MARY BEARD'S FORBIDDEN ART + THE TEACHER + TRIGGER POINT

This article was originally published in The Courier on 29th January 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV 

Mary Beard’s Forbidden Art – Thursday, BBC Two, 9pm

The eminent art historian is on typically frank, thoughtful and engaging form in this new essay about the complicated nature of offence. 

She examines various works of art which have, for various reasons, been deemed unacceptable throughout history. Beard isn’t interested in judging whether the controversial works in question are intrinsically good or bad, she’s more concerned with finding out just why they’re considered taboo. 

Isn’t it the artist’s right to challenge and provoke? And who gets to decide whether they’ve crossed a line? There are no easy answers, but Beard does a good job of contextualising her nuanced multitude of ethical debates. 

NB: episode one contains scenes of wanton bodily excretions. You have been warned.

The Responder – Monday to Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

The best British drama of our fledgling year so far, The Responder makes most contemporary cop shows look facile by comparison. It’s ‘gritty’, yes, but not in a self-important way. 

Writer Tony Schumacher has devised a compelling thriller which also happens to be a sensitive study of depression, anxiety, addiction and abuse. It’s an unvarnished depiction of a society that allows vulnerable people to sink into the shadows, with no hope or support in sight. 

And when it makes you laugh – which it sometimes does – it’s never at the expense of a fundamentally serious and sympathetic message. 

Schumacher ratchets up the tension in the final stages. A happy ending is far from guaranteed. Life is rarely so neat.

The Teacher – Monday to Thursday, Channel 5, 9pm

Stripped throughout the week, this stark four-part drama stars Sheridan Smith as a secondary school teacher whose chaotic personal life is in danger of unravelling completely. 

Jenna is good at her job. She’s liked and respected by most of her pupils and colleagues. But she drinks too much and suffers from blackouts. 

One drunken evening in a club, while celebrating a promotion, Jenna bumps into one of her favourite pupils. The next morning, she has no memory of what happened. But soon the police are knocking at her door. 

The Teacher broaches uncomfortable territory. Jenna is sympathetic, and yet she may be guilty of a terrible crime. An intriguing piece, and Smith, as always, is entirely convincing.

Janet Jackson – Monday and Tuesday, Sky Showcase, 9pm

This four-part profile of the influential pop superstar is her attempt to set the record straight. Jackson doesn’t do many interviews; what do we really know about her? Not that it’s any of our business, but she endorsed this project so here we go. 

I only had access to episode one, but I’m pleased to report that she comes across as a nice, well-adjusted person. Which is remarkable under the circumstances. 

Jackson reflects upon her often tumultuous life and career in the company of various family members. And yes, she will comment on the controversy surrounding one of her brothers. Apologies in advance if this turns out to be a puff piece, but it does look quite interesting.

Race and Medical Experiments: What’s the Truth? – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Journalist Seyi Rhodes presents this incisive and angering report about the history of unethical medical tests on people of colour. 

As we’ve seen during the COVID pandemic, some black and brown people have resisted vaccination. Their mistrust of medical science is understandably rooted in notorious historical cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Trial, in which doctors injected syphilitic African-American males with disguised placebos. They were used to study the effects of syphilis; there was never any intention of helping them. 

But, as Rhodes explains, that atrocity has since been exploited by prominent anti-vaxx grifters who thrive on the lucrative conspiracy theory circuit. Prepare to be appalled by yet another example of institutional racism and culture war madness.

Wonders of the Border – Tuesday, STV, 7:30pm

The Offa’s Dyke Path is a national trail that winds its way along the Welsh/English border for 177 miles. In this cloudless series, Good Morning Britain’s Sean Fletcher explores its verdant contours from the Severn Estuary to the Irish Sea. 

The latest leg of his scenic yomp involves an encounter with a farmer who feeds beer to his cows (don’t worry, it’s all above board apparently), and a visit to Powis Castle, which is full of treasures stolen by Britain during its conquest of India. According to the curator, they’re on display as a way of teaching visitors about the more insalubrious aspects of British history. 

On a lighter note, Fletcher also enjoys a trip in a bespoke biplane. All bases covered.

