CORONATION STREET ICONS + THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th August 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

CORONATION STREET ICONS

Wednesday, STV, 8:30pm

And here we go again, yet another piece of emergency Covid schedule filler. Still, archive clips of Corrie are always a fun distraction. Episode one pays tribute to Ken Barlow, the longest-serving character in TV soap history. It reminds us that Ken, the street’s resident Guardian-reading paragon of righteous sense and virtue, a soft leather elbow patch in human form, has actually experienced his fair share of brawls and romantic entanglements over the years. No one who's never seen Corrie before will watch this programme, but if they do they'll be left with the impression that Ken has spent the last six decades embroiled in a never-ending orgy of mindless sex and violence, alleviated only by the occasional slapstick scrape. A lord of chaos living on the edge of reason.

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: WHEN ART MEETS POWER

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. It’s also demographically the youngest continent, with six in every ten people being under the age of 25, and far more culturally diverse than anywhere else on Earth. In this enlightening new series, British journalist Afua Hirsch visits three African countries - Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya – to examine the ways in which they’ve reasserted their identities as leading cultural lights. The through-line in her opening essay is the extraordinary story of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, a powerful yet complex symbol of the country’s proud history of fierce independence. Hirsch also meets renowned artists who are keeping Ethiopia’s fecund cultural legacy and defiant spirit alive in the 21^st century.

MANCTOPIA: BILLION POUND PROPERTY BOOM

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

The Manchester skyline is in a state of flux. Expensive high-rise homes are popping up with such velocity, the city centre looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. Manchester’s population is set to double in the next few years. Manctopia, an incisive four-part series, examines the drastic impact this unprecedented regeneration is having on existing residents. We meet a local millionaire property developer, a man with a vested financial interest in eradicating homelessness, who plans to transform the red light district into a luxury residential hub, and a single working mum who can no longer afford to stay in the increasingly gentrified area she’s lived in all her life. The free market in action, folks.

UNREPORTED WORLD

Friday, Channel 4, 7:30pm

As you read this, billions of locusts are devouring crops and vegetation all across Kenya. As a result, farming families are starving and destitute. If this devastating plague continues, Kenya will be brought to its knees. The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the catastrophe. In the latest edition of this august foreign affairs series, reporter Sahar Zand travels to a country where agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population. She hitches an urgent ride with one of the teams responsible for spraying infested areas with pesticide. Seeing as most areas in Kenya appear to be infested – in one particularly horrifying scene, Zand visits a town where the walls are caked with locusts – their task is Herculean.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Sunday 9th August, BBC Two

The indigenous Australian football star Adam Goodes never set out to be an inspirational spokesperson for racial equality. All he ever wanted to do was play his beloved sport at a professional level. But as a prominent black public figure who has experienced blatant and casual racism throughout his life, he felt he had to make a brave stand and speak out. This intensely angering documentary examined the backlash he faced after forcing white football fans to confront the toxic vein of racism that has coursed through Australian society for centuries. And you don’t need me to tell you that institutional racism isn’t a problem specific to Australia. It’s all around us right now. Goodes’ message was clear: we need to talk, listen and learn. That’s our only hope of ever developing more empathy and understanding of what racism actually means. The film is still on iPlayer, I highly recommend it.

HOW TO BEAT… PAIN

Tuesday 11th August, Channel 4

Do you remember that late ‘80s/early ‘90s vogue for splicing kitschy old clips of public domain American films into contemporary TV documentaries? The geniuses behind this otherwise blandly presented health series certainly do. It’s as tiresomely unfunny now as it was then, a literally cheap trick.

 

 

RODNEY P'S JAZZ FUNK + ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ

This article was originally published in the Courier on 18th July 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

RODNEY P’S JAZZ FUNK

Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

This lovingly-curated documentary captures the energy and excitement of Britain’s first home-grown black music culture. Hip hop legend Rodney P reveals how jazz funk began as a thriving underground club scene, before going on to shape the sound of early ‘80s British pop. It was created by the first generation of suburban and inner city black kids born in Britain, and although it was influenced by the heavy fusion innovations of American musicians such as Herbie Hancock, it allowed them to create their own distinct identity. That pioneering scene was also an early example of multiculturalism and gender equality, during an era when overt racism, sexism and homophobia were rife. A valuable, funky social document.

THE REAL EASTENDERS

Tuesday, Channel 4, 10pm

The Isle of Dogs was once the healthy heartland of London’s docklands community. A place where you’d find ‘proper’ working-class cockneys. Today it stands in the oppressive glistening shadow of Canary Wharf. The only boats you’ll find nearby are on the other, more affluent side of the river. Hak Baker, a local resident and musician, presents this insightful, tender ode to his neighbours. It’s not a sentimentalised account, razor-edged shards of sadness often poke through, but it never wrings its hands in a patronising way. The stars of the show are the kids Baker meets. They’re funny, smart, innocent, brilliant. Boris Johnson will never watch or understand this beautiful programme.

EASTENDERS: SECRETS FROM THE SQUARE

Available now on BBC iPlayer

While EastEnders prepares to resume production, super-fan Stacey Dooley visits the set to meet some of Albert Square’s more notable residents. The banter flows thick and fast when she sits down for a socially distanced chinwag with Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright, who play Mick and Linda Carter. Dyer and Bright come across well, they have natural chemistry. Dyer claims that he occasionally adds authentic cockney slang to his dialogue, while admitting that his career was in the doldrums when he got the part. Carter first appeared on the show in 1986, as an extra at Michelle and Lofty’s wedding, and reveals that she channels elements of Carmella Soprano into her performance. A harmless piece of cheap emergency filler.

MIRIAM MARGOLYES: ALMOST AUSTRALIAN

Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

Six years ago, Miriam Margolyes became an Australian citizen. “It was a day of supreme happiness,” she beams at the start of this typically honest and thoughtful travelogue. The self-described “78-year-old Jewish lesbian”, whose partner is Australian, embarks upon a 10 thousand kilometre voyage to find out whether the so-called Australian Dream still exists in 2020. Did it ever exist? Margolyes' findings are pretty bleak. She meets the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Victorian parliament, which only happened in 2017, and is shocked to discover that women over 55 now make up the fastest growing homeless population in Australia. She also uncovers the devastating effects of drought on farming communities, and encounters a young Afghan man who has been denied permanent residency.

LAST WEEK’S TV

IMAGINE… THIS HOUSE IS FULL OF MUSIC

Sunday 12th July, BBC One

Filmed during lockdown, this documentary visited the Kanneh-Mason family from Nottingham. Mum and dad looked on proudly as their seven children, all of them virtuoso classical musicians, performed various pieces. It existed for pure pleasure alone, a calming symphony of respite.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ

Monday 13th July, BBC One

This riveting series is essayed through the eyes of the civilians, journalists and soldiers who lived through the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the years of chaos which followed. It’s an expertly woven, detailed patchwork of brutally frank talking head interviews; an essential document, scathing and humane. Notwithstanding the extravagantly whiskered Iraqi man who still regards Saddam as a martyr, the most troubling figure in episode one was a tequila-swigging American marine who was trained to view his mission as a glorified Rambo adventure. He looked broken, haunted. Meanwhile, a sharp-witted young man, who initially viewed the invading forces as emissaries of freedom, vividly encapsulated the utter insanity of the situation. When Saddam’s statue was toppled, he, like so many Iraqis, assumed the nightmare was finally over. As one war correspondent put it, with a rueful gallows smile, “What we didn’t realise was that the invasion wasn’t the war. The war was to come.”