FEATURE: Remembering Caroline Aherne

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in June 2026.

Of all the great artists and entertainers who passed away in that accursed year 2016, Caroline Aherne was one of the hardest losses. She was only 52, a relatively young woman who should still by rights be with us now.

She wouldn't welcome the accolade, but she was also a national treasure, a comedian, writer and actor of exceptional talent who, quite simply, made an awful lot of people very happy. We didn't just admire her work, whether as Mrs Merton or as co-creator/star of The Royle Family, we liked her as a person.

At the risk of sounding weirdly parasocial, she belonged to that vanishingly rare breed of celebrities you could easily imagine having as a friend, or at the very least an acquaintance who makes you laugh at work or down the pub.

That's a quality some celebrities try very hard to cultivate, but Aherne always felt like the real, unselfconscious deal. Naturally funny, likeable and clever (she had an IQ of 176, so an actual genius), her huge success and generations-spanning appeal were essentially rooted in the fact that she was an 'ordinary' working-class person with an extraordinary gift for capturing our shared life experience through a prism of acutely observed comedy.

The characters she created, usually in conjunction with her close friend and writing partner Craig Cash, were people we recognised from our everyday lives. We've all met a Jim Royle, for example, that lazy, miserly, often boorish yet fundamentally decent Royle Family patriarch. He might even be a member of your own family. He might even be you. And that's okay, you weren't being held up to abject ridicule.

Much like the Royles themselves, Aherne always took the piss with warmth and affection.

Even when she cheekily mocked her celebrity guests in the deceptively innocent, purple-rinsed guise of OAP chat show host Mrs Merton, there was never anything cruel or sneering about her comedy, she never punched down.

“So Debbie, what first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”

That loaded question, which Aherne as Merton faux-gently fired at the magician's wife and glamorous on-stage assistant Debbie McGee, is rightly regarded as a classic line. An immortal put-down. It's important to remember, however, that McGee didn't laugh through gritted teeth. She was genuinely tickled by Aherne's willingness to go there. She got the joke, and because she actually loved her talented millionaire husband, didn't feel offended at all.

One suspects that Aherne instinctively knew that: Debbie will be up for a daft laugh, just as I am.

Her instincts also proved correct during that famous Mrs Merton interview with the racist comedian Bernard Manning, an encounter in which Aherne basically breaks character to challenge him on his bigotry. Her elderly studio audience laugh along with him at first, but when she gradually exposes just how unrepentantly horrible he was, you can sense their discomfort and inner conflict. As Aherne later acknowledged, some of those pensioners were probably quite racist themselves, but you would hope that interview made them question some of their knee-jerk prejudices.

She did that a lot in her work, it was a defining characteristic. As her friend and occasional collaborator Steve Coogan observed in the touching 2003 BBC documentary Caroline Aherne: Queen of Comedy – which is still available on iPlayer – she was inarguable proof that “clever, intelligent comedy can appeal to everyone.”

Most of us first became aware of Aherne via her memorable contributions to The Fast Show. One of her recurring characters, Our Janine, was a pregnant, working-class teenage girl whose stream-of-consciousness monologues oscillated between naive absurdity and utter bleakness.

But you never got the impression that Aherne was laughing at this kid, it's more that she was – like so many great comedians – fully aware that comedy and tragedy, absurdity and pathos, are sometimes barely indistinguishable. They exist side by side, poking at each other like family-members squashed on an old settee.

Compare her treatment of Janine to the way Catherine Tate and Little Britain depicted working-class teenage girls in their depressingly popular sketches. Scornful stereotypes perpetrated by middle-class comedians going for cheap and easy laughs.

Matt Lucas has, at least, latterly expressed sincere regret about that. Caroline Aherne, however, never had to apologise for anything. Sure, some of those later Royle Family festive specials were atrocious, utterly gobsmacking disasters in which formerly nuanced and beloved characters were turned into cartoon caricatures of their former selves.

God only knows what happened there, but fortunately no one ever thinks of them when they remember the woman who helped to redefine what a British sitcom could be. Caroline Aherne adored Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, and saw no reason why you couldn't combine those influences to create a programme in which nothing and everything happens all at once. We laughed, we cried, we loved spending time with that family.

Aherne was adamant that it shouldn't have a laugh-track, that it should all be shot on film, in real time. She knew it would work, just let it breathe and be what it is. The people will come, they will understand. And they did.

Whenever Ricky Gervais boasts that The Office changed the sitcom landscape, remember this: The Royle Family did it first.

When funny people die – and there were few funnier than Caroline Aherne – our grief is tinged with a kind of selfish disbelief and resentment. This person will no longer be around to make us laugh, and that's not fair. But the work lives on, forever.

We didn't know Caroline Aherne, she owed us nothing. That she gave us so much was a blessing.

Caroline Aherne: Rebel in Disguise, a new biography by David Scott, is out now via Manchester University Press.

BOOK REVIEW: A Mind Of My Own by Kathy Burke

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in January 2026.

