TV Review: I WANT MY WIFE BACK + MICHAEL McINTYRE'S BIG SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 23 April 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle/

I Want My Wife Back: Monday, BBC One

Michael McIntyre’s Big Show: Saturday, BBC One

Only in the boating pond of gentle British farce do the following vessels collide: meddling in-laws, slovenly best friends, philandering workmates, flirtatious secretaries, easily avoidable misunderstandings and, drowning in the middle, our old friend the harassed, suburban middle-aged man shrugging haplessly.

There’s nothing wrong with these stock devices in and of themselves, it’s just that I Want My Wife Back sticks to them with rigid orthodoxy.

Part of BBC One’s new Monday night comedy power hour – the other half being a curious Peter Kay compilation largely comprised of work he did for Channel 4 – it’s a traditional sitcom starring Ben Miller as Murray, a well-meaning business drone who is dismayed when his wife decides to leave him on her 40^th birthday.

Murray is a workaholic, an absent partner, so she’s had enough. The spark has gone. But Murray still loves her (it’s suggested that she still has glimmers of affection for him), so he does everything in his limited power to woo her back.

It’s a half-decent premise, predictably executed. Miller, a competent comic actor, does what he can with his beleaguered nice guy act. But his hunched-up jumble of jittery faux pas can’t disguise the fact that Murray is a bland protagonist. It’s amiable enough, but we’ve seen it all before.

Inevitably, the first episode climaxed (gently, of course) with a surprise 40^th birthday party during which everything went wrong. Thanks to the estranged wife’s parents, she and Murray were shipped off to a romantic foreign holiday. Oh the calamity!

The first episode of any sitcom has to work hard to get viewers onside. We need time to get to know the characters and for the situation to bed in, so it’s perhaps unfair to dismiss I Want My Wife Back completely at this point. But there was nothing in this lazy opener to suggest that it will offer any surprises in future.

Joining it squarely in the middle of the road is Michael McIntyre’s Big Show. It’s a shamelessly derivative yet tolerable heap of Saturday night variety flotsam in which the tirelessly mainstream comic unleashes a slick barrage of Beadle-esque disguises, Edmonds-style pranks and Barrymore-shaped japes with the Great British Public.

I’m not a McIntyre fan, although I appreciate his appeal and the skill with which he plies his trade. Delivering trite observations in a consummately professional, excitable simian fashion, he’s the benign king of cuddly comfort comedy. He’s good at what he does, but what he does is of no lasting interest. Nevertheless, it would be silly (albeit funny, a la Stewart Lee) to pretend that he’s detestable in any way.

A seemingly improvised segment with an audience member showed how quick he can be, and the item in which he surprises members of the public is quite sweet. Last week it was a Welsh hairdresser who dreams of becoming a professional singer. Big-hearted McIntyre rewarded her with a Michael Ball duet. Surely every girl’s fantasy?

There was music for the kids from Tinie Tempah, old-fashioned novelty from some acrobats, and a mildly amusing skit involving Geri Halliwell (she’s apparently a Horner now) during which McIntyre harmlessly bothered people in her mobile phone address book.

All in all, a passable rival for Ant & Dec on t’other side.

And if we must have MOR comedians, then I’d rather McIntyre over John Bishop. McIntyre has some presence at least. Bishop is just a man who says things.

TV Review: DOCTOR THORNE + THE ALIENS + STOP/START

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12th March 2016.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Doctor Thorne: Sunday, STV

The Aliens: Tuesday, E4

Stop/Start: Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

Paupers! Mourn ye not for the demise of Downton Abbey, for oleaginous Tory apologist Lord Julian Fellowes hath returned with another luxury bauble of frock-coated period drama! Let joy be unconfined.

An adaptation of a 19^th century novel by Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne stars Tom Hollander, looking for all the world like a limited edition Victorian Lego man, as a kindly physician struggling to protect his sweet, penniless niece from a whirling community of money-obsessed snobs.

Fellowes, an awful snob himself, does at least ridicule their grasping aspirations; if he wasn't working from another writer's text, he'd almost certainly ask us to sympathise with them in some way. 

With its ludicrously heightened summer colour palette and near-impenetrable conversations involving the surnames of characters we hadn't met yet – Fellowes dumps exposition with all the finesse of a blunderbuss - the first half of episode one felt like a silly French & Saunders spoof of This Sort Of Thing.

But when the simple narrative eventually became clear – unbeknownst to anyone but Thorne, his niece is the heir to a fortune owned by Ian McShane's entertainingly crude Lord of the manor - it revealed itself to be a fairly diverting social satire elevated by a fine cast.

