TV Review: THE JOB INTERVIEW + THE SECRET LIFE OF BROTHERS & SISTERS

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

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

The Job Interview: Tuesday, Channel 4

The Secret Life of Brothers and Sisters: Wednesday, Channel 4

Before I wade into The Job Interview, I should first offer a disclaimer. As an arty media wastrel, I’ve never actually had a proper job interview. I didn’t get where I am today without the twin benefits of blackmail and competition tickets.

But surely the process isn’t as needlessly contrived as shown in this new observational documentary series? Do employers really subject candidates to semi-elaborate role play exercises? If so, I’m amazed anyone has a job at all.

Filmed using fixed-rig cameras, the programme follows actual job-seekers prostrating themselves before genuine employers. The stakes are real. It encourages us to squirm in the company of nerve-wracked candidates as they struggle to sell themselves. We also get to see interviewers collapsing into giggles once certain candidates have left the room. That must do wonders for the latter’s self-esteem.

And yet despite all that, it’s a surprisingly benign voyeuristic exercise. Sure, it’s basically the annual gruelling interview episode from The Apprentice – the one we all enjoy the most – stretched out to a series, but the key difference is that, unlike most Apprentice candidates, the participants are recognisably human. The programme doesn’t mock them. On the contrary, it invites our sympathy.

The first episode also functioned as a sly commentary on this great nation’s class divide. The companies looking for new recruits were a van leasing company and a luxury weddings and events venue. The former was run by an affable pair of ordinary managers, while the latter was overseen by a sitcom-posh mother and daughter duo named Philippa and Bertie. Snooty and brusque, Philippa was like Anne Robinson fused with a cheese grater.

Meanwhile, at the van company, we rooted for candidates such as a single mum experiencing her first interview in twelve years. Getting the job meant the world to her, as she wanted to make her loved ones proud.

We also wallowed in the inherent pathos of a man in his fifties who was recently made redundant after 26 years at a brush-making factory. Seeing as the programme focused on their stories, they were obviously the final contenders. She got the job, but the employers were so impressed by his character, they asked him in again to see if he could fill another role.

Would he have achieved this happy outcome if the cameras weren’t present? I just don’t know any more. Either way, it was rather heart-warming.

Like the similarly benign First Dates, it’s a good-natured study of everyday folk enduring high-pressure situations. As with First Dates, however, their reasons for inviting added pressure by allowing themselves to be filmed is a matter for their psychiatrists.

There was more human anthropology in The Secret Life of Brothers and Sisters, in which behavioural scientists observed various young siblings on their first family camping holiday.

80% of us have siblings. It’s potentially the longest relationship of our lives. You can’t choose your brothers and sisters, so you’d better get along with them. Otherwise, watch out.

Thankfully, there was no screaming enmity on this harmonious campsite. We were introduced instead to some cute kids who clearly loved each other. Anyone hoping for Lord of the Flies horror would’ve been sorely disappointed.

Although it could never be mistaken for an important anthropological study, the programme did manage to provide some pleasant insight into the dynamics between kids embarking on life’s unknown voyage.

One day they’ll be trembling at job interviews. Or writing TV reviews. It’s a gamble. 

TV Review: BRIEF ENCOUNTERS + B IS FOR BOOK

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

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

Brief Encounters: Monday, STV

B is for Book: Tuesday, BBC Four

Essentially The Full Monty with lingerie and sex toys, Brief Encounters is, aptly, a skimpy affair about a group of ordinary women in early ‘80s Sheffield who decide to sell goods from the Ann Summers range.

Though billed as a comedy-drama, it doesn’t deliver on either front. Inevitably, scenes of the women presenting living room demonstrations of their “naughty” toys and undergarments are delivered in a light-hearted fashion, but they’re only gently amusing. Cosy comedy. The dramatic elements are so rote and predictable, they almost feel tacked on as an afterthought.

It’s not exactly bad as such. The very concept of faint praise could’ve been invented for this typically inoffensive ITV confection, in which an able cast of familiar faces do what they can with a competently written, wholly unsurprising script. Like an ageing married couple slipping into sexless twilight torpor, we’ve seen it all before.

It’s stocked full of archetypal, sub-Mike Leigh characters - Leigh stalwart Peter Wight crops up - such as the nouveau riche snob, the permed, predatory sexpot, and the frustrated middle-class housewife (Penelope Wilton). Every box is ticked with a kind of dutiful flourish.

