AIDS: THE UNHEARD TAPES + STORYVILLE: CITIZEN ASHE + DISPATCHES – UKRAINE: LIFE UNDER ATTACK

This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th June 2012.

NEXT WEEK’S TV 

AIDS: The Unheard Tapes – Monday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

This new three-part series revolves around audio interviews with young gay men recorded throughout the 1980s and 1990s, recordings subsequently archived at the British Library. They’ve never been broadcast in public before. 

Their voices are meticulously lip-synched by actors. The filmmakers took quite a risk here; with a little less care and attention that borderline gimmicky device could’ve easily undermined their sincere intentions, but it works. I daresay you’ll find yourselves immersed in these candid, moving stories. 

It all takes place against a bleak bigoted backdrop of virulent homophobia and scaremongering, which eerily foreshadows the horrific transphobia we’re currently witnessing in this supposedly enlightened day and age. AIDS: The Unheard Tapes is powerful television.

Murder in the Alps – Monday and Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm

Gruesome catnip for true crime addicts, this series (which starts on Channel 4 on Sunday at 9pm) investigates the unsolved case of a British family who were murdered in an idyllic French beauty spot almost ten years ago. 

The brother of one of the victims was once a prime suspect, but he’s since been exonerated. His story is told in tandem with that of the various investigators. It’s a twist-strewn saga. 

In Monday’s episode, journalists dig into the victim’s connections with the Iraqi regime. Meanwhile, the police stumble across a Swiss bank account containing almost a million euros, and the FBI help to uncover details of a secret marriage. A truth/stranger than fiction scenario.

Dispatches – Ukraine: Life Under Attack – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Narrated by Cate Blanchett, this starkly intimate documentary tells the story of the battle for Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. For ten weeks, the film crew were trapped alongside the civilians and frontline workers who bore the brunt of Russia’s initial onslaught. 

We follow fireman Roman and his team as they attempt to combat a relentless blitz. Paramedics Tatjana and Irina are tasked with rescuing civilian casualties. And the people of Kharkiv, all of whom are innocent victims of a heinous invasion, talk candidly about what they’re going through. 

Channel 4’s Dispatches, which began way back in 1987, is a venerable example of British television journalism at its most vital. We cannot afford to lose it.

Storyville: Citizen Ashe – Tuesday, BBC Four, 10pm

The legendary sportsman and social activist Arthur Ashe was the first black tennis player to be selected for the US Davis Cup team. This thoughtful 90-minute documentary gives him his thoroughly deserved due. 

Ashe’s socio-political activism was initially inspired by the Civil Rights movement, but as time rolled on he expanded his horizons to encompass oppressed people from all around the world. 

Ashe died of AIDS-related complications in the early 1990s. In the last few years of his life, he founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS and the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A truly remarkable man.

Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Britain – Wednesday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

In the concluding episode of Len’s tender cultural odyssey, he examines the ways in which second and third generation British-born Caribbean kids integrated their identity into their art. 

As a young comedian in the 1970s, he often made awkward jokes at his own expense. Kids of colour no longer have to do that, and Len explains why in an episode devoted to the progress we’ve made over the last 40 years. 

Comedy, music and drama have enriched our multicultural society. And Len himself, although he’s too modest to say this outright, played a huge role in bringing the black experience to the masses. For people of a certain generation (i.e. my generation) he will always be a cherished comedy hero.

Sarah Beeny’s Little House Big Plans – Thursday, Channel 4, 8pm

This week, industrious property developer Sarah Beeny meets more folk who are brave/foolhardy enough to buy and ambitiously convert small living spaces. 

First up are a couple from Poole who got their first taste of the property market when they purchased a poky semi-detached house that was built in the 1930s. Their bold plan: expand the space by creating an open-plan kitchen diner. 

Unfortunately, by the time Beeny rocks up they’ve already spent their budget. The whole thing is being precariously funded on a week to week paycheque basis. 

We also spend time with a couple who are in the process of transforming their Victorian terrace into a modern, spacious home complete with indoor garden.

