TV Review: SILK and JONATHAN CREEK

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1st March 2014.

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

Silk: Monday, BBC One

Jonathan Creek: Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

The problem with idealistic QC Martha Costello is that she's far too human and empathetic for her own good. If only she could somehow dispense with her feelings and carry out her job with the ruthless efficiency of a programmed assassin. Until then, she's doomed to wrestle with ethical dilemmas on a weekly basis at 9pm on BBC One.

That, in a nutshell, is the recurring theme of Silk, the diverting legal drama that returned last week for a third series. As played by Maxine Peake and written by former barrister Peter Moffat, Martha is certainly one of the more convincing lawyers to grace our screens. Her ability to balls things up almost as often as she gets things right makes her infinitely more sympathetic and believable than your standard maverick courtroom hero. I'm no legal expert, but Moffat's work always carries a persuasive ring of authenticity.

Her latest case was typical in that it found her getting emotionally involved to the detriment of her professional acumen. While the problem of a professional getting TOO DAMN CLOSE to a case is a terrible genre cliché, Silk tends to handle it with relative aplomb.

“There's too much mothering and not enough lawyering,” frowned Clive, her Harrow/Oxford-educated paramour and colleague. You could hardly blame Martha for embracing her maternal instincts while defending the son of her own Head of Chambers. A vulnerable teenager with mental health issues, he'd accidentally killed a policeman while taking part in a protest march. What unfolded was a slickly executed rumination on police brutality, corruption and the compromised values of insular institutions.

Peake, who has a knack for delivering dramatic courtroom speeches without ever overselling them, was as solid and affecting as ever, while Neil Stuke, as morally ambiguous chief clerk Billy, handled his terminal cancer sub-plot with admirable restraint.

Although Silk is essentially a case-of-the-week courtroom drama – and therefore fairly forgettable in the grand scheme of things – it's realised with such skill that it rarely fails to engage. Plus this week's episode treated us to the sight of Peake dancing badly to Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart. Beat that, Law & Order: UK.

Despite its layers of black comedy, whimsical mystery drama Jonathan Creek has always struck me as rather too cosy for comfort. I admire David Renwick as a writer, but I've never been taken with this particular creation. At its worst it's little more than Midsomer Murders with a self-aware sense of humour.

To give Renwick his due, the latest episode did feature an enjoyably sly dig at the success of Sherlock, an increasingly tricksy and self-regarding show that's usurped Jonathan Creek in the nation's affections. Creek, competently played as always by Alan Davies, was lumbered with an unwanted sidekick: a young, cocky David Tennant lookalike who constantly rattled off detailed yet entirely incorrect deductions a la Sherlock on a bad day. But it was Creek, of course, who solved the case.

Even so, Renwick's attempts to spice up the formula by showing us, a la Columbo, how the murder happened in the first act felt half-baked. The inherent pleasure of Columbo is in watching the faux-naive detective lure his quarry into a trap. But Creek has none of that character's endearing charm. He's just a dull middle-aged man solving crimes in his spare time.

While the episode hung together more coherently than some of the recent feature-length specials, tonally it didn't quite gel. The story of a mentally ill mother hanging herself after losing her baby and murdering an actress jarred rather harshly against the jokes about Piers Morgan and unsubtle Alien references. With the addition of a superfluous sub-plot involving Paula Wilcox and an urn of ashes, it all felt like something of a hodgepodge. 

I was more entertained by the notion that the moment where Creek was bitten by an angry theatre-goer was a cheeky nod to the real-life incident in which Davies bit a homeless man's ear. Do I deduce correctly?