The Americans will love it, which is the main thing as far as ITV are concerned.  

An aggressively unfunny black comedy with ham-fisted allegorical pretensions, The Aliens

depicts a 21^st century Britain identical to our own, except for the presence of humanoid beings from another planet who are forced to live in a fortified urban ghetto.

This vilified underclass are pejoratively known as “Morks” (geddit?) and, having presumably replaced travellers, immigrants and benefit claimants as society's knee-jerk victims of choice, fulfil the nasty human urge to blame someone else for our problems.

It's a premise more or less stolen from the superior South African sci-fi film District 9, but whereas that had something valuable to say about racism, The Aliens strikes a weirdly reactionary tone for a show that presumably hopes to promote an anti-prejudice message.

Its stained with sniggering homophobia and a general meanness of spirit which not even the likeable hang-dog presence of This Is England and Being Human star Michael Socha can alleviate.

He plays a border patrol guard whose bigotry will obviously be challenged following his discovery that – in a twist visible from space – he's half-alien. This pivotal plot point is typical of how poorly conceived the show is: he's somehow survived into his twenties without realising he's half-alien, despite the fact that he's the only member of his team who's physically incapacitated by the technology they use to keep aliens in their place.

Socha deserves better than this. So do we.   

Written by and starring Jack Docherty of Absolutely fame, Stop/Start is the latest promising pilot from  the Comedy Playhouse strand. It's a Glasgow-based post-modern sitcom in which three couples in varying states of dysfunction share their inner monologues via direct-to-camera asides.

Sharp, funny and refreshingly unsentimental – some of its brutally frank observations elicited gasps from the studio audience – it's that rare beast: a middle-class, middle-aged relationship comedy with obvious popular and critical appeal.

Its central device could potentially annoy, but Docherty and a great cast including John Thomson, Kerry Godliman and Nigel Havers sell it expertly. More please!

TV Review: CHURCHILL'S SECRET + MURDER + BROKEN BISCUITS

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 5th March 2016.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Churchill's Secret: Sunday, STV

Murder: Thursday, BBC Two

Broken Biscuits: Friday BBC One

Michael Gambon is an actor who's never been troubled by vanity. 30 years ago he gained TV immortality as the psoriasis-ridden centrepiece of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective. In Churchill's Secret he reaffirmed his prone position as Britain's leading bed-based Thespian. It was a finer performance than most actors manage in a vertical lifetime.

In 1953, during his final term as Prime Minister, Churchill suffered a life-threatening stroke which left him in no state to govern. Unbeknownst to the public at the time, the king was on his deathbed, leaving Britain without a leader.

Though he eventually recovered and lived for another 12 years, this standalone drama proved quite effective in examining the trials of an almost mythical symbol of indomitable spirit struggling with mortal decay. It was King Lear, basically, but with a vaguely happy ending.

A slurring mound of crumpled pathos, Gambon's Churchill was surrounded by his family – and by tacit extension, the nation - in a state of disarray. Having lived for decades in the Great Man's shadow, how would they cope without him? They needed him, were defined by him. But did he ever truly need them? Yes, as it turned out.

Chief among his bedside fretters was his loyal wife, Clemmie, played by Lindsay Duncan with her usual powdery steel and poise. Her determination to preserve his dignity was quite touching, but typical of the (very British) reserve which defined the production; unseemly displays of sentiment were kept under wraps.

While its avoidance of schmaltz was commendable – just think of how glutinous this story of undying love between a Great Man and his Rock could've been – its reserve worked against it in the end; while it's probably asking too much of a drama to teach us anything “new” about Churchill at this stage, this modest little chamber piece didn't say much of interest about him at all.

He was an irascible ox with a marshmallow centre? I suppose that counts as insight, of sorts.

It's a shame, as on the whole the script managed to avoid the usual biopic crime of grinding heavy-handedness. That is, apart from when it came to Romola Garai's no-nonsense northern nurse – no screen northerner has ever been shown to suffer nonsense knowingly – who wasn't so much a character as a fictional plot device against which Clemmie could deliver exposition and gradually unload her repressed emotions.

The subtext of Garai's nurse being a working-class, left-wing modern woman rebelling against Churchill's patriarchal empire was so half-hearted, they needn't have bothered.

It was a quietly admirable production in many ways, but like Churchill after a few too many brandies and cigars, it could only be approached at arm's length.

