TV Review: SAFE HOUSE and W1A

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

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

Safe House: Monday, STV

W1A: Thursday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Christopher Eccleston, that esteemed grand dame of heavyweight British drama, returned to our screens last week in four-part thriller Safe House. He plays Robert, a former police officer cautiously approaching a quiet new existence with his wife in the Lake District.

Despite blaming himself for the death of a female witness in his care, Robert misses his old life on the force. So when his former boss suggested that their remote lakeside home would make an ideal safe house, he spied a chance to redeem himself. Though initially reluctant, his wife soon capitulated when the story deemed it necessary.

Keen to prove he'd left the past behind, Robert burned old newspaper cuttings about his murdered witness in a heavily symbolic garden bonfire.

Within a convenient matter of days, they were harbouring a family on the run from a creepily bearded stalker in an army-style parka (the internationally recognised uniform of a wrong 'un). “You're completely safe,” Robert assured them. “No one knows you're here.”

He might as well have chucked them in the lake himself.

While it's inevitable that old weird beard will eventually track them down, that doesn't excuse Safe House's fatal lack of tension.

Its shortcomings were encapsulated by one particularly clumsy moment of false suspense. When the youngest member of the family disappeared at the safe house, his anxious mother went searching for him. Inevitably, he was just outside playing football with Robert, safe from the clutches of an antagonist we knew to be miles away at the time. So what was the point?

Some mild intrigue is provided by hints that the family patriarch, also a policeman, might be involved in shady dealings. What does his assailant want from him? Why does the missing teenage son keep ignoring dad's calls? And how the hell did our hirsute parka fiend discover this lad with an ease that's eluded the police?

So far I'm not convinced that the answers, when they come, will be worth the wait.

Calling to mind a slow-moving remake of Cape Fear, this first instalment lacked the instant punch of recent TV thrillers such as Happy Valley and The Missing. Decent use is made of its beautifully gloomy location, and Eccleston does what's required of him. Frown, mostly. But this lukewarm potboiler is too mechanically calculating, too rote by half.

A spoof documentary set in BBC Broadcasting House, W1A returned with a typically amusing one-hour special in which our hapless team of media buffoons welcomed Prince Charles (just about) and wrestled with the issue of whether their Wimbledon coverage is “too white”.

While it could never be mistaken for savage satire, John Morton's Twenty Twelve sequel takes impudent delight in poking fun at its paymaster. It presents an abundantly accurate vision of the BBC as a well-meaning yet hopelessly gaffe-prone behemoth governed by desperate execs who don't know what they're doing.

A particularly timely gag involved a weekly damage limitation meeting about Jeremy Clarkson. Meanwhile, the running thread of commissioning endless regurgitations of the same celebrity-fronted, populist tripe reached farcical heights, i.e. Wimbledon coverage “judged” by Alan Sugar and fused with Strictly Come Dancing. Obvious? Sure. But still valid.

Morton's deliberately clumsy, tautological dialogue often irritates – not in the way it's supposed to – and I'll always be irked by W1A's rather cosy, self-congratulatory air: “Look at us making fun of ourselves! What great sports we are!”

But it'll do. For now.

TV Review: THE WIDOWER and W1A

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd March 2014.

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

The Widower: Monday, STV

W1A: Wednesday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

As anyone who's ever watched Take Me Out will attest, ITV is no stranger to the banality of evil. But nowhere is this theme better expressed than in the work of their undisputed king of true-life crime, Jeff Pope, whose list of credits include highly acclaimed dramas about the likes of Myra Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe and Fred West.

Whether as a writer or producer, the defining characteristic of Pope's work is its sensitivity. They may be torn from the headlines, but there is nothing sensational, exploitative or tabloid-esque about his dramas. Few of us would deny that we have a morbid fascination with killers and psychopaths, but Pope always manages to satisfy that impulse without being disrespectful to their victims.

And so it was with his latest effort, The Widower, in which Reece Shearsmith stars as convicted murderer Malcolm Webster. In 1993, this outwardly unremarkable man killed his first wife, Claire, for her life insurance. Having succeeded in passing it off as a tragic car accident – in reality he poisoned her – he then attempted to do the same to his second wife. He was eventually convicted for his crimes in 2011, 17 years after Claire's death.

How did he get away with it for so long? Pope and Shearsmith – a superb actor better known for his darkly comic roles in The League of Gentlemen and Inside No. 9 – did an effective job of illustrating Webster's plausible nature. Superficially charming and sympathetic, he duped his wives with ease. It's clear that these women weren't stupid or naïve. Rather, they were the helpless victims of an arch manipulator.

The scene in which Webster convincingly performed grief-stricken tears in the mirror, before switching them off in a flash, was particularly chilling. But it also contained a trace of black, queasy comedy, of the type that Shearsmith is known for. Both he and Pope realise that even the most appalling events can have an undercurrent of bleak humour. That such moments never came across as distasteful is testament to their careful handling of the material.

If Shearsmith's performance at times felt ever-so-slightly theatrical, I took that as a deliberate choice on the actor's part. Webster, after all, was a man who was constantly performing. A congenital liar and dangerous fantasist, his entire existence was founded on duplicity. Shearsmith's embodiment of this murderous Walter Mitty is never less than mesmerising.

A strange story skilfully told, The Widower exerts an uncomfortable pull.

A sequel to the affable sitcom Twenty Twelve, W1A deposits Ian Fletcher, the former Head of Olympic Deliverance, into the bowels of the BBC as their newly installed Head of Values.

Anyone expecting a savage media satire would've been disappointed. But that's not really writer/director John Morton's style. He's more interested in poking sly fun at corporate gibberish and incompetency. Fine, just as long as it's funny.

But therein lies the problem: the jokes are far too obvious. The concept of Britain's Tastiest Village may be an accurate parody of bland, populist BBC output, but it's a cheap and easy gag.

Plus Morton's signature writing style, that tortured stew of deliberately clumsy language, has finally worn out its welcome. It no longer surprises or amuses, and narrator David Tennant always sounds like he's winking knowingly at the audience.

It's frustrating, as the rest of the cast are impeccable. But they can't do much with such underwhelming material.