MAX CLIFFORD: THE FALL OF A TABLOID KING + WHY IS COVID KILLING PEOPLE OF COLOUR?

This article was originally published in The Courier on 26th February 2021. 

THIS WEEK'S TV

Max Clifford: The Fall of a Tabloid King – Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

This excoriating documentary delves into the sordid cesspit of Clifford’s life. The now dead publicist was a vile human being: an amoral hypocrite, bully and narcissist; a psychopath; a pervert; a paedophile. Much like Savile, he hid in plain sight. 

Clifford revelled in power and the fear he wrought. A self-styled arch-manipulator, this arrogant media gangster thought he was untouchable. So no wonder we all enjoyed some schadenfreude when he was eventually exposed and incarcerated. 

But, via testaments from some of his identity-protected victims, the programme paints a bigger and far more important picture of an evil man who was kept afloat for years by our complicit media. It’s the antithesis of Clifford’s philosophy. It prints the truth.

Why is Covid Killing People of Colour? – Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

“As a 55-year-old black man,” says actor David Harewood, “I am three times more likely to die from Covid-19 than a white man of my age.” To find out more about the reasons behind this stark statistic, he talks to various doctors and scientists, as well as people of colour who have lost loved ones during the pandemic. 

It’s an angering expose of health inequality in Britain. 

“Race is a biological fiction,” says one doctor of Indian origin. Instead, this is a systemic sociological issue rooted in decades of economic and racial discrimination. People of colour are more likely to work in lower-paying frontline roles, where protective conditions are often woefully inadequate. A national scandal.

DNA Family Secrets – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

This touching series is basically ITV’s Long Lost Families in newly upholstered trousers. But that’s fine, it works. In recent years, the growing popularity of genetic testing has given us unprecedented access to our ancestry. 

In episode one, host Stacey Dooley meets Bill, a mixed-race man who has never met his African-American father, and Richard, who recently discovered that he’s not biologically related to the man who raised him. He also learns that he may have a half-brother. Bill and Richard gain some comfort from their findings, but some of the surprises are overwhelming. 

Dooley also meets Charlie, a young wife and mother with a 50% chance of inheriting her father’s Huntingdon’s Disease. It’s an emotionally-charged hour of television.

The Terror – Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Medals will be awarded to anyone who manages to endure episode one of this frost-bitten period drama for more than ten minutes. I had to watch the whole thing, because that’s what they pay me for. 

In 1845, two Royal Navy ships embarked upon a pioneering mission to navigate through the Arctic. They never returned. There’s a potentially interesting story here, but it’s (sigh) tragically capsized by a mannered, arid screenplay. There is no heart, no soul. Zero momentum, nothing to cling on to. It’s just an indistinct procession of liveried characters whispering at each other in gloomy gas-lit cabins. 

The only highlight is a scurvy-ridden crewmember suffering a sub-Lynchian hallucination. A tedious voyage of the damned.

The Pandemic at No. 47 – Wednesday, Channel 4, 10pm

Director Paddy Wivvel usually makes documentaries set in prisons and psychiatric hospitals. This time he focuses on his own privileged London neighbourhood during the first national lockdown. 

Despite its friendly outward appearance, this isn’t a cosy close-knit community at all. Most of Wivvel’s neighbours have never met each other before. As the programme unfolds, he talks to frightened people who have lost loved ones to Covid. He also pays lip service to the debilitating psychological effects of loneliness and isolation. 

But halfway through I began to suspect that it was a sly piece of social satire: a parody of upper middle-class foolishness. It is not. Honestly, some of the people Wivvel meets are like ridiculous characters from a sketch show penned by Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse.

LAST WEEK'S TV

Bloodlands – Sunday 21st February, BBC One

This ham-fisted thriller stars James Nesbitt in none-more-glowering mode as a policeman whose wife was murdered by a serial killer during The Troubles. Everyone he meets never tires of reminding him about this. He’s a haunted man. A. Haunted. Man. Got that? Good. 

The subject matter is deadly serious, I’m not making light of that at all, but Bloodlines makes a mockery of whatever its fundamental intentions were. Cliché is piled upon cliché: a deadpan Leslie Nielsen comedy without the jokes. 

I like Nesbitt. Give him a good script and he’ll deliver, but this is a turgid mess. Jed Mercurio of Line of Duty fame is one of the executive producers. It’s aiming for that sense of kinetic gravitas. It misses. It’s drivel.

Chris Packham’s Animal Einsteins – Sunday 21st February, BBC Two

Who are nature’s cleverest creatures? For too long dolphins have dominated the natural world’s mastermind rankings: now, via this lively fact-packed series, it’s time to celebrate their unsung rivals. 

Each week, using innovative scientific techniques, that nice Chris Packham and a dedicated team of researchers carry out a variety of intelligence tests. 