The disappointing follow-up to a BAFTA-winning single drama from 2013, Murder comprises three plays in which a small cast of actors explore different facets of a fictional murder case via monologues delivered straight to camera. This inventive approach worked the first time, but here the effect proved cold, mannered, alienating and pretentious. 

For a supposedly intense meditation on grief and trauma, it was curiously flat and underwhelming; an overcooked bore. The mystery involving the corpse of a man dragged from the River Tweed near Peebles wasn't sufficiently interesting, and for all his attempts at emotional complexity, writer Robert Jones failed to get under the skin of his tortured characters. An ambitious failure, sadly.

Writer/director Craig Cash (The Royle Family; Early Doors) employed a similar stylistic approach to more promising effect in Broken Biscuits, a sitcom pilot shown as part of the BBC's Comedy Playhouse strand.

Indebted to Alan Bennett's peerless Talking Heads, this compendium of gently overlapping vignettes was faultlessly delivered by a cast including Alison Steadman and Alun Armstrong as fussy B&B owners – Steadman's fixed grin was a particular highlight – plus Stephanie Cole and Timothy West as a gossipy couple obsessed with their smoke alarm. But the most intriguing segment involved a young doctor and his disabled brother, whose wry inner monologue only we were privvy to.

Infused with Cash's usual warmth and observational wit, I hope it returns for a full series. Plus, any show that uses Tom Waits' heart-tugging Take It With Me as its theme song is A-okay by me.

TV Review: THE GAME and PETER KAY'S CAR SHARE

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 2nd May 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

The Game: Thursday, BBC Two

Peter Kay's Car Share: Wednesday and Thursday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

Union strikes and power-cuts. Soviet spies and government traitors. A dingy, orange-brown Britain choking to death on the thick sting of Capstan smoke. The Game sometimes feels like an unlikely Peter Kay routine: “The Cold War, eh? What were all that about?”

Set in 1972, this six-part thriller is mired in a kind of perverse nostalgia for an age when paranoid East/West enmity threatened to spill over into all-out nuclear annihilation. Those were the days, my friend.

Yet despite being shamelessly derivative – it wouldn't exist without the work of John le Carre and Tomas Alfredson's 2011 film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy  – The Game has just enough character of its own to deflect accusations of irrelevance. At least so far.

Written by Toby Whithouse (Being Human; Doctor Who), its sardonic sense of humour is a saving grace. Steeped in neo-noir trappings and an ominously jazzy John Barry-esque score, The Game blends knowingly fond pastiche – the nasty chief villain is defined by his unerring ability to peel apples sinisterly – with violent severity. It's also handsomely, gloomily stylised without drawing too much attention to its handsome, gloomy style. That's a tricky balancing act, but Whithouse at his best is an assured purveyor of black comic drama.

Our idiosyncratic team of MI5 anti-heroes are headed by a world-weary chief codenamed 'Daddy' – Brian Cox in careworn teddy bear mode - which none too subtly heightens the notion of them as a dysfunctional family.

Chief among them is a Bowie-boned young agent whose carapace of ruthless, almost catatonic efficiency masks an impulsive broken heart, a terribly nice wire-tapper who is so socially inept he keeps a list of possible conversation topics in his pocket, and, via a wonderfully arch performance from Paul Ritter, a barely-closeted establishment kingpin cruelly domineered by his monstrous mother. They're typical Whithouse creations – flawed, odd and intriguing.

The saga began with a defecting KGB officer informing MI5 of a potentially devastating Soviet plot. What this involves remains unclear, but already the body-count is rising. Throw in the usual paranoid spy themes of strained loyalty and creeping mistrust, and the potential is there for a compelling yarn told at a suitably deliberate pace.

In a way, I don't blame Whithouse for indulging himself in this familiar milieu. As a petrified child of the Cold War myself, I admit to being similarly obsessed with the era and its chilly accoutrements. Doom-caked BBC classics such as Edge Of Darkness and Threads are part of our collective DNA. With good reason, they still haunt our dreams.

Plus there's no reason why a talented dramatist shouldn't be allowed to play a brand new game using the Tinker, Tailor toy box. I remain cautiously optimistic.

Peter Kay's last sitcom was the best-forgotten Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere in 2004. Since then he's coasted along on an increasingly flimsy raft of good-will, his best years seemingly behind him. Hence why Peter Kay's Car Share is such a pleasant surprise.

A low-key sitcom in the claustrophobic mould of The Royle Family and Rob Brydon's Marion & Geoff, it's set almost entirely within the confines of a car belonging to assistant supermarket manager John (Kay) as he drives to and from work with employee Kayleigh (Sian Gibson, a revelation).

