TV Review: THE WINDSORS + GRAYSON PERRY: ALL MAN

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 7th May 2016.

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

The Windsors: Friday, Channel 4

Grayson Perry: All Man: Thursday, Channel 4

Made by the team behind scattershot celebrity satire Star Stories, The Windsors boasts a similar blend of heightened silliness and healthy disrespect. It’s a brash sitcom in which our beloved Royal Family are depicted as a workshy bunch of freeloaders and functioning alcoholics. Happy birthday, your majesty!

Though framed as a Dallas-style soap parody, that’s really just an excuse for a hit and miss barrage of nonsense. Yes, it ticks off all the usual Royal gags – Harry and William are nice but dim etc. – but it attacks them with relish. It’s not an excoriating or particularly clever satire, but it’s full of crude, amusing energy.

It also subverts the tired comedy notion that Charles is a harmless duffer. Instead it portrays him as a dictatorial bully with a savage sense of entitlement. That alone makes it more interesting than your average Royal spoof.

His fellow antagonists are Camilla, an embittered, power-hungry schemer, and Pippa Middleton, a duplicitous sex-pot. Prince Edward also crops up as a desperate failure. It’s all good fun, although the absence of the Queen and Prince Philip is curious. Aren’t they ripe for parody too?

The writers presumably felt that someone among this motley shower of buffoons had to be vaguely sympathetic, if only so they can fall victim to the cruelty and stupidity of the others.

That honour goes to William and Kate, who are depicted as essentially well-meaning. Kate is ineffably bland, so her character doesn’t work, but full marks to Hugh Skinner (Will, the bumbling intern from W1A) for seizing the role of William – a hapless hero who’d rather fly helicopters than be King – with such dense enthusiasm. It’s the sort of role that Hugh Laurie would’ve nailed in his youth, but Skinner does a fine job.

Harry Enfield is also good value as Charles; his absurd line-readings are a particular highlight. And I’m always pleased to see Morgana Robinson, a comic actress whose devotion to grotesque clowning is admirable. Her own starring vehicles have never matched her talents, but she always adds a peculiar energy in supporting roles.

While no classic, The Windsors does at least milk some barbed comedy mileage from a deserving target.

Be honest, you’d watch a series about Britain’s hardest men hosted by Grayson Perry. Placing the cross-dressing artist in aggressively male environments sounds like a recipe for fish-out-of-water fun. But there’s far more to Grayson Perry: All Man than that.

It’s a thoughtful study of masculinity in which our charismatic host – “a lifelong cissy” – tries to find out why some men feel compelled to be macho. He began his investigation in the violent world of cage fighting, where his own prejudices were challenged by meeting dedicated, articulate athletes with an undercurrent of emotional vulnerability.

His natural ability to relate to anyone he meets triggered the poignant spectacle of one fighter breaking down while discussing his brother’s suicide. As well as providing a surrogate family and sense of self-worth, cage fighting for him was a form of therapy. Perry went on to reveal that 80% of people who kill themselves in the north-east, where the programme was based, are male.

He also illustrated how deprived backgrounds inspired many of these men to channel aggression into something positive. Perry handled this raw subject without a hint of condescension. On the contrary, it was a sensitive, moving, open-minded essay on working-class community pride and the tragic price of male stoicism.

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: I WANT MY WIFE BACK + MICHAEL McINTYRE'S BIG SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 23 April 2016.

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

I Want My Wife Back: Monday, BBC One

Michael McIntyre’s Big Show: Saturday, BBC One

Only in the boating pond of gentle British farce do the following vessels collide: meddling in-laws, slovenly best friends, philandering workmates, flirtatious secretaries, easily avoidable misunderstandings and, drowning in the middle, our old friend the harassed, suburban middle-aged man shrugging haplessly.

There’s nothing wrong with these stock devices in and of themselves, it’s just that I Want My Wife Back sticks to them with rigid orthodoxy.

Part of BBC One’s new Monday night comedy power hour – the other half being a curious Peter Kay compilation largely comprised of work he did for Channel 4 – it’s a traditional sitcom starring Ben Miller as Murray, a well-meaning business drone who is dismayed when his wife decides to leave him on her 40^th birthday.