A Mind Of My Own by Kathy Burke is out now (Gallery UK, £22)

Kathy Burke’s mother, Bridget, died of cancer when Burke was only two years old. Her late father, Pat, was an alcoholic prone to violent rages. As Burke half-jokingly declares in the foreword to her frank, funny and wise autobiography, A Mind of My Own, Pat is the only ghostwriter you’ll find in these pages.

This is no misery memoir by any stretch of the imagination, Burke is far too self-aware for that sort of nonsense, but she does capture the stark reality and tedium of growing up with an alcoholic parent in the house. She and her two older brothers would long for the peace that would descend when he was asleep, away on days-long benders, or those occasional periods of sobriety.

Burke also writes about her own problems with heavy drinking in the 80s and discreetly alludes to a dark period in the early '90s – “the bad, sad days” – when she was involved in a difficult romantic relationship.

Otherwise, this is an upbeat and enoyable account of a talented working-class woman who only ever wanted to act, write, direct and entertain.

Burke comes across just as you’d expect, a thoroughly decent, kind and non-judgemental person who reserves her ire for those who deserve it, eg she didn’t enjoy working with a pre-Trainspotting Danny Boyle (“He reminded me of a supercilious priest from my childhood.”), and once called Helena Bonham-Carter a “stupid cunt” in a letter to Time Out after HBC complained in all sincerity that it’s harder for attractive posh actors to evade typecasting than it is for “non-pretty, working-class” actors. She has no time at all for patronising luvvies.

Seriously, be more like Kathy Burke.

TV Review: FRANCIS BACON: A BRUSH WITH VIOLENCE + TRACEY ULLMAN'S SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 4 February 2017.

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

FRANCIS BACON: A BRUSH WITH VIOLENCE: Saturday, BBC Two

TRACEY ULLMAN’S SHOW: Friday, BBC One

  

The late artist Francis Bacon has always struck me as the sort of boozy raconteur who’d be entertaining company until one drink over his tolerance level transformed him into the kind of monstrous bore for whom swift exits were built.

That’s raging alcoholics for you, especially those possessed of talent, brains and an infinite capacity for self-loathing.

While the stark documentary FRANCIS BACON: A BRUSH WITH VIOLENCE did little to disabuse me of this view, it did succeed in humanising a man whose riotous legend was at odds with the lost soul who flailed in its shadow.

Although I’m sometimes guilty of it myself, I’m suspicious of our tendency to lionise unhappy geniuses. I’d rather they found peace during their lifetime than suffer the indignity of antiseptic experts pontificating over their tragic legacy. But Bacon wouldn’t have painted his masterpieces without that tortured drive. A chicken, egg and Bacon sandwich.

 As with most introspective artists, it’s impossible to judge their work without examining their private lives. Bacon enjoyed publicity, hence the smattering of archive interviews included here. I would’ve preferred to watch those interviews in full than listen to talking heads pontificate on his behalf.

Bacon’s extraordinary paintings were shocking, spiteful, furious, horrific. They possessed a visceral ugliness which, depending on one’s taste for the morbid, could seem rather beautiful in a certain sensitive light.

I’ve seen Ricky Gervais’ Derek, so I know what it’s like to gaze into the abyss. Bacon’s work is but a light aperitif.

A homosexual whose work screamed against the abusive tyranny of his upbringing and dysfunctional adult relationships, Bacon’s propensity for masochism and black humour was hardly surprising.  

This lonely demon-bohemian with the puffy cherub face and Tony Curtis quiff would, I hope, have chuckled at this grubby canvas of essay-quoting critics and old friends, now greying eccentrics, who somehow survived all that after-hours drinking and existential jousting.

A final joke before closing time.

Tracey Ullman is a talented show-off whose undoubted artistry and intelligence ceases to be entertaining when allowed to roam unfettered.

Her old US sketch show – which famously begat The Simpsons – was proof of her tendency towards overbearing self-indulgence, and the first series of TRACEY ULLMAN’S SHOW, her UK comeback vehicle for the BBC, confirmed it.

A frustrating talent, she’s always seemed tantalisingly capable of creating great work. A handful of sketches in series one did at least suggest a depth of ambition beyond the usual confines of mainstream British comedy, even when they fell short of their potential.

Every spotty sketch show deserves a second chance, especially one starring a comedian capable of uncanny impressions of Judi Dench and Clare Balding, but it’s still nothing more than a generic compendium of, at best, mildly amusing spoofs.

These are the jokes, folks. Dench exploits her status as a beloved national treasure to cause mayhem (quite funny the first time; tiresome when repeated ad nauseam). Balding is manically ubiquitous. Nicola Sturgeon is a Bond-style supervillain. And so on. It’s terribly weak, strained sauce.

I quite liked Angela Merkel’s tearfully melodramatic musical number about being ostracised by her old EU chums, but finding anything to enjoy in this show is like clutching at straws.

TV Review: ARE YOU BEING SERVED? + PORRIDGE + YOUNG HYACINTH

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 3 September 2016.

