy new series, Mr Affability visits various picturesque outdoor spots in the North East of England. He’s not alone, of course, each leg of his rural journey is enjoyed in the company of a celebrity chum. That’s how these shows must always operate. By law.

Guests this week include footballers Les Ferdinand and Jill Scott, actor Mark Benton and comedian Lost Voice Guy. However, in a shocking break from standard TV rules, he’s joined on Friday by members of his actual family. 

Weekend Escapes fulfils its unpretentious M.O. without any fuss. This is comfort viewing incarnate, an animated tapestry of pretty pictures populated by pleasant people indulging in mild banter. 

It’s winter, it’s freezing, it’ll do for now.

Everyone Else Burns – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Simon Bird stars in this new sitcom as the uptight patriarch of a puritanically religious family who believe the end times are a‐coming. They’ll be saved by the Rapture. 

I wasn’t impressed by the first two episodes, both of which go out on Monday. It’s fundamentally sympathetic towards the brainwashed followers of futile doomsday cults, that much is clear, but it falls short of its potential as a piece of character‐based social satire. 

The performances are fine, but the script is limp and obvious. Every attempted joke falls flat.

It’s frustrating, and I can’t help thinking how this bleak subject matter would be handled by Chris Morris, who once made a very funny, thoughtful film, Four Lions, about suicide bombers. 

Sort Your Life Out – Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

The delightful Stacey Solomon has returned for another series of friendly life hacks. In episode one, we meet a family whose home is cluttered with unnecessary detritus. Solomon and co come to the rescue. 

Now, I’m instinctively suspicious of most programmes along these ‘life‐changing’ makeover lines, as they tend to judge people harshly. They sneer, poke, mock and belittle. But that’s not the Solomon way. 

It would appear that she actually gets to know these families, she engages sympathetically with the parents and children, so in the end you get the impression that everyone is genuinely satisfied. You’d hope so anyway. 

Such a misleadingly aggressive title, though. It sounds like something Dirty Den would bark at Angie.

My Kind of Town – Thursday, BBC Scotland, 8pm

I’m fully aware that this week’s column is preoccupied with travelogues, but I hope these outdoorsy recommendations provide you with some vicarious forms of escape from the January blues. 

If you haven’t seen this lovely little show before, it’s worth checking out. The latest episode finds Ian Hamilton and his guide dog Major exploring the Scottish Borders town of Hawick.

Iain Robertson Rambles – Thursday, BBC Scotland, 8:30pm

And the walks just keep on comin’. 

In this episode, the Scottish actor Iain Robertson concludes his epic 200 mile trek along The Hebdridean Way. He’s occasionally accompanied by a film crew, but for the most part it’s all filmed via Robertson’s light self‐affixed camera. We’re in the intimate presence of a ruminative man and his faithful dog friend, Mollie, both of them miles from anywhere while in the centre of something meaningful. 

As Robertson points out, communing with nature can do wonders for one’s mental health. 

Yes, there are some celebrity cameos ‐ actors Kevin McKidd and Alex Norton in this case ‐ but they enhance Robertson’s message: solitude and company exist in therapeutic tandem. 

Travel Man: 48 Hours in Salzburg – Friday, Channel 4, 8:30pm

Joe Lycett’s travelling companion this week is fellow comic Roisin Conaty. They are, as you’ve doubtless already gathered from the title, in the Austrian city of Salzburg. 

Food‐wise, they devour some schnitzel, strudel and Salzburg’s signature dark chocolate, marzipan and nougat sweet: Mozartkulgen, which translates into English as Mozart’s Balls. Salzburg’s most famous son would presumably see the funny side of that irreverent tribute. 

The Mozart theme continues during a visit to an imaginative art installation. Lycett and Conaty also check in to a luxury art‐filled hotel, visit a forest‐bathing workshop, and have the all‐singing time of their lives on Fraulein Maria’s Bicycle Tour, which takes in various locations from The Sound of Music.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Happy Valley – Sunday 15th January, BBC One

We’ve reached the halfway point of the final series of Sally Wainwright’s modern classic. I usually shy away from praise of that nature, as it tends to sound glib and excessive, but Happy Valley is a special case. 

