http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle
Peaky
Blinders: BBC2, Thursday
The
Wipers Times: BBC2,
Wednesday
Paul
Whitelaw
Having enjoyed episodes two and three
of gangster drama Peaky Blinders, I can assure the unconvinced
that episode one was little more than an extended trailer for the
main feature. So self-conscious was it in its desire to establish an
over-stylised aesthetic – essentially an hallucinogenic, rock 'n'
roll vision of industrial Birmingham in 1919 – that it forgot to
introduce the actual story and characters in a compelling fashion.
Curiously undramatic for something
that went out of its way to grab viewers by the throat, it was all
flash and no trousers.
The deliberately anachronistic use on
the soundtrack of The White Stripes and Nick Cave, whose
doom-clanging Red Right Hand functions as a recurring
leitmotif, did at least succeed in establishing the desired gangster
gothic mood. Set in what looks like the furnace of hell itself, the
soot-laden art direction also deserves credit.
But the episode struggled to settle
on a comfortable tone, feeling at once like a determined effort to
differentiate itself from US dramas such as Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire, to which
it's inevitably been compared, and an inferior British cousin of those very shows.
The glacier-eyed Cillian Murphy plays
Tommy, a damaged war veteran and leader of a local gang whose silly
sobriquet derives from the gleaming razorblades sewn into their caps.
After they came into possession of an arsenal of weapons, a
barnstorming Belfast copper (Sam Neill) was tasked with recovering
them under the orders of Churchill himself.
Chewing his lines like Van Morrison
in a particularly foul mood, Neill effortlessly stole his scenes with
a hammy performance perfectly in tune with Peaky Blinders'
heightened atmosphere. Originally of Irish stock, his Belfast brogue,
for which – I kid you not - he received tutelage from Liam Neeson
and James Nesbitt, is flawless.
Murphy, meanwhile, is the charismatic
calm in the eye of the storm, although his character doesn't really
come alive until later. A disappointingly weak link is the usually
reliable Helen McCrory as the gang's matriarch. Her terrible accent,
which takes a wild tour around the regions every time she opens her
gob, is so distracting it's hard to focus on her performance.
While it's refreshing to see a
British period drama hurling itself into broad, bold and violent
territory, I fear this muddled episode may have put people off. But
when it settles down this week, it finally combines its surface sense
of the ridiculous with an involving narrative. It's worth sticking
with.
Set
just a few years earlier, The
Wipers Times told the
potentially fascinating true story of a satirical magazine written by
British soldiers and distributed throughout the trenches during World
War One.
Co-written,
appropriately enough, by Private
Eye editor Ian Hislop, it
adopted a wry, witty tone befitting the subject matter. Quipping like
a pair of benevolent Blackadders, the frightfully posh officers and
mag editors played by Ben Chaplin and Julian Rhind-Tutt were an
engaging duo. But the story itself, despite initial promise, petered
out long before closing time.
The repetitive encounters between the
Wipers team, who printed anonymously for obvious reasons, and an
antagonistic officer were a leaden attempt to inject more drama
into proceedings. While an effective way of illustrating the
magazine's contents, the cutaway sketches used throughout also felt
like padding.
Nevertheless, it was a partially
effective attempt at blending a 'war is hell' message with an
affectionate celebration of an irreverent crew of forgotten
morale-boosters.
ONE
TO MISS
Father Figure
Wednesday, BBC1, 10:35pm
Written by and starring Irish
comedian Jason Byrne, this aggravating family sitcom makes its
obvious US antecedent, Home Improvement, look like a
challenging piece of avant-garde theatre. Byrne leaves no cliché
unturned: the hapless dad; the long-suffering wife; the interfering
mother; the slobby best mate; the irritatingly over-confident moppet
brats; the straight-laced Christian neighbours dutifully on hand to
look aghast whenever Byrne falls over/breaks something. An awkward
and predictable marriage of cartoon slapstick, tawdry sight-gags and
cosy blandness, it finds itself buried in a graveyard slot for good
reason.
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