Would I Lie to You? – Friday, BBC One, 8:30pm

Describing this warhorse as the only TV comedy panel show worth bothering with may sound like the very faintest of praise, but it’s a consistently cheerful distraction. 

Smiles, chuckles and, on a good night, bona fide big laughs are guaranteed. All aboard the fluctuating mirth express! 

Your guest panellists this week are poet Pam Ayers (who quietly steals the show), comedian Sarah Kendall, broadcaster Richard Osman, and Ghosts star Kiell Smith-Bynoe. 

Questions include: Did Osman once break into his own house while dressed as Darth Vader? Did Smith-Bynoe pretend to be a member of 50 Cent’s support act to get into a nightclub? And did Mitchell once play a prank on his wife using a small plastic wind-up penguin?

LAST WEEK’S TV

Trigger Point – Sunday 23rd January, STV

This new thriller about a bomb disposal squad is curiously lacking in tension. Episode one tried every wire-cutting trick in the book – including a scene in which our hero rescued an innocent man with a bomb strapped to him – and that’s its fatal flaw. Trigger Point is hollow and contrived. 

Despite the best efforts of Vicky McLure and Adrian Lester, good actors both, we were given no reason to care about these characters. They came across as ciphers being dutifully moved around towards the next supposedly nail-biting set-piece. 

When Lester’s character was killed towards the end of the episode, it felt like nothing more than a cheap ‘gotcha’ stunt. Don’t believe the ITV hype, this isn’t their Line of Duty.

The Decade the Rich Won – Tuesday 25th January, BBC Two

Driven by a sense of urgency and despair, this sobering series traces the disastrous after-effects of the 2008 financial crash. 

As everybody knows, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. A dismal injustice triggered by panic-stricken governments pouring huge amounts of money into the system, it ensured that elites mired in private equity tap-danced all the way to the bank. 

The poverty rate in Britain today is higher than it’s ever been this century. We’re all in this together! That was Cameron’s catchphrase at the time. 

Episode one featured contributions from Nick Clegg, Alistair Darling and George Osborne, all of whom tried to deflect blame from themselves. And so it goes on. 

THE RESPONDER + THE NILSEN FILES + I, SNIPER: THE WASHINGTON KILLERS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd January 2022.

NEXT WEEK’S TV

The Responder – Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm

Martin Freeman delivers a career-best performance in this queasy drama about an urgent response police officer struggling with mental health issues. 

Desperately overworked, he’s had enough. His beat on the mean streets of Liverpool feels futile. “I want to be normal,” he sighs to his therapist. But he’s somehow in the pocket of a local drug dealer (Ian Hart), and hopelessly trapped in a nocturnal odyssey of violence and death. 

Despite that sombre premise, The Responder is liberally peppered with amusing gallows humour: an existential howl of nervous laughter.

Written by former policeman Tony Schumacher, it’s unsentimental yet compassionate in the Jimmy McGovern vein. It feels painfully authentic, so much so that it won’t go down well in police recruitment circles.

Bradley & Barney Walsh: Breaking Dad – Monday, STV, 8pm

I like Bradley Walsh, but he is now officially the most ubiquitous man on television. It’s ridiculous, he’ll probably be presenting Newsnight next. 

But I can’t deny the simple pleasures of this series, in which Walsh and his affable son roam the globe in their massive RV. This week they’re in Hungary. Naturally, Walsh does the “no thanks, I’ve had breakfast” dad joke; it would be disappointing if he didn’t. 

Highlights include a visit to a museum dedicated to one of Hungary’s most famous sons, Harry Houdini. Walsh actually re-enacts the great escapologist’s straitjacket stunt, which involves him hanging upside down from a slowly burning rope, 150 feet above the ground. I kid you not.

The Nilsen Files – Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

In 1983, after dismembered human remains were discovered in his flat, the serial killer Dennis Nilsen confessed to claiming the lives of up to 16 young men. This sensitively handled series gives voice to his victims and their families. 