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

Are You Being Served?: Sunday, BBC One

Porridge: Sunday, BBC One

Young Hyacinth: Friday, BBC One

  

The BBC’s Landmark Sitcom season is, officially, a celebration of its redoubtable sitcom legacy. Chief among its offerings are revivals of old favourites such as Are You Being Served?, Porridge and Keeping Up Appearances.

Though billed as one-offs, they’ll almost certainly be recommissioned if viewers approve. The success of Still Open All Hours, which began as a Christmas special, proves that.

Naturally, this has led to accusations that the BBC is trading on former glories when it should be supporting original comedy. Well, yes. To a degree.  But that j’accuse conveniently ignores the plentiful sitcom pilots which also form part of the season.

But let’s focus on the reheated oldies. Everyone else is. Are You Being Served? was never a classic anyway, but the revival captured its bawdy spirit. Set three years after the original ended, it’s officially a sequel, albeit with different actors in situ. The original cast, of course, have all taken that escalator to the great shop floor in the sky.

Its torrent of camp innuendo was occasionally tinged with a coarser 21^st century edge. For all its blatant rudeness, the original wouldn’t have stooped to gags about “seamen” and “taking Mr Humphries up the Regal”. But you’d have to be righteously po-faced to resist smirking at such knowingly contrived tosh.

Mr Humphries may be an outdated gay stereotype, but there’s still no malice in the way he’s written and performed. Jason Watkins had a ball (ooh, pardon!) in the late John Inman’s fleet-footed shoes, although his performance took a harsher approach. Sheree Hewson was equally enjoyable as Mollie Sugden’s Mrs Slocombe, purple rinse, pussy and all.

Good, breezy fun as a one-off tribute, but the novelty won’t last if it becomes a series. Where can they go from here?

Another sequel, Porridge had a more difficult mountain to climb. After all, the original is one of the greatest British sitcoms ever made. Alas, despite being written by its sainted creators Dick Clement and Ian La Franais, it was curiously listless.

Kevin Bishop did a decent job as Fletch’s cyber-criminal grandson, although his best moments involved physical comedy rather than dialogue.

His personality is basically identical to Fletch’s, which just made me miss Ronnie Barker even more. Clement and La Franais haven’t forgotten how to write Fletch, at least in terms of nailing his cheerfully sarcastic speech patterns. But the gags were tired and threadbare, the stabs at modernity dutifully forced. It felt like a mechanical lecture from veteran scientists with nothing left to prove.

Not a disaster by any means, but utterly pointless

A 1950s-set prequel to Keeping Up Appearances, Young Hyacinth was – remarkably – the best of the bunch.

The only good thing about the shrill, tiresome original was Patricia Routledge’s performance as the appallingly snobbish Hyacinth Bucket, but the brilliant Kerry Howard echoed her mannerisms with startling accuracy. However, it was more than mere mimicry. She played a character, not a UK Gold repeat.

Roy Clarke, that prolific veteran of gentle teatime comedy, clearly enjoyed delving into the past of one of his few memorable creations. A wry character piece shot on film, it was far more charming than the original. Some of Clarke’s dialogue was even reminiscent of Alan Bennett, if only in terms of cadence and rhythm.

Key to its modest success was Hyacinth as a desperately class-climbing young woman, which carries far more pathos than the middle-aged monster she became.

We’ll probably see more of Young Hyacinth, which means that Clarke, who also writes Still Open All Hours, is still a popular sitcom writer at the age of 86. I can take or leave his work, but I bow to his incredible longevity.

TV Review: GOING FORWARD + MUM

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 21st May 2016.

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

Going Forward: Thursday, BBC Four

Mum: Friday, BBC Two

It’s arguably the fault of Carla Lane and her endless glut of joke-shy sitcoms about unhappy middle-class women that the term “gentle comedy” was, for many years, derided as a euphemism for “not funny”. The truth of the matter is that, at its best, understated, low-key comedy – a more helpful description, I think – is often sharper, funnier and more penetrating than broader examples of the form.

A notable case in point was the BAFTA-winning sitcom Getting On, written by and starring Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine. Based in an NHS geriatric ward, it said more about the struggles and faults of that beleaguered institution, and the nuanced flaws of the human condition, than any number of dramas on the same subject. Plus it was funny, piercingly so.

Now Brand is back with a sequel, Going Forward, which follows droll, kindly Kim Wilde in her new job as a community healthcare worker. Although Scanlan and Pepperdine no longer share co-writing duties, it’s just as witty and humane as Getting On. Like that show, it takes a potentially depressing premise – in this case, a middle-aged married couple with mounting financial woes – and finds something curiously life-affirming at its core.

A large part of its charm is the natural chemistry between Brand and Omid Djalili as her struggling chauffeur husband, Dave. They really do feel like a beleaguered yet happy couple who’ve shared a couch for years. Generously, Brand gave Djalili the funniest scenes in episode one, via his exasperated, almost Pete and Dud-esque conversation with a colleague who insisted that chauffeuring in Iraq is where the jackpot lies. 

