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: THE NEW GYPSY KINGS + BORN ON THE SAME DAY

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 18th June 2016.

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

This World: The New Gypsy Kings: Thursday, BBC Two

Born on the Same Day: Tuesday, Channel 4

When one thinks of traditional European gypsies, the word “bling” doesn’t readily leap to mind.

80% of Romanian Gypsies live below the poverty line. Unemployment is almost universal. And yet, as seen in This World: The New Gypsy Kings, in recent years a flashy new genre of Gypsy pop has swept the nation.

Called manele, it’s a kind of commercial electro-folk music glorifying material wealth and hedonism. Despite its popularity, manele has attracted fierce criticism from within the Roma community for its moral bankruptcy and overt links to organised crime.

But is it all bad? Director Liviu Tipurita, who’s been making documentaries about Romanian gypsies for many years, tried to find out by delving into a bleak, strange, murky world of prejudice, violence, people trafficking and even witchcraft, where a career in music is one of the few ways of escaping from poverty.

On a more positive note, Tipurita showed how, in the last 20 years, successful Gypsy musicians have ploughed their earnings into building houses and schools for poor communities which were once without basic sanitation. But those musicians are devoted to traditional gypsy music and values; Manele performers are primarily concerned with their own booming bank balance.

We were introduced to mansion-dwelling superstars who openly boast of mafia connections, plus Romania’s answer to Simon Cowell – a mogul known as Dan the Badger – and a shady businessman married to “one of the world’s most powerful witches”. She’s currently in prison for bribing a judge. All Tipurita had to do was switch on his camera to capture an endless cavalcade of weirdness.

As far as Dan the Badger is concerned, the manele lifestyle is something for Gypsies to aspire to. He sees himself as an inspirational figure. In a way, he is. After all, during the brutal reign of Ceausescu, Romanian Gypsies weren’t even recognised as an ethnic minority. Only in the last 30 years, in the wake of revolt and Ceausescu’s execution, has their culture been widely celebrated.

But let’s not get carried away. One of manele’s originators served nine years in prison for attacking a policeman with a Samurai sword. The music blatantly glorifies gangsterism. For the most part, Tipurita’s eye-opening film resembled an Eastern European version of The Godfather. The entire movement is funded by criminality.

He didn’t need to labour the point that these shameless capitalists are drowning in dubious money while half the country starves. The sombre truth was self-evident.

Some TV concepts are so simple yet effective, you wonder why they weren’t exploited sooner. Born on the Same Day is one such beast.

Take a random date from history – in the case of this opening episode, 7^th March 1944 – and trace the life of a notable figure born on that day. So far, so History Channel. But here’s the neat little twist: to illustrate that all lives are extraordinary, you then tell the stories of lesser-known people born within the same 24 hours.

It began with famed explorer Ranulph Fiennes. A remarkable man, but the show’s emotional heft sprang from Ewart and Frances. 

A first-generation Jamaican immigrant, Ewart’s story encompassed decades of racism. And yet he’s never let it define him. 

Meanwhile, Frances suffered third-degree burns as a child. She went on to foster and adopt sick children. A kinder woman you’d be hard-pressed to meet.

A winning format, it’s a fine, sincere and moving piece of social history.