SHERWOOD + THE REAL DERRY: JAMIE-LEE O'DONNELL + THE OUTLAWS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th June 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Sherwood – Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

This compelling six-part drama is a work of fiction inspired by two murders which took place in the Nottinghamshire mining village where its author, James Graham, grew up. 

It’s an intelligent, thoughtful piece, a carefully constructed whodunit fuelled by the long-lasting effects of Thatcherism and the miner’s strike on working-class communities. 

The outstanding cast includes David Morrissey as a senior police officer who is determined to win back the public’s trust, Alun Armstrong and Lesley Manville as happily married, doting grandparents, and Joanne Froggatt as a local Tory councillor who isn’t exactly in tune with the political outlook of her constituents. The series begins on her wedding day. 

You may find yourselves hooked from the get-go.

Tiny Lives – Monday, BBC One, 8:30pm

A tender document ensconced within the University Hospital Wishaw’s neonatal unit, Tiny Lives returns for more affecting stories about prematurely born babies. 

Alfie is just six hours old. His mum had an emergency caesarean after Alfie showed signs of distress in the womb. He’s in critical condition, a ventilator is keeping him alive. The hospital’s dedicated team are on constant standby, he’s in good hands. 

Alfie was born at the height of the pandemic, when the NHS were stretched to their absolute limits. The series pays tribute to their tireless efforts; decent people doing everything in their power to save lives on a daily basis. One particular nurse devotes her entire 12-hour shift to an infant placed in isolation.

The Savoy – Wednesday, STV, 9pm

The latest series of this observational hoopla reconvenes with London’s luxurious Savoy Hotel as it opens its doors post-pandemic. 

The owners are in dire straits, they have to recoup millions of pounds of lost revenue. So thank God for Gordon Ramsay, who barges in with ambitious plans for his very first seafood restaurant. 

Say what you like about Ramsay by all means, but that will at least create new job opportunities for some deserving chefs. Meanwhile, we’re treated to some heavy-hitter celebrity dining cameos from Christopher Biggins and Shirley Ballas. 

The whole thing is an unquestioning celebration of wealth. This preview was typed through gritted teeth, which is quite a physical feat if nothing else.

The Real Derry: Jamie-Lee O’Donnell – Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm

Timed to coincide with the 50^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, this documentary follows the Derry Girls actor as she reflects upon life growing up during the last few years of The Troubles. 

O'Donnell is a devoted Derry girl who wants to find out more about the complex history of her community. 

I haven’t seen this programme, preview copies weren’t available, but I reckon I can probably vouch for it in good faith. O’Donnell speaks to young people growing up in Derry today, kids who by and large have no truck with sectarian prejudices. 

According to the press blurb, it will provide viewers with some hope for the future of Northern Ireland.  O’Donnell is a smart person, she’ll do this justice.

Devon and Cornwall – Friday, Channel 4, 8pm

John Nettles’ bombastic narration during this otherwise genteel series is one of the funniest things on television. It’s a delicious chunk of pure uncut ham. Wonderful. This week, Nettles wraps his rich rococo tones around another set of everyday Devon and Cornwall stories. 

We meet woodsman John and his daughter Betsy as they attempt to revive and maintain a lost tradition – sculpting stave baskets from ash. Meanwhile, two friends put their fairly ancient powerboat through its paces ahead of a big race, and a hotelier/fisherman sets out to sea to haul in his lobster pots. 

Devon and Cornwall is a perfectly pleasant programme, and I’m sorry if I’ve ruined it by drawing attention to Nettles’ Matt Berry-esque theatrics.

Brian Cox: Seven Days on Mars – Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

Is there life on Mars? I’m inherently suspicious of questions that even David Bowie couldn’t answer, but you can’t deny the basic pleasure of watching Professor Brian Cox (sort of) fulfilling a childhood dream during this programme. 

He spends an access-all-areas week in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as it continues its exploration of the surface of Mars. 

42 years ago, young master Cox wrote a letter to the JPL asking about their pioneering deep space missions. The reply he received set him on the path to becoming a physicist. 