A stark document of early 1980s Britain, it reveals how those men weren’t just victims of Nilsen, but also of mass unemployment, rising homelessness, police indifference and systemic homophobia. They fell through the cracks of a society which, according to Thatcher, didn’t exist. 

Bolstered by impressive research, the programme features contributions from police officers, journalists and a homelessness outreach worker (pictured) who knew one of the victims. Her kindness stands in sharp contrast to the shocking attitudes we encounter elsewhere.

I, Sniper: The Washington Killers – Monday, Channel 4, 10pm

Twenty years ago, a random spate of sniper attacks occurred in the Washington D.C area. Ten people were killed and three were critically injured. The perpetrators were Lee Malvo, who was seventeen at the time, and US Army veteran John Muhammad. 

This grimly absorbing series attempts to explain what motived them to commit such a heinous crime. Not that their motivations will ever make any kind of rational sense, but episode one presents Muhammad as a charismatic yet deeply disturbed individual who seemingly radicalised his vulnerable surrogate son. 

Audio recordings of Malvo being interviewed in prison offer some disquieting insight into his psyche. Other interviewees include two of Malvo’s relatives and some of the victims’ devastated family members.

Jay Blades: Learning to Read at 51 – Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

Jay Blades, the genial presenter of TV favourite The Repair Shop, left school without any qualifications. He’s been told by experts that he has the reading age of an 11-year-old. 

In this programme, he endeavours to improve his literacy skills with assistance from a charity who offer one-to-one coaching. 

Preview copies weren’t available in time, but this sounds like a worthwhile piece of television. It is reported that over eight million adults in the UK, including half of all prisoners, struggle with their reading. 

Blades meets up with people who share his difficulties, while revealing how he runs a successful upholstery business and presents television programmes without any recourse to the written word.

Katie Price’s Mucky Mansion – Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

Time now to follow Katie Price as she renovates her dilapidated 19-room mansion in the Sussex countryside. Price has abandoned it, hence why it’s fallen into such a severe state of uninhabitable disrepair. The interior resembles the aftermath of a furious showdown between the Hulk and at least five werewolves. 

“I’d probably be better off knocking it down and starting again,” she sighs. Or making a television series about doing it up. There are always options. 

Renovating the mansion is, according to Price, a psychological process. Its sorry state is a symbolic manifestation of her turbulent private life. That’s the framing device anyway. I wish her nothing but the best, but this is hardly riveting television.

The Mind of Herbert Clunkerdunk – Wednesday, BBC Two, 10pm

Surreal comedy is a difficult art to pull off. For every successful example such as Monty Python or Vic & Bob, there are a million pretenders who mistakenly think that throwing a load of ‘random’ ideas at the wall will suffice. 

Enter comedian Spencer Jones and his zany alter ego, Herbert Clunkerdunk. Spending time in his mind is like being trapped at an office joker’s power-point presentation. A relentless torrent of self-conscious whimsy and weirdness, it’s utterly exhausting. 

I admire the intent, at least he’s attempting to do something a bit different and unpredictable. He tries very, very hard to please. And that’s the problem, his eccentricity never feels organic. There’s nowt much worse than forced nonsense.

LAST WEEK’S TV

Sue Perkins’ Big American Road Trip – Sunday 16th, Channel 4

You’d be forgiven for sighing at the prospect of yet another famous person enjoying a scenic journey in a campervan, but this new series is actually quite interesting. 

It spotlights a growing subculture of Americans who have swapped their houses for motorhomes. They’ve opted for a life of glorious freedom (while posting about it on social media). 

Perkins’ journey began in California, where she met a young van-lifer who earns a living from vlogging, and a genial hippie Santa who heads an enormous grassroots movement of people who’ve found salvation in this alternative lifestyle. It was quietly inspiring. 

Also, Perkins is a funny and personable traveller who’s interested in finding out about people. A good-natured vehicle.

Dragons’ Den – Thursday 20th January, BBC One

In the latest instalment of this never-ending entrepreneurial fever dream, we met a couple dressed as boy scouts (always enter the Den with a strong visual gimmick). They pitched an idea for the UK’s first summer camp for adults. Alas, the Dragons weren’t impressed by their shaky business plan, so that wacky game of dress-up was pointless. 