The Undeclared War – Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

The latest political thriller from writer/director Peter Kosminsky is set in 2024. TheUK is still in the grip of COVID while struggling through one of its worst ever economic slumps. The new PM (Adrian Lester) is even more unpopular than Boris Johnson. 

Meanwhile, a preeminent team of computer analysts led by Simon Pegg deal with an increase in cyber-attacks. 

Potentially interesting subject matter, but it’s a terribly dry affair primarily devoted to people frowning at screens while chatting about codes and viruses; watch out for an inadvertently funny moment just before the second ad break, when Kosminsky ramps up some dramatic music in lieu of any actual drama occurring. 

Suffice to say, it’s not his finest work.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Glastonbury: 50 Years and Counting – Sunday 19th June, BBC Two

The radical left wing ethos of the Glastonbury Festival has been totally usurped by the sheer commercial scale of the event in recent years. This 100 minute documentary sought to remind us of its once close association with CND, Greenpeace and numerous outsider performance artists. 

It still is, in idealistic essence, a celebration of diversity. Alas, that point was undermined by the prominent presence of white, male interviewees such as the preternaturally small-minded Noel Gallagher. Women and people of colour were reduced to supporting roles. 

A compromised documentary, it did, however, confirm that festival organiser Michael Eavis is a canny pragmatist who probably lost interest in music circa 1972.

Who Do You Think You Are? – Thursday 23rd June, BBC One

In the latest episode of this hardy perennial, actor Anna Maxwell Martin from Motherland and Line of Duty travelled to Northern Ireland to find out more about her beloved father, who passed away at the tragically young age of 59. She also uncovered some uncomfortable facts about her mother’s Scottish side of the family.  

It was a poignant saga, sensitively told, but as always I was ever so slightly staggered by just how little the stars of this show know about their family heritage. Why have they never bothered to look into this stuff before? They’ve presumably heard of the internet. 

Anyway, Maxwell Martin came across as a thoroughly nice and genuine person. Those tears weren’t performative.

DON'T EXCLUDE ME + 28 UP: MILLENNIUM GENERATION + HITMEN RELOADED

This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th September 2021.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Don’t Exclude Me – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

The rate of school exclusions in Britain for five to six-year-olds has doubled in the last three years. This sensitive new series visits a primary school which, like so many schools, struggles to cope with the extreme behaviours of certain pupils. 

Enter the aptly-named behavioural expert Marie Gentles, who has spent the last ten years working with excluded children. She gradually forms close professional relationships with the kids, their parents and teachers, in the hope of making life better for all concerned. 

The children she meets come across as bright and sensitive, but they’re prone to sudden angry outbursts; no one so far has been able to explain why. Gentles, a beacon of kindness, works realistic wonders.

The Goes Wrong Show – Monday, BBC One, 8:30pm

The Mischief Theatre company are renowned for their knockabout send-ups of incompetent amateur dramatic productions. I’m reliably informed that their live shows are great fun, but my only exposure to them has been via these middling TV adaptations. Something has presumably been lost in translation. 

It strikes me as a purely theatrical conceit, ill-suited to the necessary constraints of being filmed in a television studio. The blatantly tweaked audience laughter track doesn’t help. 

I don’t want to be too down on this utterly harmless show, it’s an agreeable enough piece of family entertainment written and performed by a capable cast. Unfortunately, for me, the joke wears thin in this context. It’s like an overextended Crackerjack sketch. Great. I feel terrible now.

24 Hours in Police Custody – Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

Please take heed: this is a particularly gruelling episode of a series that’s seldom upbeat at the best of times. It chronicles the case of a man who, in broad daylight, invaded a house and brutally assaulted the inhabitants: a woman, her daughter and teenage grandniece. 

The police captured a clear image of the attacker on CCTV: a brothel owner and human trafficker with a string of GBH offences. They also had his fingerprints. Unfortunately, the investigation was placed in jeopardy when an understandably angry and entirely well-meaning family member shared the CCTV footage on social media. He also offered a £20,000 ransom award. Naturally, the attacker fled the country. 

An uncomfortable hour of television. Don’t have nightmares.

