THE OUTLAWS + BLAIR & BROWN: THE NEW LABOUR REVOLUTION + CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 23rd October 2021.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Outlaws – Monday, BBC One, 9pm

An agreeable comedy thriller co-devised by writer/director Stephen Merchant, The Outlaws follows a group of strangers doing community service in Bristol. 

Our mismatched antiheroes are: an obnoxious Daily Mail-reading businessman; a militant left-wing black woman; a studious Asian teenager who shoplifts as a cry for help; a damaged reality TV star; a black teen from a high-rise estate who’s in trouble with a local gang (Merchant’s co-writer Elgin James is a former gang member); Merchant himself playing a variation on his usual blundering character; and a roguish ex-con played by Christopher Walken (yes, really). 

It’s knowingly presented as a microcosm of modern Britain, albeit one inhabited by Christopher Walken. The entire premise is fraught with potential embarrassment, but Merchant and James are clearly coming from a good place. The results are rather sweet, sharp and addictive.

Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

The penultimate episode of this riveting series confronts Blair’s defining legacy: the war in Iraq. It gradually becomes a psychological study of this haunted man, as he struggles to present his case for the defence. 

Blair trots out his familiar spiel, presumably honed over several sleepless nights. “I think about the decision and its consequences virtually every day,” he says. But still he can’t fully admit that he made a catastrophic mistake. 

Clare Short, who resigned in opposition to the war, reveals that there was no serious plan in place to take care of the Iraqi people once Saddam was dethroned. “Which is disgraceful,” she sighs. Brown, meanwhile, more or less admits that the government’s actions “were not proportionate.”  

Curb Your Enthusiasm – Monday, Sky Showcase, 10:40pm

It’s (somewhat) remarkable to consider that this impeccable sitcom has been running, off and on, for over 20 years. It’s always a pleasure when another season rolls around, as Larry David and co rarely disappoint. 

The latest run begins with an episode titled The Five Foot Fence. I wish I could tell you what this entails, but unfortunately preview copies weren’t available. However, I'm fairly certain it will involve comical misunderstandings, ludicrous petty grievances and various characters losing patience with our hero. Guest stars this year include Jon Hamm, Woody Harrelson and Tracey Ullman. 

Curb Your Enthusiasm is an A-grade farce orchestrated by a true comic maestro; how blessed are we to live in its epoch.

Who Do You Think You Are? – Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

TV’s ever-popular celebrity gene-fest continues with a particularly poignant episode in which TV presenter and former England footballer Alex Scott finds out more about her Jewish and Jamaican ancestry. 

She’s proud to discover that her great grandfather fought against Mosley’s fascists during the Battle of Cable Street. The other side of her family were part of the Windrush generation, but up until now she’s never known anything about their lives in Jamaica. 

The story she uncovers during her visit there is terribly sad on a number of levels. It involves slavery, poverty and mental illness. This is Who Do You Think You Are? at its best: a sensitive and perceptive piece of far-reaching history.

Impeachment: American Crime Story – Tuesday, BBC Two, 9:15pm

In episode two of this darkly comic drama about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the protagonists finally meet. It charts the early stages of their clandestine affair, during which the unworldly Lewinsky fell for a powerful and utterly disingenuous man who made her feel special. We’re essentially watching a predator grooming his victim. 

Meanwhile, the press start to dig into allegations of sexual harassment. Clive Owen is very good as sleazebag Clinton, he captures his husky snake oil charm to a tee. 

But the star turn once again is Sarah Paulson as the Machiavellian Linda Tripp, who looks and operates in ways not dissimilar to Pauline from The League of Gentlemen. She’s sad yet formidable. It’s an outstanding performance.

My Kind of Town – Wednesday, BBC Scotland, 8pm

Cumnock in Ayrshire is famed for coalmining and being the home of Labour Party founder Keir Hardie. But there’s more to it than that. 

As Glasgow prepares to host COP26, the latest UN conference on climate change, Cumnock is in the process of becoming Scotland’s first green town; hopefully a blueprint for communities in the rest of the country. 

In episode one of this new series, genial host Ian Hamilton and his guide dog Major find out how Cumnock has changed in the 40 years since Thatcher closed the pits. Thankfully, it seems to be thriving. 

Now the UK’s largest manufacturer of fire engines, the factory in question is pioneering the use of zero emission electric vehicles. 