Despite its warmth, there’s an underlying edge of desperation to Going Forward. Kim and Dave are barely surviving. Kim’s sister is a neurotic mess. Kim’s clients are, of course, lonely, housebound elderly people who rely on her for company. But like all the best comedies of its careworn kind, it finds humour in sadness and vice versa. Without blowing its own trumpet, it’s a sly, compassionate comment on the reality of life for millions of Britons today. There’s nothing gentle about that.

Cut from a similar cloth, Mum is a well-observed new sitcom starring the brilliant Lesley Manville as Cathy, a recently bereaved widow struggling to put her life back together. Once again, it spins a rich seam of comedy from a wholly downbeat premise.

Each episode is set over a few hours inside Cathy’s suburban home, hence why it reminds me of Simon Amstell’s underrated Grandma’s House. Tender and sharp, humane but never sentimental, it revolves around that distinctly British conceit of maintaining politeness in the face of social awkwardness. 

It’s full of small talk, inadvertent insensitivity, condescending pettiness and pained smiles (Manville is so good at smiling through anguish). But like Going Forward, it doesn’t look down on its characters. Even Cathy’s horrifically snobbish sister-in-law is tinged with pathos.

Peter Mullan – an actor often typecast as hard-nuts – is a heart-tugging bundle of unrequited love as an old friend of Cathy’s, while newcomer Lisa McGrillis shines with an endearingly tactless performance as the well-meaning girlfriend of Cathy’s son. She’s that rarity, a “stupid” sitcom character written and performed with warmth. That’s Mum all over, really. It’s a gem.

TV Review: ATTENBOROUGH AT 90 + UPSTART CROW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 14th May 2016.

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

Attenborough at 90: Sunday, BBC One

Upstart Crow: Monday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

This year marks the 90^th birthday of a truly beloved British monarch, whose regal humility and tireless dedication have enriched millions of lives around the world. I am of course talking about Sir David Attenborough, the reigning king of Natural History television.

It’s impossible to avoid gushing praise when discussing Attenborough, because quite simply he deserves it. How many people can claim to have fundamentally changed the way we see the world? How many broadcasters are synonymous with the evolution of television itself? A serene emblem of the BBC at its world-beating best, his natural ability to communicate and inform is second to none. He’s one of the greatest broadcasters in the history of the medium, and we’ll almost certainly never see his like again.

So no wonder the BBC has gone all out in celebrating his 90^th summer on Earth, a planet he’s taught us more about than anyone else in his field. The centrepiece of their ongoing season of archival treats was Attenborough at 90, an affable, touching, studio-based salute hosted by another consummate broadcaster, Kirsty Young.

Sprawled on a couch like a slightly crumpled yet still-spry deity, Attenborough was in delightful raconteur mode as he regaled the audience with a welter of anecdotes.

While all the usual clips were present and correct – let’s face it, we’ll never tire of those gorillas – the programme also served as a reminder that Attenborough was a pioneer, not only in the field of conservationism awareness and – in tandem with his peerless backroom boffins - technological advancements in Natural History filmmaking, but also across every genre of television via his progressive stewardship of BBC Two in the ‘60s.

Initially hired by the BBC as a producer, he basically fell into presenting by accident. Had he not decided to focus his energies on hosting documentaries, he would’ve probably ended up as Director General at one point. Executive management’s loss was a grateful nation’s gain.

Though he shows no sign of slowing down as such, Attenborough’s skill as a presenter is, alas, a dying discipline. Always devoted to his subject first and foremost, his programmes are never about him. He’s an informed guide, a benign teacher, a beacon of integrity and passion. The man owns a dinosaur egg, for heaven’s sake. Need I say more? Happy birthday, your Lordship.

Following the catastrophic disaster of The Wright Way – a sitcom so hackneyed it felt like a parody – it seemed that Ben Elton had finally lost it for good. A prolific talent in his ‘80s pomp, the man who co-wrote classics such as The Young Ones and Blackadder had since become a byword for selling out and treading water; a sad shadow of his former self.

So, you could’ve knocked me down with a pig’s bladder when I found myself laughing – actually laughing! – at Upstart Crow, his breezy new sitcom starring David Mitchell as a hapless William Shakespeare.

Swathed in welcome traces of Blackadder, it plays to his strengths via ridiculously wordy, witty dialogue, knowingly farcical contrivances, winningly broad performances and even – via genuinely pointed swipes at the Oxbridge mafia – a little bit of politics (yes indeed, ladies and gentlemen).

It’s funny, intelligent, self-aware and clearly the work of a re-energised writer who, for obvious reasons, feels he has something to prove again. It’s as if the real Ben Elton has suddenly woken up after 25 years in a nightmarish trance. A remarkable comeback. 

TV Review: THE WINDSORS + GRAYSON PERRY: ALL MAN

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 7th May 2016.

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

The Windsors: Friday, Channel 4

Grayson Perry: All Man: Thursday, Channel 4

Made by the team behind scattershot celebrity satire Star Stories, The Windsors boasts a similar blend of heightened silliness and healthy disrespect. It’s a brash sitcom in which our beloved Royal Family are depicted as a workshy bunch of freeloaders and functioning alcoholics. Happy birthday, your majesty!