Murray is a workaholic, an absent partner, so she’s had enough. The spark has gone. But Murray still loves her (it’s suggested that she still has glimmers of affection for him), so he does everything in his limited power to woo her back.

It’s a half-decent premise, predictably executed. Miller, a competent comic actor, does what he can with his beleaguered nice guy act. But his hunched-up jumble of jittery faux pas can’t disguise the fact that Murray is a bland protagonist. It’s amiable enough, but we’ve seen it all before.

Inevitably, the first episode climaxed (gently, of course) with a surprise 40^th birthday party during which everything went wrong. Thanks to the estranged wife’s parents, she and Murray were shipped off to a romantic foreign holiday. Oh the calamity!

The first episode of any sitcom has to work hard to get viewers onside. We need time to get to know the characters and for the situation to bed in, so it’s perhaps unfair to dismiss I Want My Wife Back completely at this point. But there was nothing in this lazy opener to suggest that it will offer any surprises in future.

Joining it squarely in the middle of the road is Michael McIntyre’s Big Show. It’s a shamelessly derivative yet tolerable heap of Saturday night variety flotsam in which the tirelessly mainstream comic unleashes a slick barrage of Beadle-esque disguises, Edmonds-style pranks and Barrymore-shaped japes with the Great British Public.

I’m not a McIntyre fan, although I appreciate his appeal and the skill with which he plies his trade. Delivering trite observations in a consummately professional, excitable simian fashion, he’s the benign king of cuddly comfort comedy. He’s good at what he does, but what he does is of no lasting interest. Nevertheless, it would be silly (albeit funny, a la Stewart Lee) to pretend that he’s detestable in any way.

A seemingly improvised segment with an audience member showed how quick he can be, and the item in which he surprises members of the public is quite sweet. Last week it was a Welsh hairdresser who dreams of becoming a professional singer. Big-hearted McIntyre rewarded her with a Michael Ball duet. Surely every girl’s fantasy?

There was music for the kids from Tinie Tempah, old-fashioned novelty from some acrobats, and a mildly amusing skit involving Geri Halliwell (she’s apparently a Horner now) during which McIntyre harmlessly bothered people in her mobile phone address book.

All in all, a passable rival for Ant & Dec on t’other side.

And if we must have MOR comedians, then I’d rather McIntyre over John Bishop. McIntyre has some presence at least. Bishop is just a man who says things.

TV Review: SCOTT & BAILEY + BBC: THE SECRET FILES

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 16th April 2016.

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

Scott & Bailey: Wednesday, STV

BBC: The Secret Files: Thursday, BBC Four

  

Thanks to the magnificent Happy Valley, writer/director Sally Wainwright is now rightfully recognised as one of Britain’s finest TV dramatists. As if to emphasise that point – and she’s earned the right – she returned last week with another series of her previous creation, Scott & Bailey, starring Lesley Sharp and Suranne as a pair of humane coppers.

Granted, she didn’t actually write this new mini-series – that honour went to Lee Warburton – but Scott & Bailey is distinctively hers; a female-fronted, northern cop show mired in plausible reality and unforced character detail.

From a distance it resembles a bog-standard police procedural – plods investigating nasty cases in dour weather – but on closer inspection it reveals itself as one of the genre’s leading lights.

Unlike most TV cops, the protagonists aren’t dysfunctional or quirky. They’re likeable, compassionate professionals with a dry sense of humour (some of Scott’s quips draw scripted attention to themselves, but I’ll magnanimously let that pass) and a warm, understated chemistry.

It also focuses on the interesting nuts and bolts of dogged police work, an aspect informed by the advisory involvement of former Detective Inspector Diane Taylor.

Bubbling under the surface of this latest case, in which they struggled to apprehend a serial killer who posts footage of his crimes on the darkest corners of the internet, was the story of two close friends who haven’t seen each other for a year. As always, the everyday trials of their private lives were as important as the case itself. This time we discovered that Bailey is pregnant. Meanwhile, Scott’s teenage daughter became embroiled in an underage sex investigation because of illicit selfies sent by her boyfriend.

It managed to explore these real-life issues without feeling too contrived or overcooked, so it’s a shame that the otherwise semi-naturalistic tone is completely at odds with an overbearing, needlessly dramatic incidental score. It’s not a documentary, it needs to meet the demands of an episodic hour of dynamic crime drama, but there’s no need to slather it in the soundtrack from a Yakuza-based B-movie.