Peckham’s Finest – Wednesday, ITV2, 10pm

This buoyant reality show focuses on various young black people living in the London district of Peckham. They’re a likeable bunch; spending time with them just shooting the breeze and going about their daily business is a thoroughly pleasant experience. 

This week, pole dancer Kelechi teaches a class for two plus-sized women who want to feel better about themselves. It’s a success. Meanwhile, DJ and local radio presenter Gilly hopes to give something back to his community by creating a new creative hub for local kids; a place that will inspire them. 

Peckham’s Finest is a refreshingly positive endeavour. There is no manufactured drama or conflict, it seeks only to spread good cheer. Imagine that!

LAST WEEK’S TV

The Trick – Monday 18th October, BBC One

In 2009, shortly before the UN summit on climate change, hackers stole thousands of emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. The perpetrators were climate change deniers who falsely claimed that the emails contained proof that global warming is a lie. 

This standalone drama revisited ‘Climategate’ from the perspectives of those directly caught up in it, chief among them Professor Philip Jones (the brilliant Jason Watkins), a respected scientist who suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the attack. 

A hugely important subject, but unfortunately it was handled in a frustratingly unfocused and stiffly expositional way. Jones was the emotional core, but too often it strayed away from him. A well-intentioned disappointment.

The Love Trap – Wednesday 20th October, Channel 4

One handsome eligible bachelor. A mansion full of beautiful women. Yes, this new series is just never-ending American reality series The Bachelor in thinly disguised UK trousers. But it’s worse. Much worse. 

Half of the women, we're told, are there for a legitimate chance of romance, but the other 50% are only interested in the prize money. It’s up to our personality-deficient hunk to decide who’s on the level and who should literally be dropped through a trapdoor. I wish I was making this up. Begone, gold-digging woman! Truly a misogynist’s dream. 

What an idiotic, offensive and profoundly depressing misfire. It’s 2021. We’re supposed to be better than this.

TV Review: LINE OF DUTY + MRS BROWN + DECLINE AND FALL

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1 April 2017.

LINE OF DUTY: Sunday, BBC One

ALL ROUND TO MRS BROWN’S: Saturday, BBC One

DECLINE AND FALL: Friday, BBC One

The greatest British crime drama of the last ten years, LINE OF DUTY showed no signs of fatigue as its fourth series began. On the contrary, this former BBC Two blockbuster celebrated its promotion to BBC One with breakneck brio and commendable confidence.

The basic formula may be familiar by now – an ambiguous senior police officer is investigated by the dogged anti-corruption unit that links each semi-standalone series – but writer/director Jed Mercurio still takes evident delight in grabbing our attention with tantalising mysteries and shocking twists.

It’s essentially a propulsive thrill ride anchored by a solid base of research-driven authenticity: a practically seamless fusion of sombre reality and borderline deranged melodrama.

So, while this year’s intriguingly topical theme appears to be the inherent dangers of “post-fact” duplicity – Line of Duty has always fed off our gnawing fears about establishment corruption and cover-ups - episode one kicked off with a literally explosive hunt for an alleged serial killer, and climaxed with a shady forensic co-ordinator (the great Jason Watkins) attempting to chop his apparently dead boss (Thandie Newton) into pieces, before she suddenly awoke as his electric saw whirred inches from her skull.

Mercurio is notorious for misdirecting viewers with such audacious cliffhangers, but they still work beautifully (even if they don’t quite stand up to logical scrutiny).

The episode wasn’t perfect – some of the exposition was needlessly heavy-handed, the physical encounter between Watkins and Newton was awkwardly directed, and Scottish actor Paul Higgins continues to struggle with a stiff, unconvincing English accent – but these are mere quibbles in the face of its tightly controlled tension and sheer entertainment value.

A nail-bitten nation will doubtless become hooked all over again for the next six weeks.

Brendan O’Carroll is clearly some kind of genius. Not when it comes to comedy – he’s a dreadful, lazy chancer - but for the way he’s managed to vigorously milk the Mrs Brown cash cow far beyond its natural shelf-life as a tawdry touring theatre production.

Despite being reviled by most critics and discerning comedy fans, he’s one of the BBC’s most popular entertainers. Despairing of his success is as futile as moaning about wretched weather. It’s an immovable fact of life, you may as well accept it.

But that doesn’t mean you have to accept his latest vehicle, ALL ROUND TO MRS BROWN’S, as anything other than a post-Brexit vision of Hell.

