TV Review: McMAFIA + GIRLFRIENDS + DERRY GIRLS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 6th January 2018.

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

McMAFIA: New Year’s Day and Tuesday, BBC One

GIRLFRIENDS: Wednesday, STV

DERRY GIRLS: Thursday, Channel 4

A monumental bore of global proportions, McMAFIA is a turgid crime drama which proves that it’s possible to surf a wave of hype while wearing concrete boots.

Two years ago, the BBC scored a direct hit with the similarly expensive The Night Manager. The only chance McMafia has of emulating that success is if millions of viewers suddenly develop an inexplicable urge to watch one-dimensional gangsters discussing investment funds and business mergers.

The non-fiction book it’s based on claims that organised crime accounts for roughly 15% of the world’s GDP. A potentially ripe source of drama, but McMafia fails to deliver on its promise. There are no characters to care about. It’s utterly soulless, a slowly meandering iceberg.

James Norton, an otherwise versatile actor, looks hopelessly lost in the underwritten central role of a successful British-born investment banker who can’t escape from his Russian family’s mafia connections. Like young Michael Corleone from The Godfather, he wants to stay legit, but they keep pulling him back in. That’s where comparisons with The Godfather end.

Norton wanders through an interminable procession of ham-fisted scenes stolen from countless other gangster dramas. The uninvolving narrative flits between Mumbai, London, Tel Aviv, Moscow - everyone’s talking ‘bout Pop Muzik! – in a doomed attempt to conjure a sense of epic scale. It makes most of Daniel Craig’s Bond films look exciting by comparison.

Slow-burning dramas only work when they’re fuelled by atmosphere, intrigue, tension and emotion, all of which are conspicuously absent from this frozen turkey.

Occasionally, a jolt of violent action will occur. These moments don’t succeed as shocking flashpoints breaking a spell of finely-tuned suspense, they’re just a cattle-prod used to keep us awake. McMafia is an empty bottle of expensive vodka. What a way to bring in the New Year.

Does Kay Mellor ever sleep? She seems to average at least two hit dramas per year. Her most recent series, Love, Lies and Records, ended just before Christmas. Now she’s back with GIRLFRIENDS, in which Phyllis Logan, Miranda Richardson and Zoe Wanamaker star as three life-long pals in their late fifties.

Mellor tackles her driving theme of age discrimination with typical compassion and humour. When Linda (Logan) loses her beloved husband in mysterious circumstances, she finds herself alone for the first time in 30 years. Gail (Wanamaker) is recently divorced, and no longer feels desirable. Sue (Richardson) is the glamorous features editor of a bridal magazine – she’s never been married – who fears growing old and dying alone.

They’ve been forced to feel irrelevant by a society that discards women when they reach a certain age. Older men are allowed the luxury of becoming distinguished. Older women become invisible. Girlfriends is a cry of anger and frustration in the covert guise of a populist drama. It’s far more important than McMafia.

So is DERRY GIRLS, a very funny, smart and charming new sitcom about a misfit gang of Catholic teenagers in the Troubles-torn Northern Ireland of the mid-1990s.

These kids aren’t defined by their bleak backdrop and religious upbringing, it’s just part of their everyday lives. They struggle with the same growing pains as everyone else. Adolescence is universal, regardless of theological or political context.

Written by Lisa McGee, this semi-autobiographical farce fizzes with cheerful profanities and affectionate observations. Her engaging characters are vividly performed by an excellent cast. The unforced period detail is commendably accurate. The tone – darkness swaddled in warmth - is perfectly pitched. Derry Girls is a delight.

TV Review: LOVE, LIES AND RECORDS + HOWARDS' END

This article was originally published in The Courier on 18th November 2017.

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

LOVE, LIES AND RECORDS: Thursday, BBC One

HOWARDS’ END: Sunday, BBC One

A Register Office is such an obvious setting for a TV show, it’s surprising that LOVE, LIES AND RECORDS is the first of its kind.

Written by that grand maven of humane ensemble dramas Kay Mellor (Fat Friends; The Syndicate; In the Club), it seizes upon the narrative potential of a world in which a fresh batch of supporting characters, each with various births, marriages and deaths to deal with, can be introduced every week.

It boasts a typically natural, likeable performance from Ashley Jensen as kindly Kate, a senior registrar at Leeds City Hall. When she’s promoted to Superintendent, a disgruntled colleague (Rebecca Front on bitterly tight-lipped form) threatens to blackmail her by exposing CCTV footage of Kate and a male colleague indulging in a drunken tryst at the office Christmas party.

