MARTIN COMPSTON'S SCOTTISH FLING | DOC MARTIN | RIDLEY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 3rd September 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

Martin Compston’s Scottish Fling – Thursday, BBC Scotland, 10pm and Friday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

The Line of Duty actor positively swells with national pride during this perfectly pleasant scenic travelogue. He reacquaints himself with Scotland in the company of his pal, the TV presenter Phil MacHugh. They’re an affable duo. 

The series begins on the West Coast, where Compston is from. In Dunoon they shoot the cheerfully innuendo-laden breeze (and play crazy golf) with RuPaul’s Drag Race UK winner Lawrence Chaney. 

Later on, they climb a hill with Zahrah Mahmood, who’s made a name for herself on Instagram as The Hillwalking Hijabi. Their view from the summit is stunning. “You know how a lot of people say the great outdoors are their church?” she smiles, “I feel like this is my mosque.”

Inside Central Station – Monday, BBC One, 8pm

The latest series of this observational doc about Glasgow’s Central Station heralds some major changes for staff and passengers alike. 

We follow engineers as they deal with one of the biggest renovations the Argyll line has ever seen. This project necessitates the temporary closure of Glasgow Central’s low level station, which serves over five million passengers every year. 

Despite all of this stress and upheaval, everyone appears to take it in their stride. There’s no point complaining about minor inconveniences, especially when they’ll ultimately lead to improvements. Wise words, I know. 

Inside Central Station is a genial show, a modest little masterclass in how to compile a workplace documentary. It’s full of low-key character and charm.

24 Hours in A&E – Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

The 28^th series of 24 Hours in A&E was filmed at St George’s Hospital in London during the lockdown autumn of 2020. It begins with Sara, who’s been rushed to A&E after collapsing at work. The doctors are concerned that she may have a bleed on the brain. 

Meanwhile, teenager Flynn hits a car while riding his bike, and Jane – who visits A&E with a severe headache – reflects upon her childhood spent in Zambia and Lancashire. 

As always, it’s a reliably tender compendium of human interest stories. The formula never changes, because it doesn’t need to. Our innate empathy connects us with these people. It could be you, me, or any of our loved ones in those hospital beds.

First Dates Hotel – Tuesday, Channel 4, 9pm

Another year, another spin-off series in which maître d’ Fred Sirieix and his matchmaking squad usher yet another group of hopefuls into their exotic luxury love shack. 

Ex-military paramedic Gareth has pretty much given up on the hope of ever meeting anyone. Gareth, having applied to appear on First Dates, obviously wasn’t expecting the producers to match him up with a theoretically perfect partner. 

The twist in this particular story – First Dates doesn’t half love its twists – is that Gareth and his date, Carys, once chatted with each other on a dating app. But they never took things any further than that. 

We also meet a retired taxidermist embarking upon her first date in 39 years.

Doc Martin – Wednesday, STV, 9pm

Martin Clunes has been playing TV’s most beloved Cornwall-based grumpy medic on and off for eighteen years. And now it’s time for him to say farewell to the character. 

The final series begins with our hero in self-imposed retirement, a decision he’s clearly starting to regret. Your special guest star is Fay Ripley, who plays a woman struggling with a stressful divorce. 

Doc Martin lasted so long for several very good and straightforward reasons: well-written scripts, lovely scenery and likeable characters brought to life by a solid cast, a cast spearheaded by Clunes exuding his uniquely lugubrious charisma. 

A warm, droll comedy drama with popular appeal, it achieved everything it ever set out to do.

Katie Price: Trauma and Me – Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

Last year, Katie Price experienced PTSD following a car accident. In this documentary, she talks about her ongoing mental health struggles. 

The programme wasn’t available in time for my deadline, but I’m flagging it up because Price is a very candid and thoughtful person. The documentaries she’s fronted in recent years have always been worthwhile. This one features contributions from Price’s parents, who express understandable concern about their daughter’s wellbeing. 

Price, as always, interviews and listens to people who are experiencing similar problems. They discuss the various triggers that can cause them to spiral, while highlighting the ways in which we can help ourselves and each other. 

I predict with some confidence that it will all be handled sensitively.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Ridley – Sunday 28th August, STV

I’m still not entirely convinced that this new crime drama starring Adrian Dunbar isn’t a masterfully deadpan post-modern parody of every cliché in the Sad Cop Bingo playbook. 

He plays former DI Alex Ridley, who recently lost his wife and daughter in an arson attack. Naturally, Ridley lives alone in a big expensive house on the banks of a picturesque lake while listening to mournful jazz records. 