The opening scene, in which Catherine and Clare confronted each other, was an acting and writing masterclass. No histrionics, just two people quietly dealing with a gamut of conflicted emotions. Wainwright understands how people actually communicate with each other.

As well as being a gripping thriller, Happy Valley is an empathetic meditation on physical and psychological abuse. Gas‐lighting narcissists cannot be reasoned with. We’re instinctively inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt, but those humane impulses are wasted on abusers. 

This Cultural Life: Ken Loach – Wednesday 18th January, BBC Four

For over fifty years, Ken Loach has been Britain’s foremost politically‐engaged left‐wing filmmaker. In the latest episode of this televised podcast, the great man sat down with journalist John Wilson to discuss some of his cultural touchstones. 

Formative memories included family visits to Blackpool where he enjoyed some of the great British comedians of the day, and the influence of 1960s Czech cinema on his exceptional body of work. Those films inspired him to capture “a life happening” on screen. 

Now aged 86, Loach remains a modest man driven by anger and compassion. With regards to his attitudes toward social injustice, this quote was key: “You can’t see it happen and be indifferent.”

TV Review: GRANTCHESTER

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on Saturday 11th October 2014.

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

Grantchester: Monday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

If I may make so bold a generalisation, then for anyone starved of thrills since the demise of Tom Bosley's ecclesiastical crime thriller Father Dowling Investigates – Murder She Wrote in a dog collar, no less – the arrival of Grantchester must've felt like manna from murder mystery Heaven.

Set in 1953 in the titular Cambridgeshire village, and written by James 'Son of Archbishop' Runcie, it follows a frustrated young vicar who gains a new lease of life when he becomes an amateur sleuth.

Operating a million country miles from his disturbing performance as Happy Valley's chief psychopath, the versatile James Norton plays Sidney Chambers as a handsome and progressive clergyman who, lest anyone doubt his modern credentials, enjoys whisky, jazz, cigarettes – note that all-important comma - and frolicking in lakes with frightfully nice young ladies.

This workaday existence is changed forever when the grieving mistress of a suicide case approaches him to cry murder. A depressed alcoholic lawyer, he'd told this poor woman that, once he'd left his wife, they would “live as we have never lived!” I mean, I ask you, are those the words of a suicidal man?

Gripped by this compelling evidence, Chambers' eyes widened. As the mistress explained, helpfully setting up the premise, who better to investigate a mystery than a pillar of the community who can go anywhere and ask any question? A romantic dreamer desperate for excitement, Chambers plunged into the case with schoolboy-ish enthusiasm, much to the short-tempered chagrin of lovable Police Inspector Geordie Keating.

Yes, it's come to this for the personable Robson Green, he's finally playing a character called Geordie. Has the man no self-respect? Would Ray Winstone accept the role of a character called Cockney Ardman in a six-part ITV crime drama? Yes, he almost definitely would if the money was right, but you take my point.

Anyway. Gimmick-led detective dramas are as old as Marconi's folly itself. There's nothing wrong with the concept, just how it's delivered. Grantchester is delivered professionally, smoothly, like a tray of Baileys to an elderly group of lunching ladies. It also provides dialogue, plotting and exposition as subtly as an anvil through a vestry window.

The shadow of the war hangs over this sleepy little village like a vast, heavy-handed subtext. The dead man's wife was a sad-eyed German given to quasi-poetic soliloquies. Chambers is a veteran himself, as was every other whisky-driven male character. That makes sense dramatically, historically, humanely. There's something to be explored there. More concerned with scenery and mood, Grantchester reduces it to a man staring solemnly over a cornfield.

Oh, I dare say we'll soon be treated to a scene in which someone challenges Chambers on why God allows such suffering. That'll pass for depth before the case at hand is solved.

This tolerable slice of sub-Agatha Christie is a pot-boiler, a page-turner, just another blood-stained slice of genteel comfort viewing, forever destined to gather dust on ITV3 in the afternoons and maybe, if it's lucky, be given away free with The Daily Mail. It's polished in the sense that dutifully tended silverware is polished, as robustly inoffensive as oatcakes, bell ringers and the face of Martin Jarvis. It's a big old tassled pouffe of nothing, but at least it rests your heels for an hour of a dark Monday evening.

I can't praise fainter than that.