Though framed as a Dallas-style soap parody, that’s really just an excuse for a hit and miss barrage of nonsense. Yes, it ticks off all the usual Royal gags – Harry and William are nice but dim etc. – but it attacks them with relish. It’s not an excoriating or particularly clever satire, but it’s full of crude, amusing energy.

It also subverts the tired comedy notion that Charles is a harmless duffer. Instead it portrays him as a dictatorial bully with a savage sense of entitlement. That alone makes it more interesting than your average Royal spoof.

His fellow antagonists are Camilla, an embittered, power-hungry schemer, and Pippa Middleton, a duplicitous sex-pot. Prince Edward also crops up as a desperate failure. It’s all good fun, although the absence of the Queen and Prince Philip is curious. Aren’t they ripe for parody too?

The writers presumably felt that someone among this motley shower of buffoons had to be vaguely sympathetic, if only so they can fall victim to the cruelty and stupidity of the others.

That honour goes to William and Kate, who are depicted as essentially well-meaning. Kate is ineffably bland, so her character doesn’t work, but full marks to Hugh Skinner (Will, the bumbling intern from W1A) for seizing the role of William – a hapless hero who’d rather fly helicopters than be King – with such dense enthusiasm. It’s the sort of role that Hugh Laurie would’ve nailed in his youth, but Skinner does a fine job.

Harry Enfield is also good value as Charles; his absurd line-readings are a particular highlight. And I’m always pleased to see Morgana Robinson, a comic actress whose devotion to grotesque clowning is admirable. Her own starring vehicles have never matched her talents, but she always adds a peculiar energy in supporting roles.

While no classic, The Windsors does at least milk some barbed comedy mileage from a deserving target.

Be honest, you’d watch a series about Britain’s hardest men hosted by Grayson Perry. Placing the cross-dressing artist in aggressively male environments sounds like a recipe for fish-out-of-water fun. But there’s far more to Grayson Perry: All Man than that.

It’s a thoughtful study of masculinity in which our charismatic host – “a lifelong cissy” – tries to find out why some men feel compelled to be macho. He began his investigation in the violent world of cage fighting, where his own prejudices were challenged by meeting dedicated, articulate athletes with an undercurrent of emotional vulnerability.

His natural ability to relate to anyone he meets triggered the poignant spectacle of one fighter breaking down while discussing his brother’s suicide. As well as providing a surrogate family and sense of self-worth, cage fighting for him was a form of therapy. Perry went on to reveal that 80% of people who kill themselves in the north-east, where the programme was based, are male.

He also illustrated how deprived backgrounds inspired many of these men to channel aggression into something positive. Perry handled this raw subject without a hint of condescension. On the contrary, it was a sensitive, moving, open-minded essay on working-class community pride and the tragic price of male stoicism.

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: JERICHO + BEOWULF: RETURN TO THE SHIELDLANDS + TRACEY ULLMAN'S SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 16th January 2016.

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

Jericho: Thursday, STV

Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands: Sunday, STV

Tracey Ullman's Show: Monday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

By virtue of its scant competition, Jericho has the distinction of being the best British western since Carry On Cowboy. I can think of no higher praise.

The setting is an 1870s Yorkshire Dales shanty town full of rough and tumble navvies toiling to construct a viaduct. All the standard frontier archetypes are here – handsome hero, stoic heroine, brothel madam with a heart of gold etc. - but they're written and performed with enough charm to keep tiredness at bay.

Though it sounds ridiculous in theory, series creator Steve Thompson (Sherlock; Doctor Who) has managed to transpose the dusty tropes of Wild West fiction to 19^th century England without making a dang fool of himself. It works because he playfully acknowledges his obvious influences while avoiding outright pastiche. It's a brisk, broad, enjoyable production.

Not that it's perfect. Essentially a sanitised Deadwood by way of Little House on the Prairie, it all looks far too clean. This supposedly rough-hewn town reeks of IKEA-fresh timber. The costumes bear not a speck of grime. Jessica Raine's wig looks like a plastic Lego turban. No one ever swears.

Nevertheless, I can't deny the intriguing, novel promise of a drama in which an enigmatic African-American sheriff (the excellent Clarke Peters from The Wire) presides over a white community of working-class Victorian northerners. Loosely inspired by historical events, Jericho, in its wholly escapist way, is more ambitious than yer average period circus.

By contrast, turgid fantasy drama Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands is a hairy heap of grunting nonsense signifying zilch. A U-rated Game of Thrones, this supposedly child-friendly romp suffers from a flabby narrative and chronically dull, poorly defined characters. The glowering Beowulf himself resembles a dazed Neil Oliver wandering through a poorly policed battle re-enactment.

This charmless non-adventure fills the early evening slot recently vacated by the flawed yet far more likeable Jekyll & Hyde. A more natural home would be a mouldering ditch.