With minimal effort he’s tweaked his knicker-dropping, feck-spewing, single entendre sitcom by adding sketches, games, a cookery segment, easily pleased audience interaction and dynamite celebrity guests of the Pamela Anderson, James Blunt, Louis Walsh, Judy Murray and Judy Murray’s mum variety.

As usual, it’s staggeringly charmless, depressing and unfunny, but his target audience will lap it up. The rest of us are merely baffled bystanders in O’Carroll’s all-conquering world.

As if to prove that comedy of wit and distinction still has a home on BBC One, a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s darkly satirical novel DECLINE AND FALL introduced itself with reassuring aplomb. Despite being written in 1928, Waugh’s astringently comic assault on elitism and prejudice feels fresher than O’Carroll’s grimly old-fashioned revue.

A perfectly-chosen cast of peerless character actors is led by Jack Whitehall as a hapless young schoolmaster drowning in a quagmire of corrupt, dissolute British eccentricity.

Deftly performed, written and directed – you can practically taste the stench of whisky, lunacy and crumbling despair - it’s a genuinely funny farce of the type they supposedly don’t make any more.

Granted, it’s based on an 89-year-old novel, but any primetime BBC comedy involving an alcoholic schoolmaster shooting a pupil in the foot with a starting pistol is all right by me.  

TV Review: SECRET LIFE OF THE HUMAN PUPS + LOVE, NINA

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 28th May 2016.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/178411/tv-reviews-secret-life-human-pups-surprisingly-sympathetic/

Secret Life of the Human Pups: Wednesday, Channel 4

Love, Nina: Friday, BBC One

We all want to be seen as different in some way, as unique individuals set apart from the masses. Some choose to express their iconoclasm by wearing humorous socks or pretending to enjoy experimental jazz. Others make a stand against conformity by dressing up in tight-fighting rubber dog costumes. Whatever works.

Despite its voyeuristic premise, Secret Life of the Human Pups took a sympathetic look at a growing subculture of men who live unusual double lives. Although it sprang from the underground fetish scene, it seems that for most human pups in the UK – current membership, around 10,000 – it’s not about sexual gratification.

Many of them are bored. They enjoy adopting a canine alter ego as a way of escaping from the dreary pressures of life. Whereas some people take the edge off with drugs and booze, these chaps take the healthier option of having their bellies rubbed by designated handlers. Others suffer from social anxiety. Theoretically, escaping into another identity and meeting likeminded, non-judgemental believers should improve their self-esteem. Just another form of cosplay, it all seems fairly harmless.

Of course, any practice deemed outside the accepted parameters of society will always come at a price for some. Tom, who sleeps in a cage – despite evidence to the contrary, he insists it’s perfectly comfortable – was last year honoured as the first ever Mr Puppy UK.

But Tom’s doggy desires destroyed his romantic relationship with Rachel, to whom he was once engaged. She’s still his best friend, but her sadness was palpable. “It would be a nice thing to have him back,” she sighed, as Tom prepared to compete for Mr Puppy Europe.

Back in Britain, it was telling that when a handler arranged for a group of them to take their first walk in public, only two of the 50 applicants turned up. While it was brave of these men to expose themselves on camera, their reticence to risk public wrath is understandable.

Personally, I suspect that most people don’t really care if grown men want to dress up as dogs for kicks. They’re not harming anyone, after all. What is normal anyway?

Thankfully, that was the position the programme took. While it didn’t ignore the innate humour of their fetish – it’s not as if human pups take themselves entirely seriously either – it didn’t poke fun at them. To each dog their own.

Adapted by Nick Hornby from Nina Stibbe’s autobiographical book about her time spent as a nanny for a well-heeled London family in 1982, Love, Nina is a comedy-drama which just about stays afloat on a waft of gentle charm.

A no-nonsense lass from Leicester – The Generic North, in other words – Nina looks after the precocious/annoying young sons of an elegantly lonely single mum (Helena Bonham Carter) while fending off snobbish putdowns from the gossipy Scottish poet next door (Jason Watkins, playing a character loosely based on Alan Bennett).

Despite being the living definition of a comedy designed to provoke, at best, wry smiles instead of laughs – it’s all very Radio 4; a so-so Brit flick in episodic form – it ambles along inoffensively.

But current BBC comedies such as Going Forward and Mum are far more effective in wringing subtle humour from character detail and social observations. Love, Nina, by comparison, is too whimsical, too insubstantial, to make much of an impression.  

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.