TV Review: SEAN CONNERY: IN HIS OWN WORDS and THE SCANDALOUS LADY W.

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 22 August 2015.

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

Sean Connery: In His Own Words: Tuesday, BBC Two

The Scandalous Lady W: Monday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Sean Connery is a dazzling human being. This much I learned from Sean Connery: In His Own Words, a cheekily titled hagiography in which the great man's own words were culled entirely from archive interviews.

Having retired several years ago, Connery, who turns 85 this week, clearly had no interest in contributing to this affectionate documentary. Fortunately, an awe-struck procession of celebrity friends and fans, including Jackie Stewart, Terry Gilliam, George Lucas and Robert Carlyle, were available to pay gushing man-crush tribute.

His absence at times made it feel like a eulogy. But his immense charisma hogged the limelight via several well-chosen clips of him in action, both as an actor and interviewee.

Arguably one of the greatest post-war screen stars, Connery's sheer presence is inarguable. He commanded attention without ever seeming to consciously steal a scene. Though often mocked for never dropping his Edinburgh accent regardless of his character's nationality, Connery at his best was always authentic. As Gilliam observed: “When you hire Sean Connery, you want Sean Connery to turn up.”

The programme looked beyond Bond to remind us of Connery's oft overlooked merits as an intelligent actor who, in the late 1960s and 1970s especially, defied typecasting with hard-hitting projects such as The Hill and The Offence. It also suggested that, despite his alpha-male image, the private Connery is a rather thoughtful and articulate, even gentle, soul with a commendable lack of vanity.

Clearly he adores his homeland. Rare extracts from a self-directed 1960s documentary about the decline of Scotland's shipyards indicated that, even while in the bosom of Hollywood, Connery never severed ties with his working-class roots. We were also reminded that he only made Diamonds Are Forever, his final official hurrah as Bond, on the condition that his gargantuan fee was ploughed into establishing the Scottish International Education Trust. Whatta guy.

Even I, a born cynic, was saluting Big Tam by the end of this deftly crafted celebration. If tomorrow he formed a dangerous cult, I'd probably join. Never underestimate the magnetic pull of twinkling charisma.

A prissy, mannered, standalone period drama,The Scandalous Lady W scored a worthwhile point in dreary style. Set in the late 18^th century, it told the potentially interesting true story of Seymour, Lady Worsley, who took the scalding step of leaving her husband to elope with his best friend.

This was an era when a man's wife was thought of as his property; to leave him was akin to a field gaining sentience and declaring itself a village.

The madness of this attitude was tackled resolutely, but as a drama, for all its good intentions, The Scandalous Lady W was far too arid. It was a chamber piece in the most cloistered, stuffy sense: a procession of powdered wigs tilting dutifully at each other.

Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones fluttered and jutted her way through what should have been, by rights, a powerful feminist polemic. Instead it unfurled into stilted farce.

Laughable insult was added to harrowing injury once you clocked that the splendidly named Aneurin Barnard as Lady W's lover was, with his tousled mop and red frock coat, the absolute spitting image of Pete Doherty. What a waste.

TV Review: MUSLIM DRAG QUEENS and EDUCATING CARDIFF

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 29 August 2015.

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

Muslim Drag Queens: Monday, Channel 4

Educating Cardiff: Tuesday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

Asif Quraishi is Britain's first out and proud Muslim drag queen. An inspirational figure, he uses his politically charged performances as part of his campaign for gay Asian – or “Gaysian” - rights. He frequently receives death threats, yet remains defiant.

Asif shone at the centre of Muslim Drag Queens, a sensitive documentary narrated by actor and gay rights activist Sir Ian McKellen.

Born to a conservative Asian family, Asif came out to his parents several years ago. His father still refuses to acknowledge his son's sexuality. However, the programme's spirit of cautious optimism was capped by the touching moment when Asif's mother joined him as he received recognition at Attitude magazine's Pride Awards bash. “He looks beautiful,” she smiled.

Inevitably, this positive spirit was diluted by tragic accounts of people committing suicide after coming out to their fiercely disapproving families. Despite the efforts of heroes like Asif, most Gaysian men continue to live in fear of ostracism and homophobic violence.

Then there was the pathos of lonely Imran. He's been using social media in the hope of finding love. So far he's discovered that many Gaysian men, some of them married, are only interested in meeting him in his female guise. That, reckons Imran, helps them to justify their deceit. He's also disappointed that most of them are only interested in casual sex. They're too scared to commit to a visible relationship.