Sophie Rundle (Happy Valley) is a quietly appealing presence as protagonist Steph, a young married working-class mum who seizes her chance to make some extra money when she spots an advert for Ann Summers saleswomen in the local newspaper. It’s also a way of escaping from her workaday rut – she’s a part-time cleaner for a well-off neighbour – and fulfilling her dreams of a worthwhile career.

The Ann Summers parties, though initially regarded with nervous suspicion by some of the women, present an opportunity to have fun and make new friends. What’s more, in a domestic world where disapproving patriarchs rule the roost, it’s a form of rebellious empowerment.

Thematically, it’s a sound premise. But Brief Encounters is stubbornly unwilling to explore its potential as a piece of gender commentary or social history in any great depth.

When Steph’s husband (Rundle’s Happy Valley co-star Karl Davies) is made redundant, the script goes through the motions of showing his wounded pride resentment of his wife’s new career.

The menfolk will doubtless come to terms with it in episode six, thus symbolising society’s gradual acceptance of sisters doing it for themselves (award yourself a tart beverage when Annie and Aretha appear on the soundtrack).

This is all projection, of course, but when confronted with a show which basically writes itself, even Nostradamus would be bang on the money.

However, it does feel more substantial if you regard it as an ominous prequel to harrowing BBC drama Threads, in which early ‘80s Sheffield was destroyed in a nuclear war.

A delightful celebration of the written word, B is for Book followed a group of Hackney primary school pupils as they discovered the joys of reading.

The “emotional journey” arc is one of the most clichéd devices in modern documentary-making, but in this case its usage was entirely apt and rewarding. Watching these kids gradually learn to read and grow in confidence over the space of a year was, dare I say it, quite magical.

Even the potentially twee conceit of using the kids as narrators supported the central theme of how important it is to encourage literacy at a formative age.

This charming essay was also one in the eye for critics of Britain’s education system. Good, dedicated teachers literally change lives.

TV Review: THE LIVING & THE DEAD + LIFE INSIDE JAIL: HELL ON EARTH

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 2nd July 2016.

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

The Living and The Dead: Tuesday, BBC One

Life Inside Jail: Hell on Earth: Tuesday, STV

The gas-lit brainchild of Life on Mars creators Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, The Living and The Dead is a supernatural period drama which doesn’t scrimp on effective bumps and scares.

Part of that uniquely British sub-genre known as folk horror – a cult gathering epitomised by such classic films as The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan’s Claw  – it unfolds in the innately disquieting setting of late 19^th century Somerset.

Inevitably, this rural locale boasts creeping traces of ancient pre-Christian religion, psychosexual weirdness and demonic possession. 

Our photogenic guides are a bright, modern young couple played by Colin Morgan (Merlin; Humans) and Charlotte Spencer. Intensely sensitive Nathan is a pioneering psychologist – a useful vocation in this increasingly unhinged environment - while jolly Charlotte is a leading photographer. It’s only a matter of time before her monochrome snaps capture something horrifically inexplicable.

You knew things were about to go drastically awry when, after returning to Nathan’s ailing farming community, Charlotte breezed, “A few weeks in the country are just what we need!”

Little did she realise that the local vicar’s teenage daughter had been possessed by a guttural maniac. What’s more, dangerous supernatural forces appear to be targeting her husband. But at least the industrial revolution has come along to rescue the area’s agricultural fortunes. Hasn’t it?

Bathed in a pleasingly spooky, insidious atmosphere, this promising yarn benefits greatly from elegant direction by Alice Troughton (Doctor Who), although I wish she’d resisted the temptation to include those hoary old horror props, the creepy Victorian doll and rocking horse. And I’m not yet convinced by the incorporation of a time travel element, which so far threatens to gild the lily. However, I can’t fault its ambition.

Inventive adult ghost stories are all too rare on TV these days, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of my niggling doubts. So far it has the potential to become a haunted gem.

The horror continued in Life Inside Jail: Hell on Earth, a two-part documentary filmed in one of New York’s largest, toughest jails.

Despite being familiar territory – American jailbirds must spend at least 25% of their cell time speaking to British documentary crews – it was, as such programmes always are, a sombrely voyeuristic account of a society gone awry.

Home to a thousand male and female inmates, the prison finds petty criminals rubbing shoulders with people accused of murder. Inevitably, we witnessed lives destroyed by drugs. One desperate young addict, who’d never been in trouble with the police before, was accused of murdering a woman to feed his habit. Trapped in a waking nightmare, he looked utterly dazed by what he’d done.