The undoubted highlight of episode one was the carefully controlled experiment which revealed that bees have enough brainpower to count from zero to five, a basic skill they use to their advantage in the wild. What’s more, their intelligence levels are flexible enough to understand the rudiments of football (sort of). 

Packham, a naturally engaging teacher, is in his educational element here.

 

 

 

 

 

TV Review: FLOWERS + THE SECRET

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 30th April 2016.

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

Flowers: Monday to Friday, Channel 4

The Secret: Friday, STV

Destined to be dimly recalled in years to come as “that rubbish with Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt”, Flowers was a black comedy misfire which somehow managed to be overcooked and under-powered simultaneously.

Channel 4 trailed it as an ambitious piece of event television, hence why they stripped all six episodes throughout the week. But I suspect the real reason for that was to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

A sort of rural British Addams Family, it followed a dysfunctional brood as they fell apart in a claustrophobic country house. Spending time in their company was immensely trying. Black comedy characters don’t have to be likeable, but they need to be interesting. This lot were miserable bores who it was impossible to care about.

Barratt, who’s very good at looking lost, played the depressed author of a popular range of children’s books. His failed suicide attempt came back to haunt him throughout the series, leading to a comical misunderstanding involving a child and a “secret magic snake” with a punchline so blatantly sign-posted it was visible from space.

Writer/director Will Sharpe tried far too hard to present Flowers as weirdly subversive, but the weirdness felt incredibly forced. It wasn’t funny enough to succeed as comedy, and too alienating to work as a serious study of clinical depression. He did manage to conjure a pleasingly gloomy bucolic atmosphere, but his script was an overbearing, tonally confused mess.

And what on earth was going on with the wacky Japanese houseboy/illustrator? A borderline dubious racial stereotype, his jarring presence was typical of Sharpe’s tendency to overdo things in the wrong direction. Sharpe, who is English/Japanese, actually played this character himself, but despite some laboured attempts to imbue him with pathos, the performance didn’t work. Almost nothing in Flowers did.

Its sole saving grace was a typically superb performance from Dame Olivia Colman. Making full use of her wonderfully expressive face, her beaming mask of sunny desperation was constantly under attack from her cracked inner turmoil and passive-aggressive undertow. Performing on the verge of hysteria is something she excels at, but in this case her brilliance far exceeded her tiresome material.

Fact: you’re only ever five minutes away from yet another brooding drama starring James Nesbitt. His latest salvo of grim intensity is The Secret, a superior thriller set in Troubles-era Northern Ireland in which he (and his fascinating hair transplant) plays a seemingly respectable pillar of his local Baptist Church. But as he embarks on an affair with another married member of the church, his true psychotic character gradually becomes apparent.

Based on a horrifying true story, this righteous attack on religious hypocrisy works because it manages to fuse its underlying ire with a bleakly compelling storyline and morally complex characters. Largely shorn of incidental music, its queasy hand-held quality creates an unforgiving sense of realism.

Without being overdone, the Troubles backdrop exacerbates the sense of a world in which violence and murder are a means to an end.

It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Nesbitt’s role, as it fully exploits his ability to appear outwardly charming while masking a dark, disturbing core. The great Jason Watkins also stands out as a creepily controlling pastor/cult leader.

The BBC have led the way with drama this year, but The Secret should be a deserved hit for ITV. Despite its bland, forgettable title, it’s an impressive piece of work.

TV Review: THE MISSING and INTRUDERS

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 1st November 2014.

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

The Missing: Tuesday, BBC One

Intruders: Monday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

There is something uniquely visceral about stories involving vanished loved ones. The thought of losing someone through unexplained circumstances is a terror we can all relate to. So much so, it doesn't bear thinking about.

Thank heavens, then, for fictional drama! Like an unflattering mirror, it reflects those fears from a safe, if queasy, distance. Two new shows explored this area last week, albeit in markedly different styles.

Promising eight-part thriller The Missing stars the excellent James Nesbitt on suitably fraught and haunted form as the father of an abducted child. Five year-old Oliver was snatched during a happy family holiday to France in 2006. While standing in a crowded pub showing World Cup coverage, Tony (Nesbitt) suddenly noticed that Oliver was missing. There one moment, gone the next.

This impressively handled sequence tracked Tony's rising panic as he frantically searched their holiday resort. Every parent's nightmare writ large.

From there we switched between 2006 and the present day, where Tony, burdened with guilt, has become a heavy-drinking loner obsessively trawling the town where Oliver was last seen. His refusal to let go had torn his marriage apart, forcing his ex into the arms of the (rather creepy) British police liaison officer responsible for Oliver's case.

This plot point struck a rather jarring note, as did the highly convenient twist of tracing Oliver's movements through a second-hand shop with meticulously thorough records of sale. What's more – and call me a heartless monster if you will – the cliff-hanger discovery of Oliver's drawing of jug-eared daddy on a basement wall was, I'm afraid, borderline comical.

