This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12 November 2016.
Damilola, Our Loved
Boy: Monday, BBC One
Close to the Enemy: Thursday, BBC Two
Nigerian
schoolboy Damilola Taylor was 10-years-old when he was fatally attacked on a
Peckham estate in November 2000. The image of this innocent, smiling child
seared itself on the nation’s consciousness, an unwitting emblem of growing
fears over inner city knife crime.
Following
a prolonged, controversial trial, two teenagers were eventually charged with
manslaughter.
The
shock of this senseless crime still reverberates, hence Damilola, Our Loved Boy, a deeply moving drama made with support
from the Taylors.
Primarily
framed through the eyes of Damilola’s father, Richard, it went behind the
headlines to explore the anguish of a family struggling with unimaginable
tragedy.
The
establishing scenes of the Taylors living a happy life in Nigeria – Richard was
a successful businessman with government connections – were weighted with a sense
of impending horror.
The
Taylors moved to England so that Richard’s British-born daughter could receive
urgent NHS treatment for her epilepsy. Writer Levi David Addai didn’t need to
stress the terrible irony of parents losing a child while seeking to save the
life of another.
Damilola’s
excitement about moving to this land of hope and glory was heart-breaking. Breadwinner
Richard stayed behind as the family moved into a cramped Peckham flat. Seven
months later, Damilola was dead.
Certain
scenes lingered long after the credits had rolled. The mounting panic of
Damilola’s mother when he didn’t return from school; his guilt-stricken older
brother phoning Richard to break the awful news; Richard visiting the scene of
Damilola’s murder, then eventually breaking down away from the gaze of the family
for whom he tried to remain strong.
With
admirable honesty, it depicted Richard as an often myopically proud and moral
man who, via sincerely noble deeds in the local community, neglected the needs
of his family while trying to make sense of Damilola’s death. But that was his
way of dealing with guilt and grief.
Sensitively
handled by all concerned – Babou Ceesay was particularly outstanding as Richard
– this necessarily upsetting film succeeded by stating its nuanced, complex
case without a trace of tabloid hysteria.
One
thing we can all agree on about divisive auteur Stephen Poliakoff is that no
one makes television quite like him. He’s an eccentric genre unto himself. For
some, his work is agonisingly mannered and opaque. For others, myself included
broadly speaking, those affectations are often quite appealing.
So
what to make of Close to the Enemy,
in which he rakes over his trademark obsessions with hot jazz, war criminals
and the haunted glamour of barely populated luxury hotels? It’s tempting to
assume that he’s trolling his critics with a Bingo-card summation of every
Poliakoff drama ever made.
Set
in the bomb-damaged London of 1946, just as the Cold War began, it pivots on a strange
performance from Jim Sturgess as a maverick military intelligence agent tasked
with securing the services of a reluctant German scientist.
With
his shop-damaged chocolatey diction and eyebrows a-cocked a la Roger Moore, he
appears to be sending the whole thing up. I don’t quite know what the hell he’s
doing, but it’s certainly entertaining.
Like
Poliakoff’s last tribute to his own oeuvre, Dancing
on the Edge, it’ll probably squander its vague promise by drifting
languidly up its own fundament. In which case, the BBC may finally decide to
stop throwing money at this self-indulgent oddball.
But
I must admit, it’s perversely pleasing that he’s managed to reign unfettered
for so long. There’s something to be said for public disservice broadcasting.
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