This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 11 February 2017.
THE MOORSIDE: Tuesday, BBC One
ROOTS: Wednesday, BBC Four
When
nine-year-old Shannon Matthews went missing in 2008, the media descended upon
her Yorkshire council estate.
Her
mother, Karen Matthews, wasn’t as conveniently middle-class as the parents of
Madelaine McCann, but the nation donated its sympathies anyway. We’re
magnanimous like that.
As
we now know, Karen abducted her own daughter in cahoots with a male relative.
Inspired by the financial rewards surrounding the discovery of Maddie, they hid
terrified Shannon with the intention of eventually ‘finding’ her and enjoying
their payday.
When
the truth was revealed, the usual suspects had a field day. An unmarried, uneducated
working-class mother on benefits who exploited her own child for media
attention and scrounging remuneration? Typical!
Well
no. Obviously. This was hardly a typical case, as THE MOORSIDE made clear.
Produced
by the team behind acclaimed factual dramas about the likes of Fred West and
Myra Hindley, this sensitive – if occasionally didactic – drama seized upon
this story to critique our dismally polarised society.
It
focused on the compassionate grass-roots search for Shannon organised by
neighbour Julie Bushby (Sheridan Smith), a fellow single mother who sympathised
with the trauma that Karen was supposedly going through.
It’s
the story of a so-called underclass fighting for its right to be respected as a
close-knit community who, abandoned and demonised by the media and ruling
elite, sought to prove themselves as dignified human beings.
Their
betrayal by Karen Matthews – who made fools of them all – may have proved a
point to morons who’ve never expressed a nuanced thought in their lives, but The Moorside illustrates how basic human
decency, however misplaced, is more important than knee-jerk generalisations.
Karen’s
actions were unforgivably cruel, and The
Moorside doesn’t try to excuse them. But it also portrays her as a pitiful
person whose weakness wasn’t formed in a vacuum.
Smith
is typically excellent, but Gemma Whelan as Karen is quite outstanding. Yes,
she occasionally mugs too comically when caught in the glare of her deceit, but
her performance is gut-wrenching in episode two.
I
hope Katie Hopkins is forced to watch it endlessly, Clockwork Orange-style.
Based
on author Alex Haley’s semi-fictionalised account of his family history, the classic
1977 miniseries ROOTS played a
landmark role in confronting a mass audience with the horrors of slavery.
It
remains one of the key texts in the teaching of African-American history and
western civilisation’s shameful legacy of racist tyranny. You only have to look
at Trump’s ban on Muslim immigrants to appreciate its ongoing relevance.
Which
is why, for once, a remake doesn’t feel redundant. Like the oral histories upon
which it was based, Haley’s epic saga demands to be retold.
It’s
reasonable to assume that many, if not most, younger viewers will be unfamiliar
with the ‘70s original, so this new adaptation will be their introduction to
the dramatic story of defiant Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte and his
descendants.
It
isn’t a remake so much as a retelling mounted with modern production values.
While
faithful to the source material, it sometimes deviates to significant effect. It’s
more explicitly violent in ways I’m sure the original – which was hardly a walk
in the park - would’ve depicted had such visceral imagery been permitted on
‘70s television.
Bolstered
by impressive performances from English actor Malachi Kirby as Kunta,
Scotland’s own Tony Curran as a sadistic plantation overseer, and the estimable
Forest Whitaker as an unsentimentally drawn yet pathos-riddled ‘court jester’,
this well-made adaptation is powerful, moving and unflinching.
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