Cox follows the JPL during one of their most ambitious projects to date: navigating Martian terrain via the first powered aircraft we have ever sent to another planet.

Avoidance – Friday, BBC One, 9:30pm

Romesh Ranganathan co-writes and stars in this likeable comedy drama about Jonathan, a newly separated man struggling to come to terms with his situation. He can’t accept it, hence that title. 

Jonathan is a nice guy, but his glib passivity is exasperating. No wonder his partner finally gave up on him. He’s never depicted as some sort of hapless victim, a romanticised sad-sack hero. This isn’t a simplistic vanity project a la Ricky Gervais’ After Life. It’s drily amusing and warm-hearted. The underlying pathos is kept in check, it never descends into sickly sentimentality. 

Also, Ranganathan, a stand-up by trade, is an entirely natural actor. Avoidance began last week; catch up with episode one on iPlayer.

LAST WEEK’S TV

The Outlaws – Sunday 5th June, BBC One

Series one of Stephen Merchant’s appealing comedy drama about a mismatched gang serving community service in Bristol was a deserved hit. And now it’s back. Episode one wasted no time at all, it jogged our memories and got on with the story. 

Merchant is a talented screenwriter with an obvious love of classic romantic comedies and thrillers. The Outlaws is basically a Scorsese film shot through the prism of Ealing Studios. The characters are sympathetic and rounded, they’re recognisable ‘types’ with flesh on their bones. 

It succeeds on its own sweet terms: a heartfelt character piece disguised as a crime drama. Merchant ensures that we care about the plight of these fictional constructs. It's a fine-tooled piece of entertainment.

Everything I Know About Love – Tuesday 7th June, BBC One

This isn’t a complaint, just an observation: in the last few years, TV execs have commissioned a notable surge of semiautobiographical coming-of-age dramas set in the fairly recent past. The ‘90s up until the early ‘10s to be exact. 

That's an inevitable development. The commissioners, many of them in their late thirties/forties, are drawn to stories which reflect their own formative experiences. So here’s the latest one, set way back in 2012. 

It follows a group of mid-twenties female friends who’ve just moved to hipster Camden. Don’t let that premise put you off, it’s not smug or annoying at all. It’s a sharp, funny, charming and self-aware meditation on youthful friendships and infatuations.

MARY BEARD'S SHOCK OF THE NUDE + INSIDE NO. 9 + DOCTOR WHO

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1st February 2020.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

MARY BEARD’S SHOCK OF THE NUDE

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

The history of Western art is crammed with naked bodies. Mary Beard casts her shrewd expert eye over this orgiastic obsession in a probing, irreverent and informative two-part series, wherein she grapples with “the problems, the anxieties and the scandals surrounding the image of the naked body ever since the Ancient Greeks.” The art establishment has always tried to defend itself from accusations of objectifying women, but Beard sees right through such mendacity, hypocrisy and gross oversimplification. She analyses problematic expressions of the erotic male gaze – many of them considered masterpieces – and looks at how female artists have responded to this fig-leafed tradition. She also traces the unusual history of idealised naked men in art.

INSIDE NO. 9

Monday, BBC Two, 10pm

All good people agree that Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s darkly comic anthology series is one of the best and most consistently inventive television shows of recent years. Series 5 kicks off in a football referee’s changing room before, during and after a fraught match. David Morrissey plays a consummately professional ref on the verge of retirement, with Pemberton, Shearsmith and Ralf Little as his temperamentally mismatched linesmen. Although it’s not one of the strongest episodes – it feels quite slight by Pemberton and Shearsmith’s usual standards – it still displays their impressive ability to weave comedy, drama and rounded characters into a single 30 minute narrative. They’re masters of the form, Rod Serling by way of Victoria Wood and Alan Bennett.

UNIVERSAL CREDIT: INSIDE THE WELFARE STATE

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Universal Credit is the biggest and most controversial (i.e. catastrophic) overhaul of the welfare state in a generation. The government insists that it was supposed to simplify the benefits system and encourage the unemployed back into work, but instead it has caused chaos and suffering for the millions of people who rely on it to survive. It has driven claimants further into poverty. People are dying as a result. This sobering series gains access to the much-maligned Department of Work and Pensions. We also meet sympathetic jobcentre employees and claimants, including a desperate middle-aged man who’s recently been made homeless, and a single mother of two who struggles with depression and anxiety caused by her dire situation.