That frustrating misgiving aside, this was a solid return from one of TV’s very best cop shows. Also, hats off to Warbuton for including jokey allusions to the original Pink Panther films and Hanna-Barbera’s animated Godzilla series from the 1970s. Yes, really.

Seeing as it must cost peanuts to produce, it’s hardly surprising that BBC Four opted to roll out a sequel to last year’s eye-opening traipse through the BBC’s vast archive of internal letters and memos between agents, executives and artists.

Once again presented by Penelope Keith, who I like to imagine living down there surrounded by cabinets and memorabilia, BBC: The Secret Files included some fascinating correspondence between the BBC’s notoriously dour founding father, Lord Reith, and his rival, Winston Churchill, plus an amused look at how the fusty old BBC dealt with the rise of rock and roll. This segment was worth it for the unique pleasure of hearing Keith say “1960s counterculture” in her cut-glass tones.

It also revealed that Morecambe & Wise’s producer initially felt that Eric would be better off without Ern, and that the redoubtable Barbara Wodehouse basically talked her way into a BBC contract following years of no-nonsense correspondence.

But my favourite moment was the revelation that a jazz song titled Where Is My Sunday Potato was once deemed “politically unsuitable” and banned. One can only wonder about its incendiary contents. 

TV Review: HOUDINI & DOYLE + INSIDE OBAMA'S WHITE HOUSE + JO BRAND'S HELL OF A WALK FOR SPORT RELIEF

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 19th March 2016.

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

Houdini & Doyle: Sunday, STV

Inside Obama’s White House: Tuesday, BBC Two

Jo Brand’s Hell of a Walk for Sport Relief: Thursday, BBC One

  

A slapdash heap of clumsy old bunkum, Houdini & Doyle takes a dubious premise – what if legendary escapologist Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had been a crime-busting duo in Edwardian London? – and unravels hopelessly before your very eyes.

ITV obviously have no faith in this woebegone attempt to rip off BBC favourites Sherlock and Jonathan Creek, hence why they bunged episode one out at 10:15pm on a Sunday before relegating the rest of the series to their subscription channel ITV Encore. Even the cast, including a woefully miscast Stephen Mangan as Doyle, look embarrassed.

I detected genuine pain in Mangan’s voice when, after ploughing through 50 minutes of poorly-written drivel, he cried, “What the hell just happened?!” I’ve seen episodes of Scooby-Doo with more depth.

Houdini and Doyle, who share no chemistry whatsoever, are your “classic” odd couple. Houdini is a chirpy rationalist. Doyle believes in the spirit world. Assisted by a bland female police officer with an incongruous modern outlook, they investigate crimes with a supposedly supernatural bent.

The biggest mystery of all, one which even they could never solve, is how a drama which, at a push, could’ve succeeded as an agreeable piece of daft escapism has reached the screen in such a charmless, empty, ill-conceived state.

When even the most powerful man in the world can’t get what he wants, what chance does anyone have? That was the sobering message behind our introductory visit to Inside Obama’s White House, a riveting new series from documentary heavyweights Norma Percy and Brian Lapping.

It’s typical of their work in that it plunges viewers into the rapid torrents of recent political history via frank contributions from the people who were actually involved: history unfolding as insider drama. Although he only appeared via archive footage in episode one, an in-depth interview with Obama himself will feature later on.

By focusing on his first 100 days in office, when the powerful wave of optimism surrounding him was immediately punctured by the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, it showed how, despite his obvious political nous, he never stood much of a chance of delivering on his nation-changing promises. Indeed, it seems nigh on impossible to achieve anything as President if the banks and the Senate are against you. 

And yet somehow, in the middle of this epic marathon of struggle and frustration, Obama seemed to remain impossibly cool and unflappable. That’s a legacy of sorts, I suppose.

He’s the sort of person who could pull off a grueling charity challenge without breaking a sweat, so maybe that’s something he can focus on when he exits the White House. Who wouldn’t support a fancy-dress fun run with Barack Obama?

If Jo Brand’s Hell of a Walk for Sport Relief taught us anything, it’s that the huddled masses are only too happy to come out in force for famous faces raising money for charity, even if that involves standing around and waving in the freezing winter rain.

