THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE HORSE | DETECTORISTS | MAYFLIES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 24th December 2022.

THIS WEEK’S TV

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse – Christmas Eve, BBC One, 4:55pm

This is beautiful. An animated adaptation of the children’s book by Charles Mackesy, it follows a lonely little boy who befriends a kindly mole in the snowy British countryside. They’re kindred spirits. “I think everyone feels a bit lost sometimes,” mutters the mole, “I know I do.” 

They meet a tethered fox, who would normally devour the mole under different circumstances, and a majestic white horse. “Life is difficult,” says the horse to his newfound friends, “but you are loved.” 

Mackesy’s treatise on loneliness and anxiety is told with poetic child-friendly sensitivity. It’s preceded on BBC Two at 3:55pm by Charlie Mackesy: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, The Horse, and Me, a charming profile of the author/illustrator.

A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story – Christmas Day, BBC Four, 7pm

Mark Gatiss, that ghost of Christmas ever-present, is the brains behind this filmed stage adaptation of the Dickens classic. 

It’s a fine production. You know the story inside out, but Gatiss and co deliver their own little twists and tweaks. An immortal text, it will always be retold by people who understand its innate power. Gatiss was born to retell it. One gets the impression that he’s been working towards this moment throughout his entire life and career. 

If you have children in the house on Christmas Day, children who know nothing of Scrooge and his various iterations, then I daresay they’ll be bewitched. Sure, it’s no The Muppet Christmas Carol, but nothing is (apart from The Muppet Christmas Carol).

Ghosts – Christmas Day, BBC One, 7:25pm

I’m surprised it’s taken this long for Ghosts to take its rightful place in our Christmas Day schedules, as it quite obviously belongs there. A family-friendly sweet-treat. Still, here it finally is, so let’s all sing Hosanna (if you like). 

The ghosts decide to show their eternal thanks to Alison and Mike by performing a panto. As always, a few hiccups aside, the extended family band together. It all turns out fine in the end. 

The appeal of Ghosts lies in its seemingly effortless ability to fuse silliness, irony and earned emotion. Prepare yourselves, this year, for a certain ghost being reminded of their last Christmas as a corporeal entity. The pathos isn’t overcooked, it’s lovely.

Call the Midwife – Christmas Day, BBC One, 7:55pm

At the risk of sounding like a comforting ‘80s BBC continuity announcer, Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without a visit to Poplar. 

1967 is almost at an end. The Summer of Love passed them by, they’re still recovering from a tragic train crash. But life goes on. The midwives swiftly move into a new maternity ward; there are babies, mothers, fathers and families in need. 

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: you can always tell when someone who’s never actually watched Call the Midwife dismisses it as sentimental fluff. Blandness personified. Nah, it fuses that fluff with a certain amount of grit and a whole heap of empathy. Some good things are deservedly successful.

Doc Martin – Christmas Day, STV, 9:05pm

The end is nigh for this fondly regarded comedy-drama starring Martin Clunes as a lovably taciturn country medic. 

In this final episode, our lugubrious antihero closes down the village grotto when he begins to suspect that ‘Santa’ might be spreading a contagion. Cue much consternation and gnashing of teeth. This being Doc Martin, of course, everything comes up roses. We wouldn’t have it any other way. 

At 8:30pm on Thursday, fans can also enjoy ITV’s Farewell Doc Martin, a retrospective celebrating the whole merry shebang.

Detectorists – Boxing Day, BBC Two, 9pm

Writer/director Mackenzie Crook’s Detectorists is one of the best British sitcoms of recent years. It ended perfectly in 2017, but now it’s back for one final episode. 

Preview copies weren’t available, but I trust Crook to deliver the goods. He wouldn’t unearth this cherished gemstone, this self-evident labour of love, if he didn’t feel it deserved to see the light of day.

The Danebury Metal Detecting Club is in dire straits. Property developers are sniffing around its soil. Disaster beckons until Lance (Toby Jones) secures permission to search ten acres of undetected land. 

