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