His replacement on the force, a former protégé, entices the great Ridley out of retirement to help her solve some mystifying cases. Perhaps that will give him a new lease of life? 

I mean, really. Come on. Dunbar, a fine actor, deserves better than this. So do we. 

The Capture – Sunday 28th August and Monday 29th August, BBC One

It’s been three years since series one of this superior conspiracy thriller – its return was presumably delayed by the pandemic – hence why series two began with a very lengthy recap. That wasn’t necessary, as it revolves around a new case for counter terrorism agent Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger). 

Newcomers to the show would have experienced no problems following the action; the opening scene clearly established that the villains of the piece are capable of corrupting CCTV footage using sophisticated deepfake technology. The framed victim in this case is an up-and-coming government minister with ties to China. 

The Capture is a slick, smart confection that actually has something to say about real-world concerns surrounding data protection and surveillance.

TV Review: DOCTOR FOSTER and LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12 September 2015.

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

Doctor Foster: Wednesday, BBC One

Lady Chatterley's Lover: Sunday, BBC One

An agonisingly slow and implausible confection, Doctor Foster is a rare misfire from Suranne Jones. This fine actress usually chooses her projects wisely, but she's hopelessly adrift in this bone-dry drama about a GP who begins to suspect that her husband, Simon, is having an affair.

The brunt of episode one – God only knows how they'll stretch this out to five hours – was preoccupied with Foster floundering in a mire of paranoid anxiety, after she discovered a stray blonde hair on Simon's scarf. Most people wouldn't regard this as incriminating evidence of extra-marital misdeeds, but for some inexplicable reason Foster leapt instantly to that conclusion.

We were initially given no evidence to suggest that Simon was the philandering type, so Foster's behaviour – checking his phone, following him from work and even asking a patient to spy on him in exchange for sleeping pills – felt borderline deranged.

The idea behind this was obvious. We were supposed to feel as panicked, confused and compelled as she was. But the conceit backfired. You simply can't relate to a protagonist whose actions don't ring true. The tension evaporates.

It didn't matter that she was eventually proved right – there would be no story otherwise - as by that point she'd been established as weirdly unsympathetic. Hats off, then, to writer Mike Bartlett for managing the seemingly impossible feat of penning a drama about infidelity in which the wronged spouse comes across as a tiresome nuisance. He also proved that it's possible to be terminally dull and absurdly melodramatic all at once. That's quite an achievement.

I get the point he's trying to make: Foster's problems drive her towards the kind of self-destructive irrationality that she warns her hypochondriac patients about. Even a respectable, sensible GP can exploit their privilege and unravel in times of personal crisis. Should we ever fully trust these supposed pillars of society?

There's a potentially interesting story to be told here, but Bartlett botches it by forcing Foster into increasingly unlikely corners. Even allowing for her rattled mental state, the scene in which she threatened a patient's abusive boyfriend was preposterous. Maddening and enervating, the Doctor Foster “experience” is like churning through a very boring fever dream.

Having never read DH Lawrence's infamous book, I couldn't tell you if Lady Chatterley's Lover was a faithful adaptation or not. However, I feel I can state with some confidence that, notwithstanding a strong, elegant performance from apple-cheeked Holliday Grainger as Lady C, it resembled a live-action Mills & Boon novella with delusions of grandeur.

Its central theme of scandalous love and lust across the class divide in Edwardian England was blatantly present and correct. Subtlety wasn't invited to this particular party. Yet at no point did the rebellious relationship between the sexually frustrated Chatterley and chippy gamekeeper Mellors feel remotely organic or convincing.

As played by a bemused-looking Richard Madden, Mellors came across as a stridently humourless northern stereotype whose thrusting nipples strived in vain to compensate for a total lack of charisma.

I kept thinking how much more effective this production might have been with, say, Poldark's Aidan Turner filling Mellor's britches. The role as written was rather thankless, so Madden wasn't entirely to blame. But an actor of Turner's smouldering calibre could, perhaps, have made it work.

As it stood, this po-faced, inadvertently comical drama was, for a supposedly erotic drama, curiously cold and neutered. I know enough about the novel to appreciate its purpose as a transgressive, challenging work of art. Shorn of its deliberate shock value - sex and profanity were thin on the ground here - it seemed pointless.

It's the first offering from BBC One's new Sunday night slate of classic 20^th century literary adaptations. Things can only get better from here, right?