There's nothing funny about the subject matter, of course, but the execution was slightly overcooked at times. With such a sensitive issue at its core, sibling writers Harry and Jack Williams – who up until now have a background in mediocre comedy - need to tread very carefully.

Fortunately, The Missing is carefully handled for the most part. Niggling missteps aside, it's an engrossing mystery with a powerful emotional kick. While it remains to be seen if they can sustain this story over eight hours, for now it contains enough dark hints and unanswered questions to maintain a hefty sense of intrigue.

Incidentally, aside from its self-evident basis in the Madeleine McCann case, The Missing may be partly inspired by a little-seen yet painfully affecting independent film from 2004 called Keane, featuring a tour de force performance from Damian Lewis. For connoisseurs of bleak art, it comes highly recommended.

Tentatively, I'll make a similar claim for Intruders. Not for the faint-hearted, it's a grisly conspiracy thriller rooted in horror and sci-fi in which John Simm – passable US accent and all – plays a former cop on the hunt for his missing wife.

That's the simplified synopsis. What Intruders is really about is anyone's guess at this stage, although the concept of reincarnation is obviously key to its mystery.

Written by X Files alumnus Glen Morgan and directed by Eduardo 'The Blair Witch Project' Sanchez, its chilly, disquieting atmosphere is occasionally punctured by blunt bursts of violence. I knew I was watching an unconventional drama when at one point it looked as though we were about to see a child being murdered in cold blood. NB: we weren't.

A hint of dark humour undermines Intruders' more portentous leanings, and the central conceit of a shadowy underground organisation visiting homes and murdering the inhabitants is fundamentally chilling. Let's just hope it doesn't descend into abject bloody nonsense, as these things often tend to.

TV Review: BABYLON and LINE OF DUTY

This article was originally published in the Courier on 15th February 2014.

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

Babylon: Sunday, Channel 4

Line of Duty: Wednesday, BBC2

Given the current weight of controversy surrounding police misconduct and media chicanery, you'd think an incisive black comedy satirising the whole sorry mess was just begging to be made. Unfortunately, Babylon isn't it.

Billed as a comedy-drama, the pilot failed to make much impact as either. Although clearly not intended as a rib-tickling farce, the stabs at humour were curiously mannered and self-conscious.

A scene in which Metropolitan Police chiefs were confused by incoming reports of a shooting spree was particularly laboured. And James Nesbitt, as a beleaguered police chief, delivering a convoluted description of what would befall him if he erroneously issued a citywide lock-down felt like an awkward barrage of watered-down The Thick of It.

This is hard to forgive, seeing as Babylon was written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, both of whom worked on Armando Iannucci's exemplary political satire. It was like a weak tribute to their own work. Creators of the excellent Peep Show, they also collaborated with Chris Morris on his thoughtful suicide bomber comedy Four Lions. Their CV speaks for itself.

And yet Babylon took tantalising elements from their previous efforts and squandered their potential. Poorly plotted and characterised, it was a tonally confused, boring mess.

Largely set in the Met's communications department, its tackling of PR, spin and corporate gobbledegook felt awfully rote and familiar. Lines such as “This is so far off the record even I don't know I'm saying it” were the stuff of half-hearted fan fiction.

Director Danny Boyle – yes, that one – did at least succeed in providing a surface sheen of energy to Babylon's hectic world of rolling news, camera phones and Twitter And the overall point about the police struggling to project an image of honesty and transparency in a world increasingly monitored by the media and a tech-savvy public was, while crushingly obvious, adequately delivered.

As a state-of-the-nation address, however, it was limp and underwhelming: a missed opportunity. Its depiction of the police may be fair – like any sprawling institution, it's populated by terrible idiots and well-meaning professionals – but Babylon rang hollow as comedy, character drama and social commentary.

By sheer coincidence, the ethical failings of the police were addressed in another TV highlight this week. But Line of Duty is a far more assured and enjoyable affair.

A satisfyingly self-contained story, series one of this dynamic thriller was hardly begging for a sequel. But on the evidence of episode one, series two promises to be just as compelling.

Once again based around a British police force anti-corruption unit, it introduced Keeley Hawes as an apparently conscientious officer suspected of involvement in the violent death of three colleagues and a mysterious witness.

As before, writer Jed Mercurio established an intriguing guessing game riddled with unexpected twists. The biggest shock of all, and one that left me grinning from its sheer audacity, was the cliffhanger death of Call the Midwife's Jessica Raine, who'd only just been introduced as a major new character.

Although I should've seen it coming – Mercurio pulled off the same trick in series one with Gina McKee's character – it still worked beautifully as a devilish bit of rug-pulling.

That barely controlled yet confident sense of anything-goes mania is what sets Line of Duty apart from the vast majority of UK cop shows. It shows Babylon how it's done.