You get the slot you deserve. Despite being hyped as a triumphant return to our shores after 30 years working in America, Tracey Ullman's Show has been buried in a post-watershed graveyard trough. It's as if the BBC, having procured the ex-pat comedienne's services, forgot to provide her with a project worth returning for.

This painfully thin confection of half-baked sketches suffers from a flat, lifeless atmosphere that stifles whatever potential it may have had. Ullman's impersonations of Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith are impeccable, but without strong material to support them they're little more than top-flight party tricks. 

The Dench skits are typical in that they take a very basic premise – Dame Jude exploits her National Treasure status to get away with bad behaviour – without bothering to build on it. A shrugging sense of “Will this do?” hangs over the whole sorry enterprise.

Her depiction of Angela Merkel as a boozy, thin-skinned brawler who's bought into her own beige sex symbol hype was mystifyingly weak. A potentially damning musical number attacking Tory cuts proved utterly toothless. A recurring sketch about a bemused woman returning home after 28 years in a Thai prison worked only as a comment on Ullman's long absence from British TV. It certainly wasn't funny.

She should cut her losses and buy a one-way ticket back to the States. Anything to escape from this misfire.

TV Review: WE'RE DOOMED! THE DAD'S ARMY STORY and FROM ANDY PANDY TO ZEBEDEE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHILDREN'S TV

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 26th December 2015.

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

We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story: Tuesday, BBC Two

From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's TV: Monday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

The BBC, especially at Christmas, is entitled to wallow nostalgically in its own legacy. Last week it even wallowed twice with barely a hint of self-congratulation. On the contrary, We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story depicted certain BBC executives as the myopic villains of the piece.

An affectionate comedy-drama about the troubled origins of the much-loved wartime sitcom, it showed how writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft (who also produced) struggled to convince their overlords – particularly BBC One Controller Paul Fox, perhaps unfairly portrayed by Keith Allen as formidably humourless – that a comedy about the Home Guard could work. With WWII still in living memory, might it be deemed insensitive?

It's laughable to think that a sitcom as benign as Dad's Army could ever be thought of as tasteless, but it was clearly a real concern in 1967.

So, while the story hit familiar behind-the-scenes beats – writers search for a great idea, slave over scripts and shape their vision, are forced into compromise by unsympathetic bosses before being proved all along that they were right – it was told in such a breezy, charming, witty way, it never felt redundant.

Packed with touching detail, good gags – I loved the fleeting references to Jon Pertwee and Trevor Eve - a nice sense of bright, smoky '60s period, and winning performances from an adroitly chosen cast of fine character actors – John Sessions' total transformation into the endearingly temperamental Arthur Lowe was miraculous – it was a refreshingly warm antidote to the BBC's notorious, and hopefully extinct, glut of dubious tears-of-a-clown biopics.

Despite its relatively brief running time, writer Stephen Russell managed to add depth to most of the principle players. The pathos of the frail Arnold Ridley, the flinty insecurity of Arthur Lowe, and the core dramatic struggle of Perry, a frustrated actor who desperately wanted a part in the show until he realised that writing was his calling, were handled with commendable sensitivity.

A poignant highlight was the scene of Perry shedding tears as his ageing comedy hero Bud Flanagan (Roy Hudd, who else?) recorded the Dad's Army theme song in one avuncular take. And yes, it ended with a “You Have Been Watching” roll call. Delightful stuff.

Another nostalgic labour of love, From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's TV celebrated the pioneering origins and reign of the BBC's generation-shaping children's output from the '50s to the early '90s.

Despite some curious narrative leaps – forgiveable, perhaps, given the 60 minute running time – this was a tender cut above most archival clip shows. It scoured the vaults with an evident sense of craft and care. It also made a point of explaining how innovative and important the likes of Play School, Vision On and, for all its dryly middle-class faults, Blue Peter were in educating and entertaining children. 

And kudos for devoting time to the inadvertently nightmarish spectre of Noseybonk from Jigsaw; truly The Child Catcher of '80s TV.

On a cheerier note, the sight and sound of eminent talking heads such as Johnny Ball, Bernard Cribbins and the man who injected some rare jazz/soul groove into kid's TV, Derek Griffiths, was enough to inspire a Proustian rush. You know you're watching a decent documentary about popular entertainment when it's inhabited by relevant, knowledgeable contributors, rather than fatuous modern comedians.

As former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis observed only half-jokingly, a channel entirely devoted to Cribbins' soothing presence could cure the world's ills. Now that really would be public service broadcasting.

I also challenge anyone to refute that the ambient voice of Oliver Postgate is the voice of God Himself. Merry Christmas.

TV Review: WITNESSES and THE JAVONE PRINCE SHOW

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

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

Witnesses: Wednesday, Channel 4

The Javone Prince Show: Sunday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Shot through an endless drizzle, French thriller Witnesses (Les Temoins) is so irredeemably gloomy it make the average UK cop drama look like a DayGlo bouncy castle pumped with laughing gas.

And that's quite reassuring. So often typecast as sex-fuelled paragons of ineffable cool and glamour, it's good to know that our Gallic cousins are just as miserable as the rest of us.