Imran and Asif were, to say the least, incredibly brave to expose themselves in this way. Appearing on television is a defiant act in itself. Ideally, this valuable report will, at the very least, have given some hope to those gay Muslims who continue to suffer in silence.

Reader, a confession: I don't think I've ever watched an episode of Educating... without finding “something in my eye” at one point. It's pathetic. Sure enough, I had a mild ocular intrusion during episode one of its latest edition, Educating Cardiff.

The formula never fails: filmed using several fixed cameras, we follow the highs and lows of life in one of Britain's secondary schools. By examining this world of heroically dedicated teachers and potential-filled pupils, it's a riposte to those who argue that the education system is failing. It's essentially a love letter to the state school system; a covertly political project, in other words.

The new series takes place at Willows High School, which up until a few years ago was one of the worst-performing schools in Cardiff. But thanks to the efforts of head teacher Joy Ballard and her staff, its fortunes have gradually improved.

Our first visit was typically touching. It focused on two teenage girls with low self-esteem, who at first glance seemed to have little in common. One had a terrible attendance record, the other was a star pupil. But they were united by fear, of failure and fitting in; all they needed was a boost in confidence.

The star of the show was bright, bespectacled Jessica, affectionately described by one of her teachers as “a little bit quirky”. She knew she could never be one of the cool kids, but her stewardship of the school newspaper seemed to improve her social skills. “I'm scared,” she admitted, “But feigning confidence is the best way of gaining confidence.”

As usual, it was a quietly uplifting hour. One of the most commendable shows on television? Hell yeah.  

TV Review: AGATHA CHRISTIE'S PARTNERS IN CRIME and LIFE IN SQUARES

This article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 1st August 2015.

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

Agatha Christie's Partners In Crime: Sunday, BBC One

Life In Squares: Monday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Though never as popular as Poirot and Marple, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were fond favourites of their creator Agatha Christie. She first introduced these happily married sleuths in 1922 and returned to them sporadically throughout her career. Their final appearance was in the last novel published before her death in 1973.

The Tommy and Tuppence canon is slim, however, hence why it's rarely been adapted for television. So, seeing as Poirot and Marple have been milked dry, no wonder the BBC have turned to the Beresfords for one more squeeze of the udder.

The first thing you notice about Agatha Christie's Partners In Crime is how expensive it looks. That £6m budget is visible in every vintage car, costume and immaculately dressed location. But these glossy trimmings can't compensate for the second thing you notice: there is zero chemistry between David Walliams and Jessica Raine as Tommy and Tuppence.

Walliams has shown in the past that he's a decent dramatic actor, but he looks painfully ill at ease here. Then again, even the world's greatest Thesp might struggle with such a poorly written role.

By rights, we should regard Tommy as a charming idler who gradually overcomes his natural cowardice by plunging into danger alongside his intrepid wife. But he comes across in this adaptation as such a soggy bore, it's no wonder Tuppence looks so exasperated with him. Their adventures are supposed to be a thrilling escape from their aimless existence, not from their marriage. A few flashes of warmth aside, they don't even seem to like each other very much.

Raine fares better as Tuppence, whose thirst for adventure drives the plot. Ably assisted by a bevy of attractive hats, she plays her with a kind of prim seriousness that occasionally bubbles over into breathless enthusiasm. It's telling that the best scenes involve her investigating the case alone. But she's got no chance of injecting any spark into her scenes with Walliams.

Even moments which should play to his comic strengths – e.g. Tommy being propositioned by prostitutes – are played monotonously straight. It's as if he's deliberately acting against his natural instincts, to prove there's more to him than camp tomfoolery. All he's proved is there's less.

However, despite his flat performance, the show does work in places. It wisely obeys one of the cardinal comic-thriller rules, namely that the villains must be genuinely threatening. Indeed, Partners In Crime is surprisingly violent at times, but that just adds to the zippy sense of peril. If the villains weren't authentically nasty, then we wouldn't buy into the central conceit of two ordinary people being dangerously out of their depth.

It also clatters along in a busy riot of twists and clues, so much so that the plot almost doesn't matter. While that may irk Christie purists, it does at least result in a fairly enjoyable piece of Sunday night escapism. You'll barely remember a thing about it afterwards – Walliams looks lost during it – but it passes time agreeably enough. So that's £6m well spent, then.

