TV Review: PSYCHEDELIC BRITANNIA and SAS: WHO DARES WINS

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 24 October 2015.

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

Psychedelic Britannia: Friday, BBC Four

SAS: Who Dares Wins: Monday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

A kaleidoscopic tapestry of wonderful archive footage, seasoned talking heads and mind-blowing music, Psychedelic Britannia paid bewitching tribute to one of the most colourful periods in British pop history.

It chronicled those forward-thinking years between 1965 and 1970 when bands such as Pink Floyd, The Yardbirds and yer Beatles swapped their beat/blues roots for experiments in jazz, classical, the avant-garde, Indian drones and holy modal chanting. It was a time of studio experimentation and long, wiggy improvisations, where anything went and usually did.

It was also a time of drugs. Lots and lots of consciousness-expanding drugs. After all, that's how the genre got its name and most of its untrammelled vision.

One of many choice interviewees, Yes/Tomorrow's Steve Howe, aka the librarian ghost from Ghostbusters, said he once played his guitar for ten hours continuously while on acid. Time, alas, hasn't archived this marathon.

Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt claimed that one of the reasons they played endless jams at London's legendary UFO club was because they didn't allow any gaps for the crowd to boo. They were probably too zonked to care anyway.

Wyatt also revealed that he barely knows what a CV is. “I was too young to take any notice of that crap,” he chuckled. Wyatt was typical of the many young hairies who dropped out of conventional society to form a bohemian counter-culture steeped in a unique British fusion of pastoral Edwardian whimsy and cultural revolution. Within months it had infiltrated the mainstream.

Of course, not everyone from his generation was impressed by this new Arcadian Age. One of the programme's many great finds was a clip of a young mod at Alexandra Palace's 14 Hour Technicolour Dream. A BBC reporter asked him what he was expecting. “Sumfink better than this,” he sniffed. It was pure Quadrophenia.

I was always going to enjoy this beautifully assembled programme, as British psych is one of my favourite genres. But I was particularly impressed by the way it managed to gently mock its sillier excesses, while simultaneously treating it with respect. That's precisely the right approach, as the pie-eyed eccentricity of British psych is one of its defining and most charming characteristics.

Even the choice of narrator, Nigel Planer, alias Neil from The Young Ones, was inspired. His affectionately droll script correctly argued that this is when British pop found its first truly original voice.Only 60 minutes long, I can excuse its exclusion of the lesser-known, one-shot acts that gave British psychedelia much of its quirky identity. Only an hour, but it was quite a trip.

It's probably safe to assume that “Turn on, tune in, drop out” isn't part of the SAS handbook. But what does it take to join this rock hard military unit? SAS: Who Dares Wins attempts to explain by following a group of ex-Special Forces soldiers as they put 30 civilians through a recreation of the gruelling selection process that they once endured.

Despite the insight it affords into this grimly serious world, it's basically a generic boot camp show of the type we're all familiar with. It even finds the judges/trainers sitting around a table to decide which of the contestants/recruits should stay in the competition/process: The Great British Bloke Off. On that point, why aren't there any women involved?

Such mysteries aside, the programme does at least reveal that psychological strength is essentially more important than physical fitness in the SAS. Alpha males aren't necessarily welcome. And for the shallower among us, we can all get a kick from the fact that the chief instructor has clearly modelled himself on the classic bearded Action Man.

TV Review: RIVER and THE RETURNED

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 17 October 2015.

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

River: Tuesday, BBC One

The Returned: Friday, More4

Paul Whitelaw

Just when you thought the hoary old cliché of the troubled detective with an extensive vinyl collection had been pummelled beyond repair, along comes River to show that there's life in the old dog yet.

The effectiveness of this new cop drama from Abi Morgan (The Hour) is enormously surprising, as from the moment I first heard about it I assumed the worst. After all, the very concept of a maverick cop named John River sounds ridiculous. 

It reminded me instinctively of Simon Day as John Actor in The Fast Show's Monkfish sketches (“John Actor is a tough, uncompromising inspector/doctor/vet...”).