But is it any better than the average UK cop drama? On the basis of episode one, I'm not entirely sure. By acquiring this six-part series, Channel 4 are obviously hoping to repeat the success of their last French import, The Returned. But that was a stylish and unusual supernatural drama with a compelling central hook. Witnesses is far more generic.

It's certainly atmospheric. The rain-spattered coastal setting is glumly arresting, and the climactic scene involving a suspended trolley car had an unnerving, almost dreamlike quality that one doesn't often see on British television.

Also, despite its clichéd cop show trappings, the mystery at the heart of Witnesses is pleasingly bleak and perverse: three seemingly random corpses are removed from their graves and posed in a show home, like a macabre facsimile of the perfect family. Pourquoi? 

What is their connection with the enigmatic former police chief who – and this is odd behaviour, you must admit – keeps a framed photograph of the car crash that killed his wife? And why does the woolly-hatted female protagonist insist on entering patently threatening crime scenes on her own, armed only with a torch? Has she never seen The Killing?

It all adds up to a mildly intriguing riddle, but whether it will eventually pay off is anyone's guess. The heavy-handed fairytale symbolism of a big bad wolf and a little girl in a red duffel coat suggests, worryingly, that the writers have po-faced pretensions which aren't as clever as they think. It's early days, but already I'm beginning to suspect that, for all its surface sophistication, Witnesses may turn out to be a rather daft affair.

It would be nice, in an ideal world, to report that The Javone Prince Show launched a bright new star into the comedy firmament last week. But the world is far from ideal, hence why it gets the painfully uninspired sketch shows it deserves.

A young black comic and actor, Prince is a fairly charming character whose eagerness to please almost makes up for the weakness of his material. But no amount of charm can rescue this tired ragbag of second-hand observations about “the black experience” in Britain today. 

A series of sketches about the way some white people behave anxiously and patronisingly around black people was never developed beyond the very basic point it was making. But that didn't stop Prince and his writers from hammering it into the ground.

They also seem to believe that the spectacle of a plummy-voiced white chap speaking street slang/jive talk is fundamentally hilarious. Why else would they steal this already limited joke from Armstrong and Miller?

Berating this good-natured and well-intentioned show gives me no pleasure, but there is just no getting around its objective mediocrity. It's a failure on practically every level.

TV Review: TOMMY COOPER: NOT LIKE THAT, LIKE THIS

This article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 26th August 2014.

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

Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This: Monday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

In the unlikely event that I should ever appear on Mastermind, I suspect my specialist subject would be 'TV Biopics About Dead Comedians'. That's hardly the most impressive claim, but you work with what you have.

BBC Four has famously mined this seam for all it's worth in the last few years, more often than not with dubious results. For every incisive drama about the likes of Kenny Everett and Kenneth Williams – famous, funny Kens have been served well - they've produced half a dozen hackneyed biopics seemingly hell-bent on reducing the subject in question to the laziest set of tears-of-a-clown clichés. I've seen 'em all, and admired very few.

So I wasn't expecting much from Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This. He may be one of our most beloved comics, but the grisly details of his personal life – alcoholism, infidelity, domestic violence – suggested that this would be just another tawdry wallow in showbiz misery. How wrong I was. What I hadn't banked on – and this was foolish in retrospect – was that this prestigious production was written by Simon Nye, a seasoned comedy writer whose respect for the Gods of his craft couldn't be more obvious.

Unlike most dramas of its kind, this one actually went out of its way to remind us that the tragic Pagliacci in question was a very funny person. The re-staging of classic comedy routines almost always fall painfully flat in biopics, but in the careful hands of Nye and David Threfall – who delivered an uncanny performance as Cooper, rubbery latex face and all – they really came alive. It was an affectionate tribute to the craft and toil of mirth-making itself; very few dramas in my experience have explored the idea of comedy as a serious business with such scrutiny and understanding.

Cooper came across as an artist who knew exactly what he was doing at all times. Like all performers, he could be anxious, self-involved and demanding. But you have to admire the amount of effort he devoted to looking like an inept, befuddled fool on stage. The irony, of course, is that in private he was a mess. 

All of the care and attention he lavished on his studiously ramshackle act was absent from his dealings with the women in his life. But Nye and Threfall, both of whom have clearly studied Cooper in some detail, understood that behind his maddening frailties, this was ultimately a lovable man. He was obsessed with comedy, but ill-suited to reality.

The way he treated his wife and mistress – both portrayed with dignity by, respectively, Amanda Redman and Helen McCrory – was unforgivable. Without going into graphic detail, Nye didn't shy away from the fact that Cooper could be physically abusive when drunk. But he never came across as a monster. Rather, he was a lost and rather hopeless alcoholic who craved adoration on his own unreasonable terms. 

I didn't think any less of Cooper after watching this sensitive, witty, nuanced drama. On the contrary, I came away from it with a renewed respect for his genius, and a sort of weary, hesitant sympathy for him as a tortured human being.

