This article was originally published in The Courier on 7 January 2017.
THE HALCYON: Monday, STV
UNFORGOTTEN: Thursday, STV
If
escaping to the past beats facing up to a brutal future, then how better to
ignore the birth of 2017 than traveling back to a glamourous five-star
London hotel in 1940? Sure, World War II and all that, but weren’t the fashions
divine?
Welcome,
then, to THE HALCYON, where jitterbugs
and doodlebugs collide in a streamlined tumult of soapy wartime melodrama: Downton Abbey with ration books and
epaulettes.
A
hotel is a classic setting for drama, offering as it does a myriad of stories
operating under one convenient roof. In this case we have a Savoy-esque palace
populated by various characters divided by class, nationality and politics,
most of them portrayed by familiar TV faces.
Chief
among them are the perennially watchable Steven Mackintosh as Garland, the
ambiguous hotel manager whose outward propriety hides a scheming underbelly –
Mackintosh excels at playing seemingly ordinary men with a sinister edge – and
his haughty yet melancholy nemesis Lady Hamilton, played by Olivia Williams.
She’s The Halcyon’s widowed owner who, for reasons only hinted at, despises
Garland and his murky relationship with her late husband.
It’s
a shame Lord H bumped himself off in episode one, as he was enjoyably portrayed
with philandering ennui by the excellent Alex Jennings. He reminded me
of Paul Whitehouse’s caddish 13th Duke of Wybourne from The Fast Show: “Me, Lord Hamilton, here?
In the bathroom of a naked jazz chanteuse? With my reputation?!”
The
lifts are also jammed with the likes of Mark Benton plying his usual trade as
an affably lugubrious concierge, Charity Wakefield – last seen over Christmas
playing a surrogate Lois Lane in Doctor
Who – as, well, a glamourous Nazi sympathiser, and Absolutely’s Gordon Kennedy as a caustic Scottish chef – the ghost
of Crossroads’ Hughie McPhee looms
large.
Of
less interest are a simpering receptionist, a gaggle of identikit posh blokes
and two big band-style songs from Radio 2 jazz squid Jamie Cullum.
Filmed
within an impressive studio set shot and dressed with appropriate opulence, The Halcyon is a blatant attempt by ITV
to replicate the success of Downton Abbey
and Mr Selfridge. It’s also indebted
to practically every Stephen Poliakoff drama ever made, albeit set to a brisker
pace (which wouldn’t be hard - the tombs of Ramesses are more animated than most Poliakoff
dramas).
Nevertheless,
the show set its well-trodden wheels in motion in confident and fairly
promising style. Seeing as it clings so unashamedly to ITV’s Posh Soap
blueprint – sex, serfs, toffs and fancy furnishings - success for The Halcyon is almost a formality.
Already
a deserved hit for ITV, superior crime drama UNFORGOTTEN returned with another byzantine cold case for refreshingly
normal and compassionate detectives Cassie and Sunny (Nicola Walker and Sanjeev
Bhaskar, whose underplayed chemistry remains a key component).
This
time they’re investigating a grisly unsolved murder from 1990. Naturally, the formula
that proved so effective last year remains intact: when Cassie and Sunny
eventually discover the identity of an unfortunate corpse, they’re plunged into
an England-spanning mystery involving several seemingly unconnected characters.
Series
Two’s suspects include an NHS nurse, a Muslim schoolteacher and a gay barrister:
an apoplectic Daily Mail nightmare
writ large. Good.
With all the requisite intrigue in place, the pressure is on for Unforgotten to match the twisting heights of series one.
If it does, then its
reputation as one of the best TV dramas of its kind is secured.
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