THE SISTER + LIFE + HAIR POWER: ME AND MY AFRO

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 24th October 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

THE SISTER

Monday to Thursday, STV, 9pm

This spooked pulp thriller is written by Neil Cross of Luther renown/infamy, which should give you some idea of what to expect. It’s knowingly daft and engulfed in histrionic murk. Typical Cross hokum. Russell Tovey stars as a man with a seemingly perfect life who is secretly haunted by his involvement in the death of a young woman several years ago. The only other person who knows what happened that night is Bob, an eccentric paranormal expert played by the shamelessly scene-stealing Bertie Carvel (he has the mien of a creepy, druggy Dickensian weirdo). To say any more would spoil the fun, but Cross does a good job of building tension as he gradually peels away the layers of his mystery. 

LIFE

Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

In the penultimate episode of this superior drama from Mike Bartlett, Gail (Alison Steadman) returns to her terminally ill husband Henry (Peter Davison) after a much-needed period of freedom. Henry is a self-centred bully, but Gail decides that, after 50 years of marriage, she should be by his side when he passes away. He’s a lucky man. Meanwhile, Belle’s (Victoria Hamilton) continuing struggles with alcohol leads to yet another excruciating scene. Bartlett is obviously more invested in the Gail, Henry and Belle storylines – the others are basically subplots – but he deserves praise for his compassionate excavation of the pain, fear, loneliness and disappointment of everyday life. A barrel of laughs it is not, but that’s Life. Sorry.

HAIR POWER: ME AND MY AFRO

Tuesday, Channel 4, 10:15pm

Now this is great. As part of Black History Month, academic and writer Emma Dabiri explores the vast cultural significance of afro-textured hair through the ages. For people of colour, to embrace the beauty of natural kinks and curls is an empowering form of self-expression. Dabiri meets people who grew up under pressure to conform to a Eurocentric ideal: straight hair equals good hair. Generations of kids felt compelled to attack their scalps with scorching chemical products. That’s yet another form of systematically racist oppression. Dabiri also examines the social significance of barbers and salons within the black community, while highlighting various forms of micro-aggression, unconscious bias and cultural appropriation. It’s a fascinating and rather beautiful essay.

DAMILOLA: THE BOY NEXT DOOR

Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

20 years ago, 10-year-old Damilola Taylor was stabbed and killed mere yards from his home. In this moving tribute, Yinka Bokinni, who is now a successful radio DJ, speaks about her late friend and neighbour for the first time. She paints a vivid portrait of a funny, bouncy, carefree kid whose life was tragically cut short. She also challenges the media-led view that her Peckham estate was Hell on Earth. Yes, there was crime and poverty, but it was a tightknit multicultural community. Bokinni makes a hugely important point: when you shovel people into substandard housing, you can’t just wash your hands of them. That’s a convenient way of ignoring the wider issue of cause and effect.

POWERING BRITAIN

Thursday, BBC Two, 7:30pm

Hornsea One, the world’s biggest offshore windfarm, is situated 75 miles off the Yorkshire Coast. In the first episode of this stats-encrusted series about the hardworking pros who answer to Britain’s energy demands, presenter Keeley Donovan meets some of the men and women responsible for running a hugely impressive eco-friendly project. With good reason, she marvels at this aquatic conurbation of massive turbines, each one taller than the Gherkin and wider than the London Eye (Donovan’s breathless claim that they’re wide enough to accommodate an adult elephant is inadvertently and pleasingly Chris Morris-esque). Mild peril warning: if you’re prone to claustrophobia and vertigo, you may be triggered by Donovan’s ascent of one of the turbines.

THE TRUMP SHOW

Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

As this grimly compelling series concludes, we come right up to date. By January 2019, Trump had sacked everyone in his administration who’d tried to reign him in. His behaviour became even more bizarre and messianic. When his chief of staff admitted that the Ukranian government had been blackmailed into smearing Joe Biden, the Democrats seized their chance to remove Trump from office. The impeachment process failed in large part because Trump managed to intimidate Republican members of the Senate into supporting him. Then came Covid and the murder of George Floyd. Trump’s blind mishandling of these situations has been utterly catastrophic. America, you know what to do next month. This pathological liar, this gangster narcissist, is utterly unfit for office.

MAXXX

Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm

Maxxx is a former boyband superstar who has fallen on hard times. He’s a desperate mess, an insecure buffoon who struggles with various personal issues. He’s also quite likeable, despite his many flaws. This new comedy actually made me chuckle. That, I assure you, is a ringing endorsement of sorts. Writer/director/star O.T. Fagbenle understands that failure is funny, but only when leavened with a bit of pathos. The latter isn’t overdone, it’s naturally ingrained within Maxxx’s character. He’s lonely, heartbroken, lost. All he wants to do is make a comeback and restore his flimsy sense of self-worth. Maxxx is a fairly sharp farce and Fagbenle inhabits his creation with just the right amount of oblivious arrogance.    