To stress the point that drug addiction can sink its fangs into anyone, the programme also included saddening scenes of a tearful mother, incarcerated for drug crimes, being visited by her daughters and grandchild. If that weren’t miserable enough, one of her daughters was later imprisoned in the same jail for heroin possession. History repeats itself without remorse.

As for the armed prison guards, they were typically willing to talk about their work on camera. It must be a welcome break from the ever-present threat of violence.

One guard admitted that he often thinks he’s crazy for choosing such a dangerous and depressing job. “It’s hopeless for society, man,” he sighed, as all around him an endless cycle of tragedy ensued.

Another guard was reduced to mordant giggles as she talked about some of the insane behaviour she encounters on a daily basis. Sometimes, all you can do is laugh to stop from crying.

TV Review: FRAT BOYS: INSIDE AMERICA'S FRATERNITIES + MR v MRS: CALL THE MEDIATOR

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 25th June 2016.

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

Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities: Thursday, BBC Two

Mr v Mrs: Call the Mediator: Tuesday, BBC Two

When Brits think of American college fraternities, our instant frames of reference are anarchically light-hearted films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House and - possibly- Richard Linklater’s latest, Everybody Wants Some!!

Our own equivalent would be the repulsive elitism of The Bullingdon Club, but somehow that doesn’t seem quite as fun and harmless as a bunch of drunk, shaggy American dudes twisting in togas to My Sharona.

That, of course, is the benign Hollywood fantasy. The sobering reality, as seen in the This World documentary, Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities, is that these college hothouses are just as much of a vile breeding ground for powerful corporate and political leaders as our own Oxbridge gene pools.

In the last few hundred years, nearly half of America’s Presidents have belonged to a fraternity. It’s an honorific badge for life, and a potential fast-track into positions of influence.

The basic facts: college students traditionally pledge allegiance to a campus fraternity or - for women - sorority. Shared accommodation can cost up to $2,500 per term. For male students, it’s seen as a noble brotherhood. They repeatedly boast of sharing the same values and goals. That is, becoming as rich and successful as possible. Darwinism and the American Dream in microcosm.

But in this macho world full of brutal masonic rituals, where new students are sometimes horrifically beaten and branded, tragedy is an inevitable by-product. The secret initiation process known as hazing has resulted in several deaths over the years. Bound by a sacred oath, these heroic brotherhoods then concoct lies to cover their tracks.

Fearful of losing donations from their powerful fraternity alumni, colleges have been accused of covering up the truth with students and the police.

Needless to say, misogyny runs rampant in an obnoxious, shallow subculture where hard-partying jocks roar at each other’s pecs and guzzle booze from footwear. Women – sorority girls - are treated as trophies. Rape cases frequently creep into the headlines. It’s endemic.

One female student spoke chillingly of being drugged and raped at a frat-house party. She didn’t report the crime, as she feels that colleges don’t encourage women to make such allegations. As she stated bluntly, they’re “the personification of patriarchy… no one wants to be known as the rape school.”

Naturally, this dispiriting programme focused on the darker aspects of frat life, because that’s where the story lies. Not every frat boy is a potential murderer or sex criminal.

But you can’t ignore the horrifying pitfalls of a protected system where social, financial and sexual triumphs are viewed as the ultimate sordid goal. You can’t ignore this world.

So you leave college, get a job, get married and live happily ever after. Right? Wrong, otherwise why would Britain need a professional network of family mediators to help couples struggling with divorce?

Filmed over a year, Mr v Mrs: Call the Mediator offers intimate insight into the work of impartial mediators tasked with assisting estranged couples, some of whom can barely tolerate each other, as they seek to resolve difficult disputes and avoid costly court cases.

The director attempts to force a layer of black humour via ironic music cues, but it’s basically a depressing miasma of frosty grimaces, bitter rebukes, catastrophic passive-aggression and dreams gone horribly sour.

Each week we trace the stories of three couples. As with all forms of voyeuristic television, it’s impossible to avoid making your mind up about people you’ve never met: Jeremy Kyle, faux-cosy BBC style. It’s guilty viewing in the most uncomfortable sense.

TV Review: THE NEW GYPSY KINGS + BORN ON THE SAME DAY

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 18th June 2016.

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

This World: The New Gypsy Kings: Thursday, BBC Two

Born on the Same Day: Tuesday, Channel 4

When one thinks of traditional European gypsies, the word “bling” doesn’t readily leap to mind.

80% of Romanian Gypsies live below the poverty line. Unemployment is almost universal. And yet, as seen in This World: The New Gypsy Kings, in recent years a flashy new genre of Gypsy pop has swept the nation.