If this secret is revealed, it will destroy Kate’s career and her relationship with her partner.

Her guilt was compounded when she witnessed the bond between a young married couple with a newly born baby. The bride had terminal cancer, and died just hours after the wedding, thus forcing Kate to confront the brevity of existence.

Meanwhile, she grew suspicious when a nervous young Slovenian woman arrived at the office to register her marriage to an Iranian man. Kate wrestled with her liberal conscience: was she wrong to suspect that this arrangement wasn’t all that it seemed?

What’s more, a male friend and colleague, who’s married with children, announced that he would henceforth be dressing as a woman. Mellor being Mellor, this was all handled with the utmost sensitivity.

She has a gift for devising empathetic, troubled characters while smoothly weaving multiple story strands into a satisfying thematic whole. The humour in her work is never forced, she has an ear for the way people actually speak. Combine that trait with Jensen, an actor who always sounds like an actual human being, and you’ve got the ingredients for yet another engaging character drama from the venerable house of Mellor.

E.M Forster’s HOWARDS’ END is reputedly one of the greatest novels of the 20^th Century. Having never read it, I’m in no position to debate its reputation. However, I have seen the garlanded Merchant Ivory film version and episode one of the BBC’s new vaporous adaptation, both of which bored me rigid.

A tiresome tale of two wealthy families, it strikes me as nothing more than a group of introspective bohemian intellectuals mithering on about love, art and what it means to be human. Yes, I know that could also serve as a description of practically every Woody Allen film ever made, but at least his characters tend to be interesting.

I just can’t engage at all with this wooden shower of pampered dullards. Writer Kenneth Lornegan (author of the overrated Manchester By The Sea) fails to establish any reason for caring about them. Granted, the actors manage to avoid the staid pitfalls of so many English period dramas by delivering their dialogue in a semi-naturalistic, overlapping style. But that’s a minor technical detail, and no substitute for compelling characterisation and narrative.

Its themes are still relevant, so it should theoretically work. Our protagonist is an independent young woman struggling to achieve respect within a rigid, sexist patriarchy. Societal hypocrisy and the hardship of transcending class barriers are also on the table. But Howards’ End examines these issues in a fatally dreary, distancing way.

Bring back Howards’ Way, I’d rather watch that instead.

TV Review: THE SYNDICATE and VICIOUS

This article was originally published in The Courier on Saturday 7th June 2015.

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

The Syndicate: Tuesday, BBC One

Vicious: Monday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

What would you do if you won millions on the lottery? Like most good ideas, the premise behind writer/director Kay Mellor's The Syndicate is so simple, it's a wonder no one has thought of it before.

So far she's exploted two hit series from this universal fantasy, each starring a different cast of characters. Theoretically, it's a flexible, fecund format. But I'm not convinced that series three will continue her winning streak (I swear that's the only laboured lottery-themed metaphor in this review).

My problem lies not with the storyline – the staff at a stately home suddenly becoming richer than their employers is a strong idea – but with Mellor's treatment of certain characters. She can usually be relied upon to write about “ordinary” people without condescension, but I'm troubled by the presence of Lenny Henry as Godfrey the gardener, a kind of fantasy “idiot savant” in the Rain Man mould.

Are we to take it that Godfrey is placed somewhere on the autistic spectrum, hence why he's an obsessive mathematical theorist prone to sudden fits of rage? Well, I ask you, isn't that a dubious stereotype? It doesn't help that Henry plays him with a permanent expression of wounded surprise, as if befuddled by his character. Who can blame him?

I'm not sure what Mellor is playing at here, especially during those uncomfortable scenes where Godfrey basically lusts after Amy, the pretty teenage maid. Now, I trust Mellor to prove me wrong, but so far she's come perilously close to portraying Amy as a sexually precocious brat just asking for trouble. Sure enough, she was apparently abducted at the end of episode one, possibly by her aggressive ex.

Bizarrely, this instinctively felt like the kind of knee-jerk moral judgement you'd find in a cheap slasher film: flaunt your sexuality, and you're mincemeat. And please, Mellor, spare us a hackneyed storyline involving poor, innocent Godfrey being falsely accused of abducting Amy. You're better than that.

Misgivings aside, I did enjoy certain aspects of the episode. Winningly, the upstairs-downstairs setting suggests a cynical, contemporary subversion of Downton Abbey. Mellor even made the comparison explicit, when the ailing Lord of the manor complained about a visiting American contingent: “They only come because they imagine they're in an episode of bloody Downton Abbey!”