BARRYMORE: THE BODY IN THE POOL

Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

In March 2001, Stuart Lubbock died at a drug-fuelled party held at Michael Barrymore’s home. To this day the case remains unsolved. This research-heavy, 90-minute documentary attempts to examine the full, murky story. Preview copies weren’t available at the time of writing – possibly for sensitive legal reasons – but it sounds potentially fascinating. The Lubbock case is rife with unanswered questions, as no one has ever spoken openly about what happened that night. We do know that Barrymore denies any involvement and that his once successful career has, for obvious reasons, never recovered. The film features contributions from members of the Lubbock family, as well as eyewitnesses, detectives and forensic pathologists. Barrymore himself appears only in archive footage.

LAST WEEK’S TV

DOCTOR WHO

Sunday 26th January, BBC One

Fair play to Chris Chibnall, he managed to keep the grin-inducing return of good old Captain Jack (the effervescent John Barrowman, having a ball as usual) under wraps; a welcome rarity in this spoilerific age. Also, in another fine twist, this enjoyably berserk episode introduced the first person of colour (Jo Martin, pictured) to play the Doctor. Or did it? I don’t trust Chibnall to satisfactorily conclude his intriguing story arc, but I’ll gladly eat humble P if I'm wrong.

 

TV Review: THE DRIVER and DOWNTON ABBEY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th September 2014.

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

The Driver: Tuesday, BBC One

Downton Abbey: Sunday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Stories about innocent men thrown to the slaughter are to the thriller genre what improbable mishaps are to the world of trouser-dropping farce. Remove these hardy perennials from either genre and both would collapse like a careless round of Buckaroo. Hitchcock famously revisited the wrong man theme on several occasions, thus cementing it as a sturdy template upon which future generations of screenwriters could hammer their own dents.

So it's unfair to criticise three-part crime drama The Driver for cleaving to a well-worn theme. Writer Danny Brocklehurst has every right to chuck another fictional everyman – in this case, David Morrissey's put-upon taxi driver, Vince – onto the bonfire for our nail-biting edification. He's simply carrying on a popular storytelling tradition. No, the most important thing is that he takes this malleable putty and moulds it into surprising shapes. And that's where episode one came unstuck.

Unless you've never witnessed a drama before in your life, Vince's story unfolded much as expected. A decent man who'd had enough of his dreary suburban existence and thankless occupation – Brocklehurst made sure to heap as many foul indignities upon him as possible – Vince was in desperate need of some excitement. Practically ignored at home, he demanded some respect and a renewed sense of purpose. Enter his old mate Colin (Ian Hart). A career criminal just out of jail, Colin offered Vince the chance to opt out of the rat race, and score big to boot, by becoming the personal driver/courier for his boss.

Of course, Colin's boss is a gangster. Not only that, he's a gangster played by Colm Meaney and nicknamed 'The Horse'. You'd have to be, not so much naïve, as thunderingly stupid to think that working for a self-made stereotype with an animal-themed alias was going to be a bed of roses.

When Vince eventually discovered Colin's violent true colours during a brutal kidnapping, his shock was matched only by a few million viewers blaring, “Well what did you expect?!”

Yes, good men are often driven to desperate measures in dire times of need. Terminally ill Walter White becoming a criminal kingpin in Breaking Bad to provide for his family is a grippingly nuanced exploration of this theme. By comparison, a despondent cabbie getting involved with some wrong 'uns to pay off the mortgage lacks a certain dramatic heft.

It's frustrating, as having peeked ahead I can report that The Driver improves in part two, as Vince's predicament gains more emotional depth. It's just unfortunate that this rather thin opener, regardless of the typically fine performances from its leads, did practically nothing that we hadn't seen before. There are only so many stories, but there are infinite ways of telling them.