The company car share scheme has thrown these two together. John is an affable curmudgeon, Kayleigh a naïve chatterbox. The pleasure derives from watching their relationship gradually blossom from initial reluctance to comfortable co-dependence. While their arc, complete with will-they-won't-they romance undercurrent, is predictable, Kay and Gibson share sweetly convincing and often very funny chemistry.

After years of cynical laziness, Kay has remembered what he's good at – broad-appeal observational comedy fused with subtlety, detail, warmth and pathos. Granted, the spilled urine gag in episode one was hammered into the ground, and the incongruous musical fantasy sequences are pure padding.

But his ability to weave revealing threads of backstory into John and Kayleigh's conversation is impressive, as is his use of the car stereo – which spews forth an acutely-observed parody of banal commercial radio plus a “timeless” roster of semi-obscure hits, while triggering and commenting upon the surface duologue.

That all of this is achieved using two characters who barely depart from a confined space is testament to the effort that Kay and his co-writers – Gibson included – have put into this show. It's an impressive piece of writing, beautifully performed.

Against all odds, Car Share is a thoroughly charming affair that returns Kay to his oft-overlooked character comedy roots. I was wrong to write him off, and I'm delighted about that.

TV Review: SAFE HOUSE and W1A

This article was originally published in The Courier on 25th April 2015.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/lifestyle

Safe House: Monday, STV

W1A: Thursday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Christopher Eccleston, that esteemed grand dame of heavyweight British drama, returned to our screens last week in four-part thriller Safe House. He plays Robert, a former police officer cautiously approaching a quiet new existence with his wife in the Lake District.

Despite blaming himself for the death of a female witness in his care, Robert misses his old life on the force. So when his former boss suggested that their remote lakeside home would make an ideal safe house, he spied a chance to redeem himself. Though initially reluctant, his wife soon capitulated when the story deemed it necessary.

Keen to prove he'd left the past behind, Robert burned old newspaper cuttings about his murdered witness in a heavily symbolic garden bonfire.

Within a convenient matter of days, they were harbouring a family on the run from a creepily bearded stalker in an army-style parka (the internationally recognised uniform of a wrong 'un). “You're completely safe,” Robert assured them. “No one knows you're here.”

He might as well have chucked them in the lake himself.

While it's inevitable that old weird beard will eventually track them down, that doesn't excuse Safe House's fatal lack of tension.

Its shortcomings were encapsulated by one particularly clumsy moment of false suspense. When the youngest member of the family disappeared at the safe house, his anxious mother went searching for him. Inevitably, he was just outside playing football with Robert, safe from the clutches of an antagonist we knew to be miles away at the time. So what was the point?

Some mild intrigue is provided by hints that the family patriarch, also a policeman, might be involved in shady dealings. What does his assailant want from him? Why does the missing teenage son keep ignoring dad's calls? And how the hell did our hirsute parka fiend discover this lad with an ease that's eluded the police?

So far I'm not convinced that the answers, when they come, will be worth the wait.

Calling to mind a slow-moving remake of Cape Fear, this first instalment lacked the instant punch of recent TV thrillers such as Happy Valley and The Missing. Decent use is made of its beautifully gloomy location, and Eccleston does what's required of him. Frown, mostly. But this lukewarm potboiler is too mechanically calculating, too rote by half.

A spoof documentary set in BBC Broadcasting House, W1A returned with a typically amusing one-hour special in which our hapless team of media buffoons welcomed Prince Charles (just about) and wrestled with the issue of whether their Wimbledon coverage is “too white”.

While it could never be mistaken for savage satire, John Morton's Twenty Twelve sequel takes impudent delight in poking fun at its paymaster. It presents an abundantly accurate vision of the BBC as a well-meaning yet hopelessly gaffe-prone behemoth governed by desperate execs who don't know what they're doing.

A particularly timely gag involved a weekly damage limitation meeting about Jeremy Clarkson. Meanwhile, the running thread of commissioning endless regurgitations of the same celebrity-fronted, populist tripe reached farcical heights, i.e. Wimbledon coverage “judged” by Alan Sugar and fused with Strictly Come Dancing. Obvious? Sure. But still valid.

Morton's deliberately clumsy, tautological dialogue often irritates – not in the way it's supposed to – and I'll always be irked by W1A's rather cosy, self-congratulatory air: “Look at us making fun of ourselves! What great sports we are!”

But it'll do. For now.