And who plays his charmingly ruffled Lordship? Why, none other than stately period drama stalwart Anthony Andrews. His presence is another neatly self-referential touch; I hope the rest of the series builds upon its flashes of promise.

Is it too late to hope the same of Vicious? This defiantly camp, old-fashioned sitcom divides opinion, but for all its faults I enjoyed series one. All it needed was some fine tuning.

But even with the best will in the world – and lord knows I want Vicious to be better than it is – last week's return was a disappointment. Ian McKellan and Derek Jacobi are still an impeccably timed hoot as a fondly caustic gay couple, but without their sterling efforts Vicious would sink like a stone.

In a semi-amusing attempt to undermine criticism, this week it cheekily drew attention to the creaky contrivances of its own plot. But that kind of post-modernism only works with strong gags to support it.

Shameless, flawed and slick, Vicious makes not a jot of sense, and that's to its credit. But I wish it was funnier, if only to piss off those who foolishly believe that mirthless, single-camera sitcoms have usurped this classic form.

TV Review: IN THE CLUB and SIBLINGS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 9th August 2014.

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

In the Club: Tuesday, BBC One

Siblings: Thursday, BBC Three

Paul Whitelaw

Even without seeing her name in the credits, loyal TV hounds would've recognised In the Club as the work of Kay Mellor. From Band of Gold to Fat Friends and The Syndicate, her signature style runs as follows: assemble a group of predominantly female characters in an enclosed environment – a red-light district, a slimming club etc. - and trace their various ups and downs.

You could probably suggest any group setting to Mellor – a sewage farm, a terrorist cell, a UKIP sex cult – and she'd conjure a bittersweet ensemble drama around it. Not that she's a hack by any means. Her formula could easily come across as cynical were it not for her obvious gifts as a dramatist.

As evinced by episode one of this engaging drama, she has a knack for creating empathetic characters struggling with dire and unusual circumstances. That's more or less the essence of all drama, but Mellor harnesses it skilfully (for the most part: more on this later).

Her protagonists in this case are a group of pregnant women from different walks of life who come together via their weekly antenatal class. They include Katherine Parkinson as Kim, a gay woman carrying the child of a man who artificially inseminated her partner 15 years ago (a surprise twist revealed that Kim was actually impregnated by more traditional, furtive means), and Rosie, a bullied teenage girl who's been hiding her pregnancy from her widowed dad.

After seeking motherly advice via Kim's pregnancy blog, Rosie burst into the class having gone into labour. Despite her trauma, she gave birth to a healthy baby as kindly Kim leant support. So far, so acceptably dramatic.

Unfortunately, Mellor – who also directs – spiralled into inadvertent camp during a climactic, winsomely-scored montage in which Rosie's dad crashed his van as his daughter nurtured her newborn in hospital. Have this poor family not suffered enough? Apparently not, reckons Mellor. Despite its obvious sincerity, her writing is often clumsily schematic.

I also wasn't entirely convinced by the central thread of Diane's secretly unemployed, debt-ridden husband, Rick, deciding on a whim to rob a bank. Desperate men are often driven to extreme measures, but posing as a bomb-toting bank robber to buy your children pizza stretched credulity.

It's fortunate, then, that Rick is portrayed by the excellent Will Mellor (no relation), who radiates everyman pathos without ever overdoing it. The scene in which he begged, with shades of Boys from the Blackstuff, for work on a building site was particularly touching. Likewise, his sincere, almost tearful apologies to the terrified bank teller were affectingly played.

It's frustrating, as these smaller moments have far more emotional impact than La Mellor's more melodramatic flourishes. Nevertheless, I'll be back for more. Daft, cloying overindulgences aside, she's a propulsive storyteller.

Similarly promising is Siblings, a sharp new sitcom about a dysfunctional brother and sister duo. Fresh Meat writer Keith Akushie takes a gilded leaf from Seinfeld's book by miring his characters in selfishness and idiocy. 

Like George Costanza, Hannah, played by Fresh Meat star Charlotte Ritchie, puts Herculean effort into her lazy self-interest, while oblivious Dan is more of an overbearing, bumblingly needy type: imagine a slightly nicer cousin of Jez from Peep Show.

These obvious influences mesh rather nicely. This first episode, as predictable though some of it was, suggested Akushie has a neat grasp of escalating farce, and the two leads fill their roles with just the right amount of warped likeability. Their flailing misfortune may grow on you.