However, putting aside the vast unlikelihood of the great Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard playing a character named John River, this is undoubtedly the most confident attempt yet at transplanting the existential angst of Nordic noir to British climes. Face facts, From Darkness.

The opening ten minutes alone offered some of the most arresting drama I've seen on TV all year. Scored to Tina Charles' disco classic I Love To Love, the sequence immediately established a warm, understated chemistry between the endearingly discomfited River and his more exuberant partner DS Stevenson (the always believable Nicola Walker, who also shines at the moment in ITV's above-par crime drama Unforgotten).

Their affectionate banter was punctured suddenly when River spotted a petty drug dealer. Chasing him on foot, our wheezy, ageing hero unwittingly drove the suspect to his death. The scene that followed seemed standard at first: River's weary chief (the wonderful Lesley Manville of Mike Leigh renown) arrived to chastise him for causing the young man's demise.

As Stevenson offered him support, the camera span around slowly to reveal a gaping wound on the back of her head. She'd been killed in action, and now exists only in grieving River's mind. It's a measure of how well this twist was handled that its invocation of another great comedy sketch – Chuffy, the imaginary sidekick from Armstrong & Miller – didn't make me laugh. It was so unforeseen, I admired its audacity.

It transpired that River is haunted by other ghosts, namely a murdered teenage girl whom he'd failed to rescue, and – there's no way of describing this without it sounding ridiculous – a 19^th century serial killer (Eddie Marsan, another gifted Leigh veteran). They're voices in his head, a manifestation of his troubled psyche. Ghosts who assist him in solving problems. 

If his noggin wasn't already crowded enough, the episode ended with a bedtime visit from the innocent man he "murdered" at the top of the episode. It's quite a party in there.

Judged incorrectly, this swirling cavalcade of psychological eccentricity could easily descend into farce. But so far at least, River gets the tone just right. It's rather subversive and unusual in an intelligent, dry-witted way. Skarsgard inhabits the role of River with sad-eyed charm and intensity. For once, the old cop-with-a-difference cliché seems justified.

Bathed in shades of medicinal green and nocturnal red, it's also directed with a sharp eye for striking composition. Delightfully, this highly promising show confounded all my expectations.

One of my favourite dramas of recent years, The Returned made good on its title last week for a second series of French supernatural mystery. Despite its ambiguous finale, I actually felt quite satisfied with series one as a self-contained piece. Is another series necessary?

Steeped in glacial intrigue, the opening episode suggested that there's more to be gleaned from this everyday saga of a remote French town populated by photogenic zombies.

Granted, thanks to a two year transmission gap between series, it took me about half an hour to fully remember who the hell everyone was. But once the fog had cleared, I was cautiously hooked all over again.

God only knows if it'll ever make complete sense, but that's not really the point. It's a disquietingly atmospheric mood piece, an exercise in odd, beautiful Twin Peaks-esque style. I'm glad it's back, to linger in the memory like one of River's manifests.  

TV Review: FROM DARKNESS and UNFORGOTTEN

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 10 October 2015.

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

From Darkness: Sunday, BBC One

Unforgotten: Thursday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

You know you're watching a po-faced crime drama when the opening credits are scored to an ethereal ballad sung by a woman who sounds like a haunted Victorian doll. But the problems with From Darkness run deeper than that.

While it isn't bad exactly – no drama starring actors as great as Anne-Marie Duff and Johnny Harris could ever be truly bad – it contains nothing that we haven't seen a million times before. By the end of episode one my generic cop show bingo card was full.

A former police constable, Claire (Duff) left the force 16 years ago when a case she was working on was shut down. She'd drawn a connection between several missing prostitutes, but her superiors wouldn't listen (they never do). Traumatised by the experience, she essentially ran away – she's shown to be a keen runner, in case you missed that subtext – to the Western Isles of Scotland with her husband and daughter.

When the remains of two women are found in what was once the red light district that Claire was investigating, her former boss and lover (Harris) travels from Manchester to draw her back in. Naturally, she resists. But could this be her chance to vanquish her demons and find justice for the women she'd “failed”? Is the killer still at large?

