TV Column: RESPONSIBLE CHILD + THE DIRTY WAR ON THE NHS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 14th December 2019.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

NEXT WEEK’S TV

RESPONSIBLE CHILD

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

Based on a true story, this riveting standalone drama follows a twelve-year-old boy, Ray, as he stands accused of the brutal murder of his stepfather. Ray (a haunting performance from newcomer Billy Barratt) is a bright, shy, sensitive child from an abusive family background. The details of his alleged crime are gradually revealed via fraught flashbacks. Meanwhile, his dedicated defence team mount their case. Criminal law in England and Wales decrees that children as young as ten are fit to stand trial in an adult court. Responsible Child probes deeply into the stark ramifications of that law. Etched in nauseating shades of anguished verisimilitude, it’s a compassionate piece in the Ken Loach vein. It will linger.

STICKS AND STONES

Monday to Wednesday, STV, 9pm

When a successful businessman botches a crucial sales pitch through no fault of his own, his colleagues start to bully him. Bullying in the workplace is a serious issue, but the well-intentioned message behind this three-part drama from Doctor Foster creator Mike Bartlett is fatally undermined by sledgehammer writing. It’s utterly ridiculous. The victim’s tormentors are one-dimensional pantomime villains, their cruel behaviour is absurdly blatant. In real life they’d be more insidious, that’s how bullying among adults tends to work. Bartlett presumably knows this, but subtlety has never been his strong point. Sticks and Stones is a missed opportunity, a drama with its heart in the right place but with a big fat foot in its mouth.

THE GALAXY BRITAIN BUILT: THE BRITISH FORCE BEHIND STAR WARS

Monday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

Now this is rather lovely. Star Wars, as we know, was a game-changing Hollywood blockbuster, but it would never have existed or thrived without the efforts of talented British artisans. To illustrate that point, affable broadcaster David Whiteley, a lifelong Star Wars fan, meets some of those now elderly producers and design pioneers. It’s a thorough excavation of a project that was regarded as an utter oddity, an expensive folly, at the time, but which turned out to be something quite special. One is left with the abiding impression that George Lucas was/is a bit of a weirdo who hit upon some good ideas, none of which would’ve been realised without major professional assistance. Either way, it worked.

THE DIRTY WAR ON THE NHS

Tuesday, STV, 11:05pm

The great investigative journalist John Pilger must’ve spat a fountain of feathers when informed that his report on Boris Johnson’s plans for the NHS was to be buried in a graveyard slot after the election. This, we're told, is officially due to broadcasting rules of impartiality during a G.E. campaign. Yeah, right. Full disclosure: I haven’t actually seen the programme, as it wasn't available for preview at the time of writing, but this is how Pilger describes it: “The NHS today is under threat of being sold off and converted to a free market model inspired by America's disastrous health insurance system, which results in the death every year of an estimated 45,000 people. Now President Trump says the NHS is ‘on the table’ in any future trade deal with America.”

LAST WEEK’S TV

ELIZABETH IS MISSING

Sunday 8th December, BBC One

The last time we saw the seemingly retired Thesp and former Labour MP Glenda Jackson on TV was either via Morecambe and Wise repeats or on Newsnight. So it was a rare pleasure to be reminded of what a great actor she is in Elizabeth is Missing, a beautifully-written, gut-punching drama in which she played an octogenarian with Alzheimer’s. This was the sort of role for which grandstanding, BAFTA-hungry actors were born to inhabit with the utmost faux-humility, but Jackson is better than that. Her vanity-free performance as Maude was utterly convincing, tender and true. Actually magnificent. Maude’s life is all our lives. We love, we laugh, we cry, we frail away and die. Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease, we must never, ever ignore or misunderstand it. These people aren’t invisible. Take care of each other, will you?

TV Review: TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK + ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME

This article was first published in The Dundee Courier on 18 February 2017.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/category/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/

TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK: Saturday, BBC Two

ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME: Tuesday, BBC Two

Human beings are frighteningly vulnerable. Even the sharpest minds among us can be assaulted without warning by the cruel lottery of fate. Two programmes last week shone defiant glimmers of hope into mortality’s glowering visage.

They focused on robust and somewhat eccentric characters who dealt with serious illness – one fatal, the other life-threatening – with humour, pragmatism and a healthy lack of sentiment.

The phenomenally successful fantasy author Terry Pratchett died of Alzheimer’s in 2015. He’d lived with the degenerative disease for eight years, during which he continued to write until he was no longer able.

His final project was a memoir recorded with the assistance of his PA. Pratchett never lived long enough to complete it.

Enter TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK, a charming tribute which sought to tell the story of his life in fittingly irreverent fashion.

Wearing the guise of a mischievous narrator, actor Paul Kaye, aka the prankster formerly known as Dennis Pennis, rescued the Discworld creator from the philosophical clutches of Death (coincidentally the most popular character from Pratchett’s novels).

Armed with trademark wizard’s beard, black fedora and nasal rhoticism – the result of a childhood accident which, in Pratchett’s words, left him sounding like “David Bellamy with his hand caught in an electric fire” – Kaye’s affectionate impersonation would, one presumes, have delighted the man who inspired it.

He led us through a prolific life and cynical/compassionate worldview forged by a childhood in which Pratchett was told he’d never amount to anything, hence why his distinctive form of satire was driven by an angry intolerance of hypocrisy, snobbery and injustice. An indelible streak of “I told you so” remained with him until the end.

But if Pratchett could be cantankerous, an essential sense of decency was his abiding characteristic. He never lost his amused yet sincere fascination with the human condition, even when he was eventually felled by the kind of unjust act of fate he always railed against.    

Andrew Marr is a kindred spirit. When he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013, the respected political journalist refused to kowtow to self-pity – which he describes as “the most nauseating human quality of all” – in a way Pratchett would’ve appreciated.

Despite clinging to the celebrity-fronted “personal journey” blueprint so beloved of modern television, ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME was, thanks to the wryly no-nonsense nature of its star, refreshingly free of stage-managed catharsis. Marr’s journalistic eye ensured that he never became the whole story. 

 Through the prism of his own experience, he examined the available recovery options and various neurological effects of the biggest cause of disability in Britain (the inclusion of a post-stroke Marr interviewing former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith wasn’t accidental).

“I’m nothing special,” he insisted, as he met stroke survivors who made him look relatively lucky.

Marr believes two years of excessive work caused his stroke, but he appears to be working as prolifically as ever. Slowing down just isn’t an option for this intensely driven broadcaster, who cites painting as one his few sources of solace. In one revealing moment, he expressed regret that he never attended art school. A fear of failure sent him on a different course.

Yet despite his candour, Marr’s Celtic stoicism remained admirably intact.

“I know the BBC has a special contract where I have to burst into tears at one point,” he smiled, “but I can’t do it. I come from Dundee.”