Can he reverse the fortunes of the DMDC? Is that expedition worth the effort if it irreversibly threatens his friendship with Andy (Crook)?

Mayflies – Tuesday and Wednesday, BBC Scotland, 10pm/Wednesday and Thursday, BBC One, 9pm

A two-part adaptation of Andrew O’Hagan’s acclaimed novel, this for me is one of the obvious festive TV highlights. 

The synopsis doesn’t sound very Christmassy, I know: Jimmy (Martin Compston) is a successful Ayrshire-born author based in London.  One day, out of the blue, Tully (Tony Curran), his best friend since adolescence, calls him back home. Tully has terminal cancer and refuses treatment.  He wants to go out his way. 

Tully asks Jimmy to help him put his final affairs in order. First step: Tully marries his girlfriend (Ashley Jensen). 

Mayflies is being shown at this time of year because it’s a touching, witty, warm and authentic meditation on enduring friendship and love. It reminds us of what’s important.

TV Review: DETECTORISTS + MOTHERLAND

This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th November 2017.

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

DETECTORISTS: Wednesday, BBC Four

MOTHERLAND: Tuesday, BBC Two

When DETECTORISTS rambles off forever in a few weeks time, it’ll be like saying goodbye to dear old friends.

Fans of this beloved cult sitcom will understand my bittersweet conflict when it returned for a third and final series last week. Lovely to have it back, but I don’t want it to end.

Mackenzie Crook, who writes, directs and co-stars, should be applauded for creating a charming little fictional universe which, for all its underlying melancholy, offers sun-dappled respite from the escalating madness of our brutal world.

If you’ve somehow committed the baffling error of never having watched it, a swift precis. Laconic Andy (Crook) and fastidious Lance (Toby Jones) are best friends and metal detector enthusiasts based in picturesque rural Essex. The defining image of the series is the pair of them gently trawling a large field in search of life-changing treasure. They never give up.

The pace is leisurely and comforting. The character-driven humour is droll, humane and prickled with glimmers of absurdity (Andy and Lance’s buffoonish rivals resemble Simon and Garfunkel). Our endearing duo chat about their quietly complicated lives while detecting or over a pint in the local pub. A winning cast of mildly eccentric supporting characters mill around them amiably.

On the soundtrack, haunting English folk music awakens aeons of ghosts from this green and pleasant land (the latest episode even paid explicit homage to M.R. James’ classic ghost story Whistle And I’ll Come to You).

That, in essence, is all there is to it. And yet Crook, without strain or pretension, conjures a bewitching spell from this simple template. Detectorists is gentle but never bland, poignant but never saccharine. Lance, Andy and co are fully-rounded, funny characters. It’s been a pleasure spending time with them.

The final hurdle is a solar energy farm being built on their beloved terrain. Their shell-shocked expressions when they heard the news spoke volumes. It was as if they’d been bereaved. That field is an escape hatch, an oasis of calm and enrichment. What will they do without it?

Crook, I suspect, knows we feel the same way about his unique creation.

A new sitcom from Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh, Graham Linehan and his wife Helen, MOTHERLAND is the cold metropolitan yin to Detectorists’ warm bucolic yang. It’s ruthlessly engineered to make parenthood look like an unbearable waking nightmare, especially if you’re comfortably middle-class and white.

I’m all for downbeat comedy when done well, but Motherland is so clinically intent on exploring this subject without a shred of sentiment, it ends up coming across as faintly depressing. Outnumbered, which covered similar territory, was never sentimental either, but it was full of wit and charm. Motherland is a migraine.

Linehan, Horgan and Walsh have all written good, sharp, funny sitcoms in the past – their collective credits include Father Ted, The IT Crowd, Pulling, Catastrophe and the underrated Dead Boss – but this joint effort is surprisingly dull and unlikeable.

It revolves around an aggravating central performance from Anna Maxwell-Martin – an actor whose work I’ve enjoyed elsewhere - as Julia, a permanently stressed and angry mother of two young children. You don’t always have to sympathise with sitcom characters to find them funny, but Julia’s clenched cynicism and intense exhaustion are exhausting to watch.