If this all sounds familiar it's because a police chief trying to convince a retired cop to return to the fold to reopen an unsolved case is such an overused trope. It felt particularly tired here as it dominated most of the episode. We knew from the start that Claire would capitulate and start looking into the case, but it took far too long to get her to that point.

Crime dramas can work when taken at a leisurely pace, but only if the story is involving. Despite some solid work from Duff and Harris, From Darkness is just too rote to arouse interest.

Though it began with an almost identical set-up – the discovery of human remains on an abandoned urban site – Unforgotten is a far more effective thriller. Or rather, it has potential. As always with dramas of this nature, it may well turn to ash as it unfolds, but episode one established a strong, intriguing mystery with impressive efficiency.

A cold case investigation was the fulcrum around which several seemingly unrelated scenes revolved. What is the connection between these disparate characters? The vicar, the Alan Sugar-like businessman, the retired book keeper and the community worker, do they all have something to do with the murder of a young black man in 1976? It's like a Byzantine game of Cluedo.

Granted, while playing Cluedo one doesn't tend to, as Unforgotten does, address the argument that society has a responsibility to punish people for their crimes, no matter how long ago they took place. But you take my point.

Our chief detectors are nicely underplayed by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar, who feel more grounded and believable than most TV sleuths. It's perhaps unwise to gauge the quality of a production based on the strength of its cast, but the presence of actors such as Tom Courtenay, Bernard Hill, Gemma Jones, Trevor Eve and Ruth Sheen suggests that Unforgotten is a cut above.

You wouldn't normally see a roll call as stellar as that outside of a Mike Leigh film. This could be a keeper. 

TV Review: DOCTOR WHO and MIDWINTER OF THE SPIRIT

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 26 September 2015.

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

Doctor Who: Saturday, BBC One

Midwinter of the Spirit: Wednesday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Those moments when we shout at the television, not in anger but with thrilled surprise, are a rare and precious commodity. Breaking Bad is one of the few recent shows I can think of where audacious twists caused me to grin and gasp with pleasure.

So, Steven Moffat, the brains behind the last five years of Doctor Who, deserves bounteous plaudits for pulling off that feat in – how's this for chutzpah? - the first five minutes of the latest series.

On a war-torn alien wasteland, the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) tried to rescue a boy trapped within a quagmire of killer hand mines (literally hands with an eye embedded in the palm). The, if you must, OMG moment came when the boy revealed his name: Davros.

Cut to the Doctor looking horrified. Cue opening credits. Bang! That's how to kick-start a series. Thankfully, the rest of the episode lived up to its fan-baiting intro.

In terms of scope and intensity, it felt more like the first part of a series finale than a series opener. Dramatic stakes were ramped skywards as the Doctor wrestled with the moral dilemma of whether to save Davros – essentially the 'Would you kill baby Hitler?' conundrum on an intergalactic scale – while intimating that, for reasons yet unknown, his Time Lord days are numbered.

Meanwhile, his other arch-enemy, Missy/The Master (a wonderfully bananas turn from Michelle Gomez), formed an unlikely alliance with Clara (Jenna Coleman, competent as always) in a bid to rescue him from Davros' clutches in the Dalek city on Skaro. The arresting conceit of the devious Time Lord/Lady seeking to assist the Doctor, however ambiguously, is something we haven't seen in Doctor Who since the saturnine reign of Roger Delgado in the 1970s.

Some critics have complained that the episode, titled The Magician's Apprentice, was far too continuity-heavy for the casual viewer, but I'd argue that all the essential information and backstory they needed – Davros is the creator of the Daleks and, well, that's it really – was clearly explained within.

It was inward-looking in the sense that it's essentially an exploration of the complex relationship between the Doctor and one of his oldest, deadliest enemies, but it was hardly a self-indulgent odyssey aimed squarely at hardcore fans. On the contrary, there was plenty here for children, those most important viewers of all, to enjoy. 

They must have surely been delighted by the spectacle of millions of Daleks buzzing around their spectacular home turf, plus the creepy presence of Davros, his snake-shifting henchman Colony Saarf, and the supremely entertaining hat-stand villainy of Missy.