Other pitches included a vegan handbag range. The novel twist? Each bag contains some erotic fiction written by the entrepreneurs themselves. They failed to secure an investment.

Believe it or not, Dragons’ Den has actually become a little bit ‘nicer’ of late, possibly because viewers have tired of watching members of the public being belittled by millionaires. I live in hope.

 

 

TV Review: SHERLOCK and BIRDS OF A FEATHER

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 4th January 2013.

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

Sherlock: New Year's Day, BBC1

Birds of a Feather: Thursday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Take a cursory glance at this year's festive schedules and you'd be forgiven for thinking that British television is ruled by just two writer/producers: Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Following the inescapable dominance of Doctor Who's 50^th anniversary celebrations and Gatiss' supernatural visitations on BBC2 on Christmas Day, the duo continued their monopoly with the eagerly awaited return of Sherlock.

Tasked with providing a satisfying explanation for the sociopathic sleuth's faked suicide at the end of series two, they cheekily confounded expectations by conjuring more than one outcome. Galloping out of the trap, the giddy pre-credits sequence declared that Sherlock survived his fall using a bungee rope, a latex mask, Moriarty's corpse and none other than obfuscating mind man Derren Brown.

Colour me complacent, but this struck me as a perfectly acceptable and amusing explanation. It was a silly, fun, audacious illusion. Job done.

Except it wasn't. Sherlock, after all, isn't so much a drama as a theatrical confidence trick, where things are rarely as they seem. A playful piece of misdirection, this absurd version of events was quickly revealed as a harmless gag at the audience's expense, later superseded by a more “plausible” flashback involving air bags, a doppelganger corpse from the hospital morgue, a colluding network of homeless assistants, and the fiendish trick of placing a squash ball under Sherlock's armpit to briefly stop his pulse.

But even that was undermined by one more hint of ambiguity. Gatiss, who wrote the episode, clearly had no intention of supplying a definitive explanation, which wouldn't matter so much had the entire episode not been devoted to teasing out the riddle.

Bloated with self-referential gags about the colourful fan theories surrounding the suicide stunt, this wasn't another exciting 21^st century adventure for Sherlock Holmes, but a heavily meta-textual commentary on the hit TV show Sherlock itself. It was as if Moffat and Gatiss were more interested in causing a stir on Twitter than writing a coherent piece of entertainment.

Resembling a self-indulgent, overextended Comic Relief sketch, it allowed scant room for any other business. The barely sketched sub-plot involving a terrorist cell operating from the London Underground was little more than flimsy groundwork for the remainder of the series.

But at least the odd couple double-act of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman continue to shine as Holmes and Watson. Cumberbatch's comic flair tumbled forth during a farcical scene in which he reintroduced himself to Watson in the guise of a French waiter. Watson's understandable reaction – a stunned conflagration of confusion, relief, sadness and fury – was impressively realised in Freeman's typically grounded, believable style.

Almost entirely by virtue of his thoughtful performance, he's the sole point of emotional depth in Sherlock's otherwise glib and heightened universe.

The engaging chemistry of its stars aside, I've never been convinced by the often disproportionate praise this series receives. Clever and entertaining though it often is, it's far too throwaway to ever be considered a classic. Blighted by one-dimensional characters – does anybody really care about the bland Molly's unrequited love for Sherlock? – and an alienating swagger of undeserved self-satisfaction, its audacity, while fitfully admirable, often comes across as mere superficial flash: a talented show-off with a desperate need to impress.

I admire Sherlock in many ways, but I could never love it.

Possibly the least anticipated comeback in sitcom history, the inexplicable return of Birds of a Feather was even bleaker than I'd anticipated.

Groaning under the weight of laboured, tired, embarrassing dialogue – yes, the computer game console Wii does sound a bit like a colloquialism for urine, doesn't it? - it's like watching a pathetic gaggle of ghosts going through the motions of haunting a long-abandoned manor. Pauline Quirke deserves better. So do we.

The reason for its sorry revival is a mystery that would leave even Sherlock dumbfounded.