A more modest affair, Life In Squares is an intriguing period drama about the Bloomsbury Set, that radical group of intellectuals who cocked a snook – and more besides – at the strictures of Victorian England.

It's an elegantly claustrophobic meditation on sex and art as intensely entwined bedfellows, as Virginia Woolf and her artist sister Vanessa fight to establish independence years ahead of their time. An intelligently written, subtly performed and beautifully photographed slow-burner with occasional flashes of fire. 

TV Review: WITNESSES and THE JAVONE PRINCE SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 25th July 2015.

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

Witnesses: Wednesday, Channel 4

The Javone Prince Show: Sunday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Shot through an endless drizzle, French thriller Witnesses (Les Temoins) is so irredeemably gloomy it make the average UK cop drama look like a DayGlo bouncy castle pumped with laughing gas.

And that's quite reassuring. So often typecast as sex-fuelled paragons of ineffable cool and glamour, it's good to know that our Gallic cousins are just as miserable as the rest of us.

But is it any better than the average UK cop drama? On the basis of episode one, I'm not entirely sure. By acquiring this six-part series, Channel 4 are obviously hoping to repeat the success of their last French import, The Returned. But that was a stylish and unusual supernatural drama with a compelling central hook. Witnesses is far more generic.

It's certainly atmospheric. The rain-spattered coastal setting is glumly arresting, and the climactic scene involving a suspended trolley car had an unnerving, almost dreamlike quality that one doesn't often see on British television.

Also, despite its clichéd cop show trappings, the mystery at the heart of Witnesses is pleasingly bleak and perverse: three seemingly random corpses are removed from their graves and posed in a show home, like a macabre facsimile of the perfect family. Pourquoi? 

What is their connection with the enigmatic former police chief who – and this is odd behaviour, you must admit – keeps a framed photograph of the car crash that killed his wife? And why does the woolly-hatted female protagonist insist on entering patently threatening crime scenes on her own, armed only with a torch? Has she never seen The Killing?

It all adds up to a mildly intriguing riddle, but whether it will eventually pay off is anyone's guess. The heavy-handed fairytale symbolism of a big bad wolf and a little girl in a red duffel coat suggests, worryingly, that the writers have po-faced pretensions which aren't as clever as they think. It's early days, but already I'm beginning to suspect that, for all its surface sophistication, Witnesses may turn out to be a rather daft affair.

It would be nice, in an ideal world, to report that The Javone Prince Show launched a bright new star into the comedy firmament last week. But the world is far from ideal, hence why it gets the painfully uninspired sketch shows it deserves.

A young black comic and actor, Prince is a fairly charming character whose eagerness to please almost makes up for the weakness of his material. But no amount of charm can rescue this tired ragbag of second-hand observations about “the black experience” in Britain today. 

A series of sketches about the way some white people behave anxiously and patronisingly around black people was never developed beyond the very basic point it was making. But that didn't stop Prince and his writers from hammering it into the ground.

They also seem to believe that the spectacle of a plummy-voiced white chap speaking street slang/jive talk is fundamentally hilarious. Why else would they steal this already limited joke from Armstrong and Miller?

Berating this good-natured and well-intentioned show gives me no pleasure, but there is just no getting around its objective mediocrity. It's a failure on practically every level.

TV Review: THE OUTCAST and INSIDE THE KU KLUX KLAN

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on Saturday 18th July 2015.

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

The Outcast: Sunday, BBC One

Inside The Ku Klux Klan: Monday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

An expensive-looking holiday in other people's misery, The Outcast is a hazy, haunted post-war period drama that never connects on an emotional level.

Its failure to communicate is, I suppose, entirely in keeping with its themes of repression and mute isolation. But that's a charitable view: The Outcast is about damaged people incapable of expressing themselves, but that's no excuse for such slow, alienating, bone-dry execution. What's the point of a story that fails to engage?

Our protagonist is Lewis, a damaged soul from an upper middle-class family immersed in tragedy. Lewis' happy childhood was obliterated by the death of his beloved mother, who drowned before his eyes. Traumatised, his inability to explain what happened to his remote war veteran father triggered an endless downward spiral.