As for the Doctor himself, Capaldi achieved the impossible feat of nailing an extended comic set-piece that, in theory, should've been excruciating.

As it turned out, a shades-wearing Doctor rocking out on electric guitar atop an armoured tank while delivering bad jokes was actually very enjoyable. As great though David Tennant could be in the role, just imagine him hamming the life out of that scene. You'd cringe yourself a hernia. It's a mark of Capaldi's authority that he can nail this 'wacky' business without making a fool of himself.

Though still spiky, the acerbic, antisocial misanthrope who replaced Matt Smith last year has gradually softened to reveal more warmth and charm, a development neatly illustrated by that sweet little moment when, upon meeting up with Clara again, he strummed a few bars of Roy Orbison's Oh, Pretty Woman on his guitar. He's almost, almost cuddly now. I don't see that as a cop-out, but rather an organic evolution of his character.

The best and boldest season opener since The Impossible Astronaut back in 2011, The Magician's Apprentice suggests that Moffat, who must be nearing the end of his tenure on the show, is attempting to shake up the formula somewhat. Doctor Who has survived, off and on, for over 50 years due to its willingness to change and adapt like the ancient Time Lord himself. As ever, I hope he succeeds in his fiendish goal.

From the writer behind notorious Halloween “hoax” Ghostwatch, Midwinter of the Spirit is an enjoyably creepy supernatural drama starring Anna Maxwell Martin as a village vicar with an unusual sideline: she's a trained exorcist.

When a man is found crucified in the woods, the police request her assistance. Meanwhile, she becomes “infected” by the evil spirit of a dead sex offender and animal-torturing sadist. It's like The Vicar of Dibley gone drastically awry.

By treating this subject matter in a fairly low-key way, its scares become more potent. This aura of authenticity may be due in part to the advisory involvement of an actual CoE exorcist. Yes, such people really do exist. By the power of Christ, what a strange world we live in.

TV Review: THIS IS ENGLAND '90

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 19 September 2015.

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

This Is England '90: Sunday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

The biggest shock of the TV week? An archive cameo from Scottish soap Take The High Road. Its cardboard charms cropped up briefly in This Is England '90, the third and presumably final TV sequel to Shane Meadows' BAFTA-winning 2006 coming-of-age classic.

The background presence of STV's stinging riposte to Dallas was sweetly indicative of Meadows' offbeat attention to period detail. As everyone surely knows by now, this is the continuing saga of a group of working-class Midlands pals growing up in 1980s Britain. The latest chapter catches up with Beaky, Choo-Choo, Fliegel and the gang as they stumble into adulthood in the Madchester era.

True to form, it began with a craftily assembled, scene-setting montage of period news footage. The music used on the soundtrack this time was There She Goes by The Las. Why, I ask you, what could possibly be the connection between that song title, the poll tax riots, escalating unemployment, homelessness, drug abuse, mad cow disease and Thatcher's ignominious exit after eleven years in power? As an amusing piece of blunt satire, it worked a treat.

We then lurched into a charmingly lackadaisical episode that touched upon the growing sense of nostalgia one feels in your early twenties – sweetly symbolised here by the Proustian tang of school dinner chips – and the awkward transition into 'settling down' when you've barely grown up yourself.

Lol and Woody (Vicky McClure and Joe Gilgun, whose droll comic timing is second to none) are now living together and raising Lol's daughter. Woody's bizarrely boring yet well-meaning parents are, without being broad caricatures, beamed in from a universe far less grounded than the one inhabited by their son.

Meadows' ability to shift seamlessly from low-key character comedy to drama and pathos in the space of a single scene was encapsulated by these stand-out moments of domestic absurdity. While This Is England '86 was rightly criticised for its jarring leaps from knockabout farce to harrowing scenes of sexual violence, thankfully he hasn't repeated that clumsy error since.

Despite being the original film's protagonist, young Shaun's role in the overarching Woody/Lol narrative remains fairly inessential. Nevertheless, as played by Thomas Turgoose, who these days resembles a forlorn potato, Shaun is TV's most convincing teenager by far: the hurt and confusion on his face speak volumes about the anxieties of wading through that awkward age.