I'll let you into a trade secret: reviewing Downton Abbey is pointless. Its inherent flaws and obvious appeal are so self-evident and so widely documented, at this stage it would be like trying to offer an original critique of breathing.

It's simply there, still, an unchanging formula dutifully poured into a decorously-carved goblet at yearly intervals. Lord Grantham grumbles exposition at breakfast, Dame Maggie purses sculpted bon mots over luncheon, Carson booms his wry instructions like a rich tea biscuit awaiting the King's own urn. It's unique in TV history in that it became a parody of itself almost instantaneously.

It exists if you want it, like the current touring version of Level 42. Who honestly cares?

TV Review: THE 7:39 and SECRETS OF THE LIVING DOLLS.

This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th January 2013.

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

The 7:39: Monday and Tuesday, BBC1

Secrets of the Living Dolls: Monday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

A Ray Davies song in waiting, David Morrissey's Carl was your typical commuter: an unremarkable middle-aged businessman sleepwalking through his drably unchanging routine. Grey of suit and beard – even his facial hair looked tired – he had the unassuming demeanour of a melancholy bear, a gentle soul both lost and harmless. 

Which was just as well, as his behaviour in romantic drama The 7.39 could easily have come across as sad and creepy: a stalker in sheep's clothing.

Instead he emerged as a likeable, if foolish, character whose whirlwind affair with Sally, a younger woman and fellow unsatisfied commuter played by Sheridan Smith, tore at the heart of this affecting little two-part saga.

Despite raking over very familiar territory – the concept of thwarted drifters gaining a new lease of life from a fleeting romance has informed everything from Brief Encounter to Lost in Translation – it was saved by mature, sensitive writing from David Nicholls and sweetly underplayed performances from Morrissey, Smith and, in her stock role of unfairly maltreated spouse, Olivia Colman.

Nicholls toyed with our allegiances by sketching each of his principal characters in a sympathetic light. Even Sally's fiancée, an overbearing fitness buffoon played by a suitably dense-looking Sean Maguire, was essentially well-meaning. This triggered an interesting subversion of the usual demands of romantic fiction, where we root for the starry-eyed lovebirds and hope they stay together at the end. Instead I found myself hoping their flirting would lead nowhere, and that Carl would see sense and return to the bosom of his lovely wife and kids.

It's testament to the quiet depth and pull of Nicholls' writing that I was actually angling for two hours of drama during which nothing remotely dramatic or untoward happened. It was like a Bizarro EastEnders: I didn't want anything bad to happen to these nice, ordinary people. She may be renowned for her extreme sobbing skills, but I doubt even the most sadistic viewer actually yearned to witness the inevitable tear-sodden scene of Colman discovering her husband's infidelity.

While it never added up to anything more meaningful than “the grass isn't always greener”, The 7.39 engaged with its themes in an entirely believable and unpretentious way. Buoyed by Nicholls' ear for natural-sounding dialogue and the informal strength of his cast, it was a touching study of human frailty and the runaway madness of the heart.

Despite being produced by the geniuses responsible for such dire point-and-gawp travesties such as the Big Fat Gypsy franchise and The Man With the 10-Stone Testicles, Secrets of the Living Dolls was a surprisingly inoffensive documentary about yet another subculture that most of us have never heard of.

The subjects in this case were a selection of men who enjoy transforming themselves into women via skin-tight rubber masks and flesh suits. Why? The only vague reasons given ranged from mere escapism to the need to feel young, attractive and special. Whether they gained any sexual satisfaction from their largely secret pursuit remained curiously unclear. 

Despite fleeting references to the anatomical accuracy of the suits, it was if the director, stricken by an unforeseen rash of prudishness, had little interest in exploring this phenomenon beyond its most superficial layer.

Instead we were simply presented with a group of harmless hobbyists whose only demand was for society to judge them kindly. And that was that. It was as bland and impassive as the sex-doll masks worn by the men, and while one could arguably applaud the programme's essentially neutral, non-judgemental approach – I never got the impression that anyone was being mocked – it isn't merely enough to present an unusual subset of society without any kind of deeper insight.

“Cuh, what do you think of that then?” is hardly the most profound authorial comment.