Everyone involved should be applauded for creating that rare beast: an angst-ridden biopic about a comedian that succeeded in celebrating his art while seeking to understand his personal demons. Without question, it was one of the best dramas of it's kind I've ever seen. 

TV PREVIEW: Channel 4's Funny Fortnight

This article was first published in The Scotsman on 18th August 2012.

http://www.scotsman.com/

CHANNEL 4'S FUNNY FORTNIGHT

Days and times vary, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

Growing up in the '80s and '90s, I wasn't alone in regarding Channel 4 as home to some of the best and most innovative British comedy. Few, I'm sure, would argue with the likes of The Comic Strip Presents, Saturday/Friday Night Live, Absolutely, Vic Reeves Big Night Out, Father Ted and Brass Eye.

But C4's noble pedigree has, with the honourable exception of the long-running Peep Show, been badly damaged in the last decade. Comedy on 4 is now epitomised by the charmless likes of Jimmy Carr, Alan Carr, Micky Flanagan and Frankie Boyle. And any channel that allows the insufferable Noel Fielding to flourish should be regarded with deep suspicion.

The deterioration of its comedy output is indicative of an overall slide in standards at C4, a sorry state of affairs that its Funny Fortnight season inadvertently illustrates. Boasting over 30 hours of new pilots, one-off specials and numerous repeats of former glories, it does at least offer some glimmers of hope, while at the same time neatly encapsulating everything that's wrong with C4 these days.

The worst offender by far is I'M SPAZTICUS (Sunday to Wednesday, 10:10pm, 10:30pm and 10:35pm), a jaw-droppingly witless and misconceived hidden prank show in which disabled performers humiliate able-bodied members of the public.

Its title – taken from an Ian Dury protest song, but shorn of its original context for maximum shock value – is the least offensive thing about this disaster. What point is it trying to make exactly? That disabled people can be involved in woefully uninspired prank shows too, especially ones that define them solely by their disability? Wow, what a heartening message. Or, seeing as its flustered “victims” are well-meaning innocents, is it saying that able-bodied people will go out of their way to help disabled people no matter how absurd the situation? Well, that's good isn't it?

Only one prank – a spoof vox pops in which members of the public are asked to choose which disability they'd least like to have - could reasonably be taken as pointed satire, although all it really proves is that dim people will partake in any old crock if there's a camera involved. But hasn't Chris Morris already made that point, albeit in a more imaginative way?

This is what C4, hosts of the 2012 Paralympics, regards as inclusiveness: a comedy show starring disabled people in which they're reduced to comedy props. The producers would doubtless pull a Gervais – an unfortunate phrase, but let's not dwell – and argue that it isn't problematic as they're willing participants and in on the joke. But all that proves is that some disabled actors are as desperate for work as able-bodied actors.

Actually, maybe that's the hidden genius of I'm Spazticus. Maybe it's a cleverly subversive comment on how C4 will exploit anyone for profit, whatever their physical ability. And that, when you think about it, actually makes them the most trailblazing equal-opportunities employer in television. All hail C4, defender of minorities!

Still, it's not all thoroughly horrendous. THE FUNCTION ROOM (Sunday, 10:40pm) is a cheerfully traditional and often very funny studio sitcom set in a pub, and starring a host of familiar comedy actors including The Vicar of Dibley's James Fleet, The League of Gentlemen's Reece Shearsmith, The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison, The Fast Show's Simon Day (once again playing a pub know-it-all) and every-comedy-of-the-last-twenty-years' Kevin Eldon.

The sort of uproariously gag-heavy sitcom that encourages deserved rounds of applause from its studio audience, it's definitely a step in the right direction for C4, and if they have any sense – which they don't – they'll commission a series. 

 

We really are through the looking glass here, as TOAST OF LONDON (Monday, 10pm) is yet another promising sitcom pilot. Co-written with Father Ted co-creator Arthur Mathews, it's a winningly silly vehicle for Matt Berry from The IT Crowd , and follows a farcical day in the life of a successful West End stage actor.

Yes, it finds the one-note Berry delivering the only performance he can – a bombastic, bawdy, swaggering ham with a voice like vintage brandy - but I can't deny that, with a busily gag-strewn script such as this, he exploits his limited strengths to the full. Not to be outdone, the whole cast – including the great Geoffrey McGivern, last seen in Dead Boss – deliver similarly broad performances, and the whole thing is so relentlessly daft it's hard to resist its rambling charms. More please, C4!

Considerably less impressive is CHANNEL 4 COMEDY PRESENTS: THEM FROM THAT THING (Tuesday and Wednesday, 10pm) an almost entirely mirthless sketch show that wastes a core cast of able comic performers such as Sally Phillips and Fonejacker's Kayvan Novak on weak, strained material (some of which was apparently written by the usually reliable Charlie Brooker).

Its gimmick, such as it is, is casting straight actors such as Bill Paterson and Sean Pertwee in comic roles, but that just comes across as a desperate attempt to give it some identity. This is committee-formed comedy, lacking in singular vision.

Still, at least this season proves that C4 comedy isn't completely dead in the water. It just needs some careful resuscitation.