Rarely do you come across such unaffected performances and authentic-sounding, semi-improvised dialogue in British TV drama. Meadows' work harks back to the days when the likes of Alan Clarke and Ken Loach cropped up in the schedules to present powerful slices of social-realism hewn from genuine warmth and compassion. He actually makes us care about these characters as if they were – gosh! - real human beings.

Granted, as enjoyable though it was the episode did contain a few self-conscious “Hey everyone! It's 1990!” howlers. And I wish Meadows' would ditch his unnecessary penchant for slow-motion, sad piano montages. He doesn't need to labour the point, we know how we're supposed to feel in those moments.

Still, at least the inevitable scene of the gang taking drugs and grooving to The Stone Roses was dispensed with early. In any case, the Madchester disco sub-plot was worth it for Woody's throwaway reference to indie dance-floor classic “Idiot's Gold”.

Anyone familiar with Meadows' work knows that it won't be long before these light-hearted japes give way to tragedy. The monstrous ghost of Lol's abusive father, Mick, still haunts this world; it's only a matter of time before his pervasive evil causes another explosion. And what of Combo (Stephen Graham), who's still in prison for making it look as though he, not Lol, murdered Mick? His redemption isn't yet complete.

However it unfolds, I'm cautiously confident that we're in for a satisfying conclusion to one of the best British dramas of recent years. We'll miss it when it's gone.

TV Review: DOCTOR FOSTER and LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12 September 2015.

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

Doctor Foster: Wednesday, BBC One

Lady Chatterley's Lover: Sunday, BBC One

An agonisingly slow and implausible confection, Doctor Foster is a rare misfire from Suranne Jones. This fine actress usually chooses her projects wisely, but she's hopelessly adrift in this bone-dry drama about a GP who begins to suspect that her husband, Simon, is having an affair.

The brunt of episode one – God only knows how they'll stretch this out to five hours – was preoccupied with Foster floundering in a mire of paranoid anxiety, after she discovered a stray blonde hair on Simon's scarf. Most people wouldn't regard this as incriminating evidence of extra-marital misdeeds, but for some inexplicable reason Foster leapt instantly to that conclusion.

We were initially given no evidence to suggest that Simon was the philandering type, so Foster's behaviour – checking his phone, following him from work and even asking a patient to spy on him in exchange for sleeping pills – felt borderline deranged.

The idea behind this was obvious. We were supposed to feel as panicked, confused and compelled as she was. But the conceit backfired. You simply can't relate to a protagonist whose actions don't ring true. The tension evaporates.

It didn't matter that she was eventually proved right – there would be no story otherwise - as by that point she'd been established as weirdly unsympathetic. Hats off, then, to writer Mike Bartlett for managing the seemingly impossible feat of penning a drama about infidelity in which the wronged spouse comes across as a tiresome nuisance. He also proved that it's possible to be terminally dull and absurdly melodramatic all at once. That's quite an achievement.

I get the point he's trying to make: Foster's problems drive her towards the kind of self-destructive irrationality that she warns her hypochondriac patients about. Even a respectable, sensible GP can exploit their privilege and unravel in times of personal crisis. Should we ever fully trust these supposed pillars of society?

There's a potentially interesting story to be told here, but Bartlett botches it by forcing Foster into increasingly unlikely corners. Even allowing for her rattled mental state, the scene in which she threatened a patient's abusive boyfriend was preposterous. Maddening and enervating, the Doctor Foster “experience” is like churning through a very boring fever dream.

Having never read DH Lawrence's infamous book, I couldn't tell you if Lady Chatterley's Lover was a faithful adaptation or not. However, I feel I can state with some confidence that, notwithstanding a strong, elegant performance from apple-cheeked Holliday Grainger as Lady C, it resembled a live-action Mills & Boon novella with delusions of grandeur.

Its central theme of scandalous love and lust across the class divide in Edwardian England was blatantly present and correct. Subtlety wasn't invited to this particular party. Yet at no point did the rebellious relationship between the sexually frustrated Chatterley and chippy gamekeeper Mellors feel remotely organic or convincing.