Called manele, it’s a kind of commercial electro-folk music glorifying material wealth and hedonism. Despite its popularity, manele has attracted fierce criticism from within the Roma community for its moral bankruptcy and overt links to organised crime.

But is it all bad? Director Liviu Tipurita, who’s been making documentaries about Romanian gypsies for many years, tried to find out by delving into a bleak, strange, murky world of prejudice, violence, people trafficking and even witchcraft, where a career in music is one of the few ways of escaping from poverty.

On a more positive note, Tipurita showed how, in the last 20 years, successful Gypsy musicians have ploughed their earnings into building houses and schools for poor communities which were once without basic sanitation. But those musicians are devoted to traditional gypsy music and values; Manele performers are primarily concerned with their own booming bank balance.

We were introduced to mansion-dwelling superstars who openly boast of mafia connections, plus Romania’s answer to Simon Cowell – a mogul known as Dan the Badger – and a shady businessman married to “one of the world’s most powerful witches”. She’s currently in prison for bribing a judge. All Tipurita had to do was switch on his camera to capture an endless cavalcade of weirdness.

As far as Dan the Badger is concerned, the manele lifestyle is something for Gypsies to aspire to. He sees himself as an inspirational figure. In a way, he is. After all, during the brutal reign of Ceausescu, Romanian Gypsies weren’t even recognised as an ethnic minority. Only in the last 30 years, in the wake of revolt and Ceausescu’s execution, has their culture been widely celebrated.

But let’s not get carried away. One of manele’s originators served nine years in prison for attacking a policeman with a Samurai sword. The music blatantly glorifies gangsterism. For the most part, Tipurita’s eye-opening film resembled an Eastern European version of The Godfather. The entire movement is funded by criminality.

He didn’t need to labour the point that these shameless capitalists are drowning in dubious money while half the country starves. The sombre truth was self-evident.

Some TV concepts are so simple yet effective, you wonder why they weren’t exploited sooner. Born on the Same Day is one such beast.

Take a random date from history – in the case of this opening episode, 7^th March 1944 – and trace the life of a notable figure born on that day. So far, so History Channel. But here’s the neat little twist: to illustrate that all lives are extraordinary, you then tell the stories of lesser-known people born within the same 24 hours.

It began with famed explorer Ranulph Fiennes. A remarkable man, but the show’s emotional heft sprang from Ewart and Frances. 

A first-generation Jamaican immigrant, Ewart’s story encompassed decades of racism. And yet he’s never let it define him. 

Meanwhile, Frances suffered third-degree burns as a child. She went on to foster and adopt sick children. A kinder woman you’d be hard-pressed to meet.

A winning format, it’s a fine, sincere and moving piece of social history.

TV Review: NEW BLOOD + UK'S BEST PART TIME BAND

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 11th June 2016.

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

New Blood: Thursday, BBC One

UK’s Best Part Time Band: Friday, BBC Four

I don’t know what’s worse: the murky world of illegal medical testing, or New Blood, an atrocious BBC thriller about the murky world of illegal medical testing.

Written – or rather, assembled – by Anthony Horowitz, the creator of somnambulant detective drama Foyle’s War, it’s a bizarrely inept, dated concoction. With its hackneyed script, woefully over-stylised direction and one-note acting, it’s like a bad ‘90s children’s drama fused with Hollyoaks After Dark. 

Horowitz, who’s 61, has committed the excruciating crime of delivering an old man’s idea of a cutting edge youth drama.

The plot? Well, if you must. A group of penniless British backpackers answer an advert for paid medical testing while travelling in India. For some reason, one of them goes crazy and stabs a nurse with a scalpel. Six years later in London, another member of the group is found dead after falling from a building. It looks like suicide, but Rash, an ambitious young PC, suspects foul play.

Meanwhile, Stefan from the fraud squad has gone undercover to investigate a corrupt pharmaceutical company. Even though he lives with a bunch of lazy Poles – not my assessment, that’s how they’re depicted – his attempt at a Polish accent makes him sound like the world’s worst Borat impersonator.

Somehow – it doesn’t really matter – he and Rash eventually team up to expose a conspiracy that so far involves a predatory homosexual, a stereotypical oddball who lives with his mum, the kind of sexy female assassins who only exist in bad thrillers, and Scottish actor Mark Bonnar playing a sinister man from the ministry, just as he did in the recent Undercover. 

His presence serves as a reminder that, for all its flaws, Undercover was a far superior conspiracy thriller than New Blood. Then again, so is an average episode of Father Dowling Investigates.

