TV Review: LINE OF DUTY + MRS BROWN + DECLINE AND FALL

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1 April 2017.

LINE OF DUTY: Sunday, BBC One

ALL ROUND TO MRS BROWN’S: Saturday, BBC One

DECLINE AND FALL: Friday, BBC One

The greatest British crime drama of the last ten years, LINE OF DUTY showed no signs of fatigue as its fourth series began. On the contrary, this former BBC Two blockbuster celebrated its promotion to BBC One with breakneck brio and commendable confidence.

The basic formula may be familiar by now – an ambiguous senior police officer is investigated by the dogged anti-corruption unit that links each semi-standalone series – but writer/director Jed Mercurio still takes evident delight in grabbing our attention with tantalising mysteries and shocking twists.

It’s essentially a propulsive thrill ride anchored by a solid base of research-driven authenticity: a practically seamless fusion of sombre reality and borderline deranged melodrama.

So, while this year’s intriguingly topical theme appears to be the inherent dangers of “post-fact” duplicity – Line of Duty has always fed off our gnawing fears about establishment corruption and cover-ups - episode one kicked off with a literally explosive hunt for an alleged serial killer, and climaxed with a shady forensic co-ordinator (the great Jason Watkins) attempting to chop his apparently dead boss (Thandie Newton) into pieces, before she suddenly awoke as his electric saw whirred inches from her skull.

Mercurio is notorious for misdirecting viewers with such audacious cliffhangers, but they still work beautifully (even if they don’t quite stand up to logical scrutiny).

The episode wasn’t perfect – some of the exposition was needlessly heavy-handed, the physical encounter between Watkins and Newton was awkwardly directed, and Scottish actor Paul Higgins continues to struggle with a stiff, unconvincing English accent – but these are mere quibbles in the face of its tightly controlled tension and sheer entertainment value.

A nail-bitten nation will doubtless become hooked all over again for the next six weeks.

Brendan O’Carroll is clearly some kind of genius. Not when it comes to comedy – he’s a dreadful, lazy chancer - but for the way he’s managed to vigorously milk the Mrs Brown cash cow far beyond its natural shelf-life as a tawdry touring theatre production.

Despite being reviled by most critics and discerning comedy fans, he’s one of the BBC’s most popular entertainers. Despairing of his success is as futile as moaning about wretched weather. It’s an immovable fact of life, you may as well accept it.

But that doesn’t mean you have to accept his latest vehicle, ALL ROUND TO MRS BROWN’S, as anything other than a post-Brexit vision of Hell.

With minimal effort he’s tweaked his knicker-dropping, feck-spewing, single entendre sitcom by adding sketches, games, a cookery segment, easily pleased audience interaction and dynamite celebrity guests of the Pamela Anderson, James Blunt, Louis Walsh, Judy Murray and Judy Murray’s mum variety.

As usual, it’s staggeringly charmless, depressing and unfunny, but his target audience will lap it up. The rest of us are merely baffled bystanders in O’Carroll’s all-conquering world.

As if to prove that comedy of wit and distinction still has a home on BBC One, a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s darkly satirical novel DECLINE AND FALL introduced itself with reassuring aplomb. Despite being written in 1928, Waugh’s astringently comic assault on elitism and prejudice feels fresher than O’Carroll’s grimly old-fashioned revue.

A perfectly-chosen cast of peerless character actors is led by Jack Whitehall as a hapless young schoolmaster drowning in a quagmire of corrupt, dissolute British eccentricity.

Deftly performed, written and directed – you can practically taste the stench of whisky, lunacy and crumbling despair - it’s a genuinely funny farce of the type they supposedly don’t make any more.

Granted, it’s based on an 89-year-old novel, but any primetime BBC comedy involving an alcoholic schoolmaster shooting a pupil in the foot with a starting pistol is all right by me.