As played by a bemused-looking Richard Madden, Mellors came across as a stridently humourless northern stereotype whose thrusting nipples strived in vain to compensate for a total lack of charisma.

I kept thinking how much more effective this production might have been with, say, Poldark's Aidan Turner filling Mellor's britches. The role as written was rather thankless, so Madden wasn't entirely to blame. But an actor of Turner's smouldering calibre could, perhaps, have made it work.

As it stood, this po-faced, inadvertently comical drama was, for a supposedly erotic drama, curiously cold and neutered. I know enough about the novel to appreciate its purpose as a transgressive, challenging work of art. Shorn of its deliberate shock value - sex and profanity were thin on the ground here - it seemed pointless.

It's the first offering from BBC One's new Sunday night slate of classic 20^th century literary adaptations. Things can only get better from here, right?

TV review: CRADLE TO GRAVE and DANNY AND THE HUMAN ZOO

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 5 September 2015.

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

Cradle To Grave: Thursday, BBC Two

Danny and The Human Zoo: Monday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

Innit typical? You wait ages for an autobiographical account of a popular entertainer growing up in 1970s Britain, then two come along at once.

Barrelling out in front, Cradle To Grave is a serial adaptation of Danny Baker's hilarious memoir Going To Sea In A Sieve. One of our greatest radio broadcasters, for years he's regaled fans with picaresque anecdotes from his whiz-bang youth, many of them revolving around his father, Fred.

Better known as Spud, this atom-powered character was a docker by trade Regardless of size, quantity and dubious provenance, everything that passed through Millwall Docks was fair game as far as Spud and his workmates were concerned. An incorrigible wheeler-dealer, he made Del Boy look like a rank amateur.

Spud, played with an uncertain South London accent by Peter Kay, is the star of the show. Danny and the rest of the Baker brood barely registered in episode one, as we plunged pell-mell into Spud's chaotic world of scams and fiddles.

Funny, charming stuff, but its energy was slightly exhausting. Kinetically edited like a cockney Goodfellas, it was overloaded with dizzying incident. It's as if Baker and co-writer Jeff Pope (Cilla; Philomena) were afraid of pausing for breath. They needn't have worried; these wonderful stories don't require the hard sell. Thankfully, it settles down next week to allow more room for nuance.

A genuinely warm, cheering comedy, this Polaroid-tinted labour of love is suffused with all the wit, warmth and attention to detail you'd expect from Baker.

By curious coincidence, Lenny Henry named his barely disguised alter ego Danny in self-penned biopic Danny and The Human Zoo. That wasn't the only curious thing about this uneven story of a working-class boy from a first generation Jamaican family breaking into the predominately white showbiz world of the 1970s.

Lenny has described it as “a fantasy memoir” due to certain fictionalised elements. So, while the details of his family situation were essentially true – as a teenager, he really did discover that the man who raised him wasn't his biological father – this version of his early forays into comedy felt like retroactive wish fulfilment.

To his eternal regret, Lenny appeared on The Black & White Minstrel Show after winning New Faces in 1975. However, unlike Danny he didn't rebel against its offensive outdatedness by appearing on stage naked daubed in tribal markings. I understand why he felt compelled to rewrite history; it must've been cathartic. But the honest truth – that he was young, naïve and eager to please – is less heroic, more complex, and therefore more interesting.

The film was more assured when dealing with Danny's relationship with his parents (touchingly played by Cecilia Noble and Lenny himself), his search for an authentic identity, and the racism he encountered almost daily. It didn't ignore the painful fact that he had to make self-mocking jokes to win audiences over. “You may have seen some of these impressions before, but not in colour!” ran his catchphrase, pointedly repeated throughout the film with needling discomfort.

Despite its awkward mix of fact and fiction, plus newcomer Kascion Franklin's inability to convincingly impersonate Lenny impersonating Frank Spencer et al, it did succeed as a unflinching record of the bigoted attitudes that once festered on the surface of British society.

Things are different these days, of course. Now they fester more subtly. Plus ca change, Len.