LAST WEEK’S TV

ROADKILL

Sunday 18th October, BBC One 

Hats off to the BBC for commissioning a slyly scathing political drama in which the central character is a thinly disguised hybrid of Johnson and Farage. Roadkill makes no bones about how manipulative and dangerous these self-styled ‘LOL legend’ charlatans are. Written by David Hare, this isn’t a cosy centrist satire. It has bite. Hugh Laurie is perfect as a philandering, superficially charming government minister who blithely assumes he can get away with anything. It began with him successfully suing a newspaper for libel, but the journalist who went after him refuses to back down. Hare is clearly enjoying himself as he spins several plates at once. Let’s just hope they don’t all come crashing down. Roadkill is promising. Of course, the BBC is largely responsible for the rise of Johnson, they helped him to cultivate his disingenuous persona, so in that sense Roadkill is too little too late. The damage has been done. But I will accept it as a form of atonement. Big of me, I know.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Monday 19th October, BBC One

In this particularly interesting episode, David Walliams discovered that his great grandfather, who served during WWI, suffered from severe PTSD. He spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital, or ‘lunatic asylum’ as they were known in those very different times. His tragic story illustrated just how valuable this show can sometimes be as a sensitive piece of social history. On a much lighter note, Walliams was delighted to learn that his great-great grandfather was a travelling showman who eventually escaped from poverty via the fairground business. Cynical caveat: WDYTYA proves that celebrities with a hitherto weirdly incurious attitude towards their family history will suddenly develop a deep and solemn interest when there’s a fee involved.

 

 

 

 

 

TV Review: DAMILOLA, OUR LOVED BOY + CLOSE TO THE ENEMY

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

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

Damilola, Our Loved Boy: Monday, BBC One

Close to the Enemy: Thursday, BBC Two

  

Nigerian schoolboy Damilola Taylor was 10-years-old when he was fatally attacked on a Peckham estate in November 2000. The image of this innocent, smiling child seared itself on the nation’s consciousness, an unwitting emblem of growing fears over inner city knife crime.

Following a prolonged, controversial trial, two teenagers were eventually charged with manslaughter.

The shock of this senseless crime still reverberates, hence Damilola, Our Loved Boy, a deeply moving drama made with support from the Taylors.

Primarily framed through the eyes of Damilola’s father, Richard, it went behind the headlines to explore the anguish of a family struggling with unimaginable tragedy.

The establishing scenes of the Taylors living a happy life in Nigeria – Richard was a successful businessman with government connections – were weighted with a sense of impending horror.

The Taylors moved to England so that Richard’s British-born daughter could receive urgent NHS treatment for her epilepsy. Writer Levi David Addai didn’t need to stress the terrible irony of parents losing a child while seeking to save the life of another.

Damilola’s excitement about moving to this land of hope and glory was heart-breaking. Breadwinner Richard stayed behind as the family moved into a cramped Peckham flat. Seven months later, Damilola was dead.

Certain scenes lingered long after the credits had rolled. The mounting panic of Damilola’s mother when he didn’t return from school; his guilt-stricken older brother phoning Richard to break the awful news; Richard visiting the scene of Damilola’s murder, then eventually breaking down away from the gaze of the family for whom he tried to remain strong.

With admirable honesty, it depicted Richard as an often myopically proud and moral man who, via sincerely noble deeds in the local community, neglected the needs of his family while trying to make sense of Damilola’s death. But that was his way of dealing with guilt and grief.

Sensitively handled by all concerned – Babou Ceesay was particularly outstanding as Richard – this necessarily upsetting film succeeded by stating its nuanced, complex case without a trace of tabloid hysteria.   

One thing we can all agree on about divisive auteur Stephen Poliakoff is that no one makes television quite like him. He’s an eccentric genre unto himself. For some, his work is agonisingly mannered and opaque. For others, myself included broadly speaking, those affectations are often quite appealing.

So what to make of Close to the Enemy, in which he rakes over his trademark obsessions with hot jazz, war criminals and the haunted glamour of barely populated luxury hotels? It’s tempting to assume that he’s trolling his critics with a Bingo-card summation of every Poliakoff drama ever made.

Set in the bomb-damaged London of 1946, just as the Cold War began, it pivots on a strange performance from Jim Sturgess as a maverick military intelligence agent tasked with securing the services of a reluctant German scientist.

With his shop-damaged chocolatey diction and eyebrows a-cocked a la Roger Moore, he appears to be sending the whole thing up. I don’t quite know what the hell he’s doing, but it’s certainly entertaining.

Like Poliakoff’s last tribute to his own oeuvre, Dancing on the Edge, it’ll probably squander its vague promise by drifting languidly up its own fundament. In which case, the BBC may finally decide to stop throwing money at this self-indulgent oddball.

But I must admit, it’s perversely pleasing that he’s managed to reign unfettered for so long. There’s something to be said for public disservice broadcasting.