Over seven days recently, Brand walked 135 miles from the Humber Bridge to Liverpool, partly as a way of encouraging other overweight, older women to keep fit.

But there was a compassionate political subtext to her ordeal, as she trudged across the once thriving industrial north to meet unemployed people from disadvantaged communities, whose straightforward generosity stood in stark contrast to the selfishness and greed of our egregious government overlords. 

A quietly subversive hour of television.

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: CHURCHILL'S SECRET + MURDER + BROKEN BISCUITS

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 5th March 2016.

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

Churchill's Secret: Sunday, STV

Murder: Thursday, BBC Two

Broken Biscuits: Friday BBC One

Michael Gambon is an actor who's never been troubled by vanity. 30 years ago he gained TV immortality as the psoriasis-ridden centrepiece of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. In Churchill's Secret he reaffirmed his prone position as Britain's leading bed-based Thespian. It was a finer performance than most actors manage in a vertical lifetime.

In 1953, during his final term as Prime Minister, Churchill suffered a life-threatening stroke which left him in no state to govern. Unbeknownst to the public at the time, the king was on his deathbed, leaving Britain without a leader.

Though he eventually recovered and lived for another 12 years, this standalone drama proved quite effective in examining the trials of an almost mythical symbol of indomitable spirit struggling with mortal decay. It was King Lear, basically, but with a vaguely happy ending.

A slurring mound of crumpled pathos, Gambon's Churchill was surrounded by his family – and by tacit extension, the nation - in a state of disarray. Having lived for decades in the Great Man's shadow, how would they cope without him? They needed him, were defined by him. But did he ever truly need them? Yes, as it turned out.

Chief among his bedside fretters was his loyal wife, Clemmie, played by Lindsay Duncan with her usual powdery steel and poise. Her determination to preserve his dignity was quite touching, but typical of the (very British) reserve which defined the production; unseemly displays of sentiment were kept under wraps.

While its avoidance of schmaltz was commendable – just think of how glutinous this story of undying love between a Great Man and his Rock could've been – its reserve worked against it in the end; while it's probably asking too much of a drama to teach us anything “new” about Churchill at this stage, this modest little chamber piece didn't say much of interest about him at all.

He was an irascible ox with a marshmallow centre? I suppose that counts as insight, of sorts.

It's a shame, as on the whole the script managed to avoid the usual biopic crime of grinding heavy-handedness. That is, apart from when it came to Romola Garai's no-nonsense northern nurse – no screen northerner has ever been shown to suffer nonsense knowingly – who wasn't so much a character as a fictional plot device against which Clemmie could deliver exposition and gradually unload her repressed emotions.

The subtext of Garai's nurse being a working-class, left-wing modern woman rebelling against Churchill's patriarchal empire was so half-hearted, they needn't have bothered.

It was a quietly admirable production in many ways, but like Churchill after a few too many brandies and cigars, it could only be approached at arm's length.

The disappointing follow-up to a BAFTA-winning single drama from 2013, Murder comprises three plays in which a small cast of actors explore different facets of a fictional murder case via monologues delivered straight to camera. This inventive approach worked the first time, but here the effect proved cold, mannered, alienating and pretentious. 

For a supposedly intense meditation on grief and trauma, it was curiously flat and underwhelming; an overcooked bore. The mystery involving the corpse of a man dragged from the River Tweed near Peebles wasn't sufficiently interesting, and for all his attempts at emotional complexity, writer Robert Jones failed to get under the skin of his tortured characters. An ambitious failure, sadly.

Writer/director Craig Cash (The Royle Family; Early Doors) employed a similar stylistic approach to more promising effect in Broken Biscuits, a sitcom pilot shown as part of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse strand.

Indebted to Alan Bennett's peerless Talking Heads, this compendium of gently overlapping vignettes was faultlessly delivered by a cast including Alison Steadman and Alun Armstrong as fussy B&B owners – Steadman's fixed grin was a particular highlight – plus Stephanie Cole and Timothy West as a gossipy couple obsessed with their smoke alarm. But the most intriguing segment involved a young doctor and his disabled brother, whose wry inner monologue only we were privvy to.

Infused with Cash's usual warmth and observational wit, I hope it returns for a full series. Plus, any show that uses Tom Waits' heart-tugging Take It With Me as its theme song is A-okay by me.