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 GREAT FIRE and GOTHAM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 18th October 2014.

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

The Great Fire: Thursday, STV

Gotham: Monday, Five

Paul Whitelaw

While trudging through the first half of The Great Fire last week, it struck me that the reason why no one has ever produced a drama about the Great Fire of London before is because the man who accidentally started it, baker Thomas Farriner, is an exceptionally dull protagonist.

Though I appreciate that every good disaster flick must first put all its characters in place before hurling them into chaos, most of episode one was bogged down with Farriner fretting over his terminated contract with the Royal Navy. Call me an impatient thrill-seeker if you like, but it was hardly the stuff of scintillating drama.

As played by Andrew Buchan, replete with anachronistic haircut, Farriner moped around his Pudding Lane bakery in the company of an entirely fictional sister-in-law – it appears that writer Tom Bradby, ITN's Political Editor no less, was moved to invent a sub-plot involving Farriner's dead brother in the hope of jazzing things up a bit. It didn't work. I know it's wrong, but I was desperate for the actual blaze to erupt so as to escape from this dreary storyline.

More interesting by far were the political shenanigans taking place in the court of Charles II (Jack Huston from Boardwalk Empire on suitably foppish form), where Lord Charles of the Dance expertly sold every brooding moment of ambiguous skulduggery.

Daniel Mays, too, is typically excellent as the King's forthright confidante, Samuel Pepys. Traditionally depicted as a bawdy, rather comical figure, this iteration of Pepys is more morally questionable. Though fundamentally decent and wise, his behaviour at times is deplorable. The scene in which he slept with a woman while her paid-off husband seethed in the next room was bizarrely arresting and uncomfortable.

Given his political background, it's hardly surprising that Bradby has opted to draw blatant parallels between the state of the nation in 1666 and Britain today. While I hesitate to describe it as subversive, The Great Fire is unusual for an ITV drama in that it openly critiques the injustice of a ruling elite of uncaring toffs living high on the hog while the poorest members of society are left to rot and burn. Rife with sectarianism and paranoid xenophobia, it's depressing to note how so little has changed over almost 400 years.

It's unfortunate, then, that Bradby's ambition is undermined by some terrible, clunking exposition and his rather bland depiction of the proletariat. His heart is in the right place, but he's obviously more excited by the vile machinations of the periwigged brigade.

Still, it's early days. Perhaps Buchan's Farriner will come into his own in later episodes. When his bakery finally went up in flames – at last! - we were treated to a suitably dramatic sequence in which he escaped from an attic window with his terrified daughters in tow. With a bit of morbid, harrowing luck, the nightmarish horror of the Great Fire will presumably be explored in due course.

In a busy week for urban hell-holes, Batman prequel Gotham proved that, in the hands of a hack, even the most intriguing premise can be squandered. An abject disappointment, this laughable drama has more in common with a stilted daytime soap than the smart, gritty, comic book noir that any reasonable person would expect.

It's well cast, and the production design is impressive, but the earnest dialogue is atrocious. Basically little more than a conventional, clichéd cop show, it's an unappetising turkey.