28 Up: Millennium Generation – Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

A 21^st century spin-off from Michael Apted’s seminal 7 Up project, this valuable social document has now reached its fourth chapter. 

You know the premise: British kids from various walks of life are filmed at seven-year intervals; an anthropological study that tells us something about the ways in which society has changed during their lifetimes. 

Episode one catches up with Sanchez, who is now a Black Lives Matter campaigner and a DJ for BBC Leeds. We also reconvene with Gemma, a disabled woman who works with children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and Courtney, a trainee teacher devoted to pupils with additional needs. 

Call me a pie-eyed optimist if you will, but this generation provides some hope for the future.

Hollington Drive – Wednesday, STV, 9pm

Set in an idyllic suburb where most of the dwellings look like luxury show homes, this psychological thriller stars Anna Maxwell Martin and Rachael Stirling as sisters with a tense, brittle relationship. 

When a 10-year-old boy goes missing from the neighbourhood, Theresa (Maxwell Martin, excellent as always) begins to suspect that her son might be involved. This is one of those chilly dramas in which no one really seems to like each other. That constant buzz of passive-aggression is quite exhausting. 

Despite the sombre subject matter and gradual drip-feed of murky secrets, it’s curiously opaque and uninvolving. Imagine an unusually depressing episode of Knot’s Landing, then decide if that’s something you want to watch.

Hitmen Reloaded – Sky Showcase, 9pm

The cuddly comedy duo of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins playing killers-for-hire is a daft, intriguing premise, and it was exploited to reasonable effect in series one of this sitcom. Now they’re back for another run. 

A black farce with a dash of warmth, it posits Mel and Sue as assassins who treat their job as exactly that: a workaday way of paying the bills while dealing with far bigger problems in their personal lives. 

Mel and Sue are a likeable team who’ve developed a natural chemistry after years of working together. They convince as daffy old middle-aged pals, because that’s what they are. And Sue is a surprisingly effective kick-ass action hero.

Richard Osman’s House of Games Night – Friday, BBC One, 8:30pm

An early evening cult hit of sorts on BBC Two for the last few years, Richard Osman’s House of Games is an inoffensive fancy in which celebrities compete via ‘esoteric’ trivia rounds. Last year during lockdown it filled an emergency gap on BBC One, which was presumably successful enough to warrant another series. 

So here he is, the enormous funster, presiding over the likes of Dara O’ Briain and Sian ‘Car Share’ Gibson as they attempt to answer questions about the unrelated provenance of test tube babies and the Teletubbies. 

It is what it is: a cheap, cheerful Friday night parlour game wreathed in whimsy. And well done to those of you at home who get the right answers.

LAST WEEK’S TV

When Nirvana Came to Britain – Saturday 18th September, BBC Two

We all know the story of how Nirvana, three nerdy punks from Seattle, became the world’s biggest band in the early 1990s. A brief freak triumph; an almost accidental assault on mainstream culture which ended in tragedy. 

But this decent little documentary reminded me that Nirvana were just a bunch of goofy, sensitive, talented kids who struck a nerve. They weren’t revolutionaries on a firebrand mission, they were ordinary human beings who made fellow outsiders feel better about themselves. 

Throughout the programme, surviving members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic reflected fondly upon that period just before they became superstars: when they could still play impromptu acoustic sets in Edinburgh pubs. It was all rather sad and sweet.

Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie and Tupac – Sunday 19th September, BBC Two

Presumably quite by accident, BBC Two continued its weekend theme of ‘90s pop tragedies with Nick Broomfield’s absorbing sequel to his 2002 film Biggie & Tupac. 

Suge Knight, the co-founder of Death Row records, has always been a chief suspect in the murders of rap stars Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur. He’s currently serving time for manslaughter, hence why Broomfield felt that his associates would be more willing to talk about him. And they were, to a cautious extent. Knight, a sadistic gangster, still has people on the outside. 

Broomfield’s main point was this: the LAPD is massively corrupt, they can’t be trusted. And Knight is an awful man. A sordid, angering saga.