ITALY'S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR'S DIARY + THE LUMINARIES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th June 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

ITALY’S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR’S DIARY

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

This stark documentary was filmed inside an overstretched hospital at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. It follows A&E doctor Francesca Mangiatordi as she struggles to care for an escalating influx of infected patients. A shortage of beds has left staff with no choice but to park patients in corridors, sometimes for days. Mangiatordi is exhausted, candid and eloquent. She repeatedly questions the worth of her role in the face of such overwhelming suffering: “When you remove someone’s dignity, you leave them with nothing.” Gradually, some of her colleagues succumb to the virus. Their experience of treating Covid patients naturally makes them more fearful about their own chances of survival. Meanwhile, Mangiatordi frets about the prospect of a devastating second wave.

THE HIDDEN WILD OF THE MOTORWAY

Tuesday, BBC Four, 9pm

Britain’s busiest road, the M25, is a vast loop of soulless concrete. But look closer and you’ll find that the natural world has adapted to coexist around it. Inspired by J.G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad, naturalist Helen Macdonald takes a thoughtful stroll around the M25’s perimeter in this hauntological documentary. She discovers pretty woodlands and waterways scored to a background roar of traffic; some songbirds have had to alter the pitch of their calls in order to be heard. She also reveals how fungi studies could help to solve the problem of traffic congestion. An enthusiastic, softly-spoken scholar finding hidden wonders in mundane areas we take for granted, this is a quintessential BBC Four joint. We’ll miss it when it’s gone.

THE SECRET MEDITERRANEAN WITH TREVOR McDONALD

Tuesday, STV, 9pm

You could argue that sunny foreign TV travelogues are the last thing we need to see at the moment. They’re a cruel reminder of an increasingly distant time when, finances permitting, we could hop on a plane and relax our blues away on holiday. On the other hand, the sight of genial Sir Trev in sunglasses and an open-necked shirt might provide a fleeting distraction from the misery of life as we currently know it. Which sounds fine in theory, but according to the synopsis – preview copies weren’t available – episode one involves Trev boarding a superyacht once owned by Aristotle Onassis and later witnessing a bout of camel wrestling. That doesn’t sound like fun to me. Tastes may vary.

HUEY MORGAN’S LATIN AMERICAN ADVENTURE

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

In this vibrant new series, the BBC 6 Music DJ drops his usual tiresome wise-guy act to engage sincerely with the turbulent history of Latin American popular music. His perspiring odyssey begins in Brazil, where ecstatic Samba rhythms continue to represent the defiant voice of oppressed working-class people (Brazil is currently governed by ‘the Trump of the Tropics’). This is protest music in its purest most transcendent form; grooving community action. He also covers the bossa nova boom and examines the anti-capitalist politics of the tropicalia movement via interviews with the great Gilberto Gil and, from the magnificently far-out Os Mutantes, Arnaldo Baptista. These musicians challenged the jackboot status quo with some the greatest music ever made.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE LUMINARIES

Sunday 21st and Monday 22^nd June, BBC One

This turgid adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel (which I’ve never read and never will) succeeds only as a showcase for some decent production design. It looks good, but the story, the characters, don’t engage at all. It’s set on New Zealand’s South Island in 1866. Various folk converge to pan for gold. It glistens with a hallucinatory sheen of opiated sweat and grime. The performances are fine and the setting is potentially interesting. There’s something to be said here about colonialism, racism, misogyny and greed. The Luminaries somehow manages to crush that potential into mulch with its awkward pacing and structure. An alienating mess.

THE CHOIR: SINGING FOR BRITAIN

Tuesday 23^rd June, BBC Two

Gareth Malone is a smarmy little creep, a tweedy child with an orchard full of apples for teacher. Hats off to every frontline worker involved in this experiment, you’re all brilliant, lovely people, but keep a close eye on Malone. He’s a government-sanctioned Minister of Music in waiting who can barely disguise his contempt for pop music behind that faux-groovy piano teacher facade. He makes Gary Barlow look like Che Guevara.

SITTING IN LIMBO + I MAY DESTROY YOU

This article was originally published in The Courier on 6th June 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

SITTING IN LIMBO

Monday, BBC One, 8:30pm

Inspired by the unforgivable Windrush immigration scandal, this relentlessly angering drama tells the true story of Anthony Bryan. In 2016, four years after David Cameron’s coalition government introduced their hostile environment policy, Anthony decided to visit his ailing elderly mother in Jamaica. He’d never needed a passport since moving to the UK in 1965. After filling in the paperwork he was shocked to discover that there was no record of him as a British citizen. He immediately lost his job and, without any official explanation, was stripped of his rights to use the NHS and claim benefits. Written by Anthony’s brother, Stephen S. Thompson, Sitting in Limbo follows him through the nightmare ordeal of having to prove his residential status. It couldn’t have arrived at a more apposite time. Do not miss.

I MAY DESTROY YOU

Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 10:45pm

I wouldn’t normally recommend a show involving young metropolitan media types struggling with deadlines, but this new series from actor/writer Michaela Coel of Chewing Gum renown isn’t remotely smug or self-indulgent. This is no carefree celebration of living inside a sexy, solvent London bubble; the occasional moment of dry humour aside, it’s a stark and queasy drama about a woman dealing with severe trauma. Coel plays Arabella, an author with a hit debut novel under her belt. Her life is pretty much perfect. Then, during a night out with friends, she’s drugged and raped. At first, Arabella can’t fully recall the exact details of what happened, but she gradually pieces it together. I May Destroy You cuts deep.

STAGED

Wednesday, BBC One, 10:45pm

Michael Sheen and David Tennant are, like all sensible people at the moment, in lockdown. They were, in this semi-fictionalised version of reality, due to appear in a West End production of Six Characters in Search of an Author, but the Coronavirus pandemic put the kibosh on that. Written and directed by Simon Evans – who also plays himself – Staged consists of Skype conversations between the bored Thesps as they struggle to remain sane while rehearsing for no reason whatsoever A six-part series of 15-minute episodes in which two famous actors bicker and knowingly mock their fragile egos, Staged stirs inevitable echoes of Brydon and Coogan in The Trip. It’s nowhere near as funny or pointed as that show at its best, but Sheen and Tennant have undeniable chemistry.

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

Thursday, BBC Two, 10pm

This likeably silly sitcom about cohabiting vampires is unique in that, despite being an American show, its principal cast are British. Matt Berry, Tash Demetriou and Kayvan Novak are very funny people, so their cult ‘Stateside’ success is almost enough to make you feel vaguely patriotic. Sure, Berry can only do one thing – a burgundy-throated caricature of a ripe English ac-tor – but it rarely fails to amuse. In season two (it’s ‘season’ for American shows, ‘series’ for British shows: them’s the official rules, folks), the 21^st century Munsters search for new human slaves. Pedants such as myself will never be able to fully accept quasi-documentary sitcoms which don’t adhere to the rules of actual documentaries, but that’s a crucifix I have to bear.

LAST WEEK’S TV

ALAN CARR’S EPIC GAME SHOW

Saturday 30th May, STV

Whenever he gets overexcited, Alan Carr sounds exactly like John Lydon singing This Is Not A Love Song. That’s the most insightful observation I can muster about this harmless bowl of froth in which Carr revives various classic game show formats. It began with a tribute to Brucie and Play Your Cards Right. Celebrity couples competed for charity. It was overlong, but no distress was caused. Carr is a likeable, nimble-witted pro and this is the comfortably-upholstered vehicle he’s been chasing for years.