Horowitz is obviously trying to say something important about state corruption and the trials of modern metropolitan living, but he delivers his message with all the subtlety of an H bomb. 

It’s a blandly mechanical drama, unencumbered by depth or nuance. Every line of dialogue is lazily culled from the big book of cop show clichés: poor Mark Addy is particularly ill-served by the thankless role of a truculent copper defined by a constant belch of tiresome sarcasm.

Conclusion: Horowitz wrote this, barely, while recovering from the effects of a medical experiment gone wrong. It’s the only feasible explanation. 2016 has been an exceptional year for BBC drama so far. This is a major step backwards.

A benign antidote to The X Factor, UK’s Best Part Time Band is a cheerful series in which comedian and DJ Rhod Gilbert trawls the country looking for, well, the title says it all. There’s no prize as such. Instead it aims to celebrate people who make music for, in Gilbert’s words, “the sheer bloody love of it.” They aren’t after riches and fame, they simply dig what they do.

In the latest episode he travelled around the north and the midlands with affable Joy Division/New Order bassist Peter Hook, who offered polite constructive criticism and advice to various unsung musicians.

An eclectic bunch, they included a “modern mariachi” band who rehearse in the bedroom of their primary school teacher/leader’s mum, a punk band consisting of junior doctors, and a ska band fronted by three middle-aged factory worker brothers.

Without resorting to cheap sentiment, it’s a quietly heart-warming tribute to everyday folk with talent, commitment and desire.

TV Review: VERSAILLES + A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 4th June 2016.

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

Versailles: Wednesday, BBC Two

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Monday, BBC One

A gilded palace of sin full of rampant scheming and deadly betrayal, the court of King Louis XIV should be rich fodder for an entertaining melodrama. It’s a pity no one told the makers of Versailles that.

Oh, they’ve certainly put all the gory pieces in place – it’s positively caked in sex and violence – but they’ve done so in such a self-conscious, po-faced way, this new series achieves the unappetising feat of being boring and risible simultaneously.

Wearing its racy “adult” attributes on its billowing lacy sleeve, it feels like something knocked up by a feverish teenage boy with a passing interest in French history. There’s nothing wrong with mixing fact and fiction per se – this is drama, not documentary – but it requires more assurance than this.

It doesn’t help that young Louis himself comes across, not as a charismatic strategist as intended, but as a pouting, jumped-up hairdresser. Whenever he and his photogenic kin aren’t pontificating solemnly, they’re roistering preposterously with citrus fruits. 

Sexual congress and gratuitous murders aside – which only seem included to keep viewers awake - Versaille is just a bunch of spaniel-haired men emoting at each other in dimly lit rooms. It’s like a midnight gathering of the Johnny Depp fan-club.

At one point we were treated to a riveting discussion about tax revenues. The supposedly dramatic closing moments – when the Queen’s new-born baby was revealed to be black – were inadvertently hilarious. The whole thing is a tonal misfire, oscillating uncomfortably between rampant melodrama and taking itself very seriously indeed.

The bland cast of unknowns are adrift with this material. They may be fine actors in other contexts, but how can you tell as they wade awkwardly through such clumsy dialogue? It’s a right royal mess.

It would be much more fun in the artisan hands of Russell T. Davies. As evinced by his suitably playful adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the former Doctor Who show-runner has lost none of his spark for mixing comedy, fantasy and romance.

Of course, that’s all there in the original text, but RTD (as the cool kids call him) put his own distinct stamp on this version, but without drawing arrogant attention to himself. After all, the play’s the thing.

However, it undoubtedly had the feel of one of his old Doctor Who episodes. It even used members of the production team, a pushy orchestral score from composer Murray Gold, and a woolly-hatted cameo from Bernard Cribbins. But if any Shakespeare play requires a broad touch of the sci-fi fantastical, it’s this enjoyably daft confection.

It’s probably fair to say that no Shakespeare adaptation has ever contained so much CGI (I haven’t seen Olivier’s Henry V). The moon-lit forest looked suitably magical. It also provided further proof that Shakey’s work is easy to understand and enjoy, even for novices, as long as it’s staged competently.

The standouts from a fine cast were a perfectly chosen Matt Lucas stealing the show as Bottom, and John Hannah suggesting that he should play villains more often.

And thank God – or RTD, whichever you prefer – that, unlike so many modern Shakespeare adaptations, there wasn’t an embarrassing rap chorus to be found. That was perhaps its greatest achievement of all.