Packed off to boarding school, he retreated further into himself, his deep emotional trauma undiagnosed and misunderstood by everyone around him. As the narrative skipped forward like a series of depressing diary entries, we observed this scarred child of the seen-but-not-heard generation morph into an angry young man with a disastrous diet of medication: self-harm, alcohol, arson and sleeping with a woman who resembles his stepmother. Freud ahoy.

This, clearly, is a well-intentioned story about the tragic consequences of a “pre-enlightened” age when the concept of bereavement counselling was the stuff of a madman's dream. A potentially interesting subject, but writer Sadie Jones fails to make us care about Lewis as we should.

He's automatically sympathetic by dint of his circumstances, but we never get beyond his troubled surface. He's outwardly numb, so that's partially by design. But as Jones subjects him to misery after misery, he feels more like a maltreated marionette than a three-dimensional character. Jones uses him to make a point, meaning that – contrary to her intentions – the endless indignities heaped upon him become borderline comical.

It's formally quite bold in that it relies as much on silence and imagery as dialogue – Lewis' inner turmoil is signified by a sound effect of blood raging noisily through his skull. But The Outcast is hobbled by its self-conscious solemnity.

As the likes of Jon Ronson and Louis Theroux have shown, one of the best ways of understanding – and undermining – crazy extremists is by humanising them. That is, to show them going about their everyday, often hapless business in such a way that they no longer feel threatening. When fear becomes pity, a monster is robbed of its power. That's the idea anyway.

Did Inside The Ku Klux Klan succeed along these idealogical lines? A documentary following a Missouri chapter of this notorious racist movement, it certainly confirmed what we already know - that racists are sad, angry, deluded, insular, paranoid, dysfunctional human beings desperately lashing out at an imagined foe to blame for their unhappiness. But if we already know this, what purpose did it serve?

If you ignore racism it won't go away, that's not what I'm suggesting. Racists aren't like bees - I really can't stress that enough. Bigotry of all kinds should always be exposed and challenged. I just don't think another documentary about a tragic bunch of ignorant rednecks is particularly useful.

The programme made the important point that, despite their threadbare currency and easily mockable foolishness, the Klan are still guilty of appalling acts of violence. We can't laugh them into obsolescence. That wasn't the programme's intention, but unlike Ronson and Theroux at their best, it basically amounted to a despairing, common sense sigh in the face of immovable bigotry.

TV Review: A SONG FOR JENNY and THE AUTISTIC GARDENER

A Song For Jenny: Sunday, BBC One

The Autistic Gardener: Wednesday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

Julie Nicholson, a Church of England vicar, lost her 24-year-old daughter Jenny in the 7/7 London bombings. Jenny was one of 52 people killed that day. Though it focused on the Nicholsons alone, one-off drama A Song For Jenny was a sincere tribute to each of those victims and the 52 families who will forever mourn their loss.

Scheduled to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of this senseless attack, the film followed Julie (Emily Watson) through every harrowing stage of her ordeal.

As with most dramatisations of real-life tragedies, the early scenes were suffused with a weighty sense of impending horror. Julie received a concerned call from her other daughter as soon as news broke of an unexplained tube explosion in London. Initial confusion gave way to mounting panic as Jenny proved unreachable by phone. All the family could do was wait and watch as the reports grew graver. Then came the inevitable, devastating news.

Numbed by shock and grief, Julie's London odyssey unfurled as a literal manifestation of, in her own words, Jenny's stages of the cross. It was a painful, almost masochistic form of catharsis. The scene in which she delivered the last rites over Jenny's remains was unbearably sad. Yet she found no comfort in her faith; God couldn't fill such a vast, unyielding void. Though it wasn't mentioned on screen, Julie is no longer a priest.

Nevertheless, this was ultimately a story of cautious hope and renewed faith - not in a higher being, but in humanity. After Julie, dazed and alone, viewed her daughter's body in London, a taxi driver insisted on taking her back to Reading with no charge. This simple act of human kindness took on enormous significance as part of her gradual journey towards some kind of peace. Despite her anger and hatred towards the bombers, eventually she refused to let those emotions overwhelm her love for Jenny.

A sensitive, intelligent actress capable of exuding anguish while remaining outwardly still, Watson was ideally cast as Julie. Her dignified performance was supported by a thoughtful screenplay from playwright Frank McGuinness. A fine, valuable, compassionate film.