Episode one lumbered her with that hoary old sitcom standby, the disastrous children’s birthday party. A tiresome volume of awkwardness ensued. There’s something quite self-satisfied about the way in which Motherland digs viewers in the ribs with its pedestrian first-world observations. It’s like eavesdropping on a group of parents moaning about their fundamentally privileged lives. The smugness is unbearable.

That wouldn’t matter so much if the gag-rate was higher, but Motherland is unforgivably sparse on that front.

The only enjoyable aspect is the deadpan performance by Diane Morgan (aka Screen Wipe’s Philomena Cunk) as Julia’s best friend. She provides a few wry smiles. It's a chilly disappointment otherwise.

TV Review: JEKYLL AND HYDE and DETECTORISTS

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 31 October 2015.

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

Jekyll and Hyde: Sunday, STV

Detectorists: Thursday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Ever since Doctor Who reasserted its position as the reigning champ of weekend family viewing, ITV has made a few, almost grudging, attempts at establishing a suitable rival.

Time-hopping dinosaur romp Primeval was their most successful effort, but even its biggest fans would concede that it never troubled Doctor Who in terms of capturing the wider imagination. And the less said about Demons – which only shell-shocked TV critics and around 50% of those who made it choose to remember anyway – the better.

So it's perhaps surprising that it's taken them this long to enlist the talents of Fast Show alumnus Charlie Higson, a critically acclaimed, best-selling author whose success with the Young James Bond novels has secured his reputation as a gifted purveyor of intelligent children's fiction. On the basis of episode one, Jekyll and Hyde already feels like ITV's first serious challenger to Doctor Who's crown.

However, it's not without its flaws. An unofficial sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic exploration of a vexing split personality disorder, it follows Jekyll's grandson, Robert, as he gradually unearths his poisoned family lineage.

Raised by a family in Ceylon – hence his impeccable upper-class English accent – he's introduced as a kindly colonial physician capable of superhuman feats of strength when emotionally piqued. He's basically a 1930s Hulk, and Higson doesn't stint on the comparisons. With its canted angles, stylised action sequences and somewhat campy feel, the show is framed as a live-action comic book.

That heightened-reality approach ensures that its flashes of violence and horror don't feel inappropriate for a family audience. Children can differentiate between this world and ours. Granted, the sight of a dog-hybrid 'Harbinger' – Higson's Jekyll universe if full of bizarre creatures - was unsettling for even a man as robust and fearless as myself, but God forbid I should represent the psyche of the average child.

More troubling, perhaps, was the fiery death of Robert's adoptive Indian family, murdered at the hands of an intriguingly sadistic villain in British military uniform. Then again, I doubt many children were conscious of its significance as an historical metaphor. They were probably just perturbed by the spectacle of some kindly people being incinerated by a greasy Englishman with an evil moustache. So that's okay.

Though peppered with clunky exposition – hopefully that will subside after this attention-grabbing scene-setter – this was a decent introduction.

The charismatic Tom Bateman handles his twin roles impressively: a Colin Firth-esque bumbler in Jekyll repose, a lascivious demon in two-fisted Hyde mode. From Frederic March to Jerry Lewis, Jekyll/Hyde tales rely upon acting versatility. Higson's reinvention shows promise, but Bateman is selling it so far.

There's something deeply heartening about the deserved success of writer/director/actor Mackenzie Crook's award-winning sleeper hit Detectorists. Maybe it's because no one ever expected Gareth from The Office to come up with a sitcom of such depth, wit and sensitivity.

It makes Derek, the saccharine dogs dinner served up by his former employer, Ricky Gervais, look even worse by comparison.

A low-key sitcom about two charmingly co-dependent metal detectorists - the other played by the great Toby Jones - when it returned last week I instantly eased back into its rural rhythms. Space precludes me from writing more, but I urge you to befriend this wonderful show. It's one of the best British comedies of the last ten years.