The aptly named Alan Gardner is an award-winning garden designer. With his affable demeanour, neon red hair, rock tattoos and nail varnish – he looks like a psychedelic Ken Dodd - he's an unusually colourful addition to TV's never-ending roster of green-fingered artisans. He's also autistic.

In The Autistic Gardener, he assembles a team of horticultural enthusiasts from various points on the autism spectrum as they set about transforming various neglected gardens into imaginatively sculpted wonderlands. Mercifully bereft of patronising sentimentality, it's a good-natured and responsible series in which people with autism unassumingly raise awareness of their condition while exercising their creative abilities.

They build their confidence and gain a sense of achievement, their 'employers' get a groovy new garden to play with, and we enjoy the whole undemanding process while chortling at Gardner's self-aware narration, in which he cheekily mocks the clichéd conventions of the TV makeover genre. Everyone's a winner, baby.

With supposedly well-meaning yet problematic shows such as The Undateables, Channel 4 is often guilty of treating people with disabilities as outsider novelties. The Autistic Gardener treats them as equals. So hats off to all concerned. When was the last time Alan Titchmarsh reaffirmed your faith in human nature?

TV Review: ODYSSEY + ARENA: NICOLAS ROEG... IT'S ABOUT TIME + NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Odyssey: Sunday, BBC Two

Arena: Nicolas Roeg… It's About Time: Sunday, BBC Four

Not Safe For Work: Tuesday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

Having spied Channel 4's success with Homeland, BBC Two is presumably hoping to grab some of that US import thriller action with Odyssey. But on the evidence of its opening double-bill, this 13-part series is possibly too sprawling, laboured and muddled to capture a comparable audience.

Set in the US and Africa, it tries to tackle all the major geopolitical issues of the day – war, terrorism, corporate corruption, grass-roots protest, media hysteria and the financial crisis – in pursuit of a supposedly grand statement about the interconnectedness of our global catastrophe.

Unfortunately, these noble ambitions are scuppered by an uneven patchwork narrative involving a drab homeland conspiracy and a Mali-based strand in which Anna Friel's

US army officer makes a dangerous trek across the desert. This latter strand is far more engaging and suspenseful than anything else in Odyssey; it flags drastically whenever Friel isn't on screen.

Her impressive performance is matched by Omar Ghazaoui as the Malian teenager who becomes her unlikely ally. Mercifully free of mawkishness, their relationship is the only interesting aspect of the show.

To carry off something on this scale requires depth, focus and precision; Odyssey is a hectic splurge. One might charitably defend its approach as an intentional attempt at reflecting the complexity of the issues at hand. But really it's just sloppy story-telling. While I'm glad that American TV dramas are gradually trying to explore geopolitics in a relatively thoughtful way, Odyssey' is less than the sum of its parts.

It's surprising to learn that, during its 40 years on air, cerebral arts strand Arena has never crossed paths with visionary British film director Nicolas Roeg. After all, they're a perfect match. But not only was Nicolas Roeg... It's About Time his first Arena profile, it was also the first time he's participated in a documentary about his work.

A suitably elliptical tribute to his unique vision, it was more interested in exploring Roeg's thematic obsessions than providing standard biographical details. Famed for his non-linear narratives and emphasis on psychological displacement, it wove thoughtful analysis of his films – including obvious touchstones such as Performance and The Man Who Fell To Earth – with quietly revealing, twinkly pronouncements from the man himself.

It was, in typical Arena style, an attempt to capture the spirit of the artist. While newcomers to Roeg's work may have preferred a more conventional approach, that woud've missed the point of this masterful impressionist. And at least it didn't ruin the ending of Don't Look Now.

More bleak than funny, comedy-drama Not Safe For Work is nevertheless an intriguing howl of anguish about a dysfunctional bunch of misfits working at a moribund immigration department.

Hitherto best known for her role as deadpan hedonist Vod in student comedy Fresh Meat, the excellent Zawe Ashton stars as a recently divorced civil servant who reluctantly relocates to Northampton from London due to budget cuts.

She's dismayed to discover that her new manager is a former underling who only got the job after pretending to be a devout Muslim. A befuddled, work-shy, drug-guzzling mess, Danny's inspirational motto is “work hard or go home.” He's also played, not as a wacky grotesque, but as a pathetically vulnerable soul by another highly promising young actor, Sacha Dhawan.

Seemingly written from a place of genuine pain and offbeat compassion, Not Safe For Work is full of bracing, downbeat promise.