TV Review: THE LAST POST + PORRIDGE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 7th October 2017.

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

THE LAST POST: Sunday, BBC One

PORRIDGE: Friday, BBC One

History is an endless spin-wash of repeated mistakes, never to be learned from. That’s the sobering message at the heart of THE LAST POST. It’s a sound point, but I didn’t enjoy this new drama from Peter Moffat (Silk; Undercover; Criminal Justice) in the slightest.

Caked in sweat, violence and despair, it’s set in a British military police compound in Aden, Yemen, in 1965.

Aden was one of the oldest colonies in the British Empire. By the mid-1960s, it was a moribund anachronism, one of the final, desperate shreds of this shameful chapter in our great nation’s mission to civilise the world with politely armed oppression.

Potentially fascinating subject matter, but The Last Post is just another staidly prestigious production in which the usual stock cast of decent actors go through the motions while a writer hits you over the head with their political point. Yes, I get it, Peter. The torture of prisoners in Yemen really did resemble the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Let’s smack ourselves sore on the back for recognising that.

It’s such a boring shimmer of expensive waste. The excellent Jessica Raine does a good, committed drunk-act in a drama that no one will remember in six weeks time. The cinematographer might get a BAFTA. Earnest speeches will be made from the podium. Life marches on.

Last year’s unpromising pilot for a new series of the classic prison sitcom PORRIDGE was greeted with a shrug from most viewers and critics, hence the ensuing bafflement when the BBC announced that it had been picked up for a series.

The pilot wasn’t terrible, but it felt pointless. Although episode one of the new series was an improvement – it felt more comfortable in its own skin - there’s still no way of forgetting that you’re not watching Ronnie Barker and co delivering a masterpiece. It’s difficult to appreciate this Porridge on its own terms.

Of course, everyone involved in the production must be acutely aware of that. It’s written by the estimable Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, creators of the original, who couldn’t write a bad half hour of comedy if they tried. But I do wonder whether, in their heart of hearts, they’d rather be writing a brand new sitcom, rather than a tribute to one of their previous successes.

They haven’t altered the original formula at all, which works both for and against it.

Fletch’s grandson is a chip off the old recidivist block. That is, he’s exactly the same character, albeit played by someone else (Kevin Bishop). The younger Fletch is a cyber-criminal (how terribly modern) serving five years in a prison which just so happens to employ a tough, no-nonsense Scottish warder with a well-meaningly lenient sidekick. History repeating, once again.

Bishop has clearly studied Barker’s performance and delivers a likeable imitation. I don’t envy him having to step into such enormous shoes, but he doesn’t embarrass himself in the slightest. Clement and La Frenais still know how to write for Fletch. Again, however, that only serves to encourage comparisons with the original.

It’s a prison from which they can never escape.

This new Porridge is occasionally quite funny, but it’s essentially a competent facsimile of a superior work. It doesn’t really need to exist.

TV Review: SILK and JONATHAN CREEK

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1st March 2014.

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

Silk: Monday, BBC One

Jonathan Creek: Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

The problem with idealistic QC Martha Costello is that she's far too human and empathetic for her own good. If only she could somehow dispense with her feelings and carry out her job with the ruthless efficiency of a programmed assassin. Until then, she's doomed to wrestle with ethical dilemmas on a weekly basis at 9pm on BBC One.

That, in a nutshell, is the recurring theme of Silk, the diverting legal drama that returned last week for a third series. As played by Maxine Peake and written by former barrister Peter Moffat, Martha is certainly one of the more convincing lawyers to grace our screens. Her ability to balls things up almost as often as she gets things right makes her infinitely more sympathetic and believable than your standard maverick courtroom hero. I'm no legal expert, but Moffat's work always carries a persuasive ring of authenticity.

Her latest case was typical in that it found her getting emotionally involved to the detriment of her professional acumen. While the problem of a professional getting TOO DAMN CLOSE to a case is a terrible genre cliché, Silk tends to handle it with relative aplomb.

“There's too much mothering and not enough lawyering,” frowned Clive, her Harrow/Oxford-educated paramour and colleague. You could hardly blame Martha for embracing her maternal instincts while defending the son of her own Head of Chambers. A vulnerable teenager with mental health issues, he'd accidentally killed a policeman while taking part in a protest march. What unfolded was a slickly executed rumination on police brutality, corruption and the compromised values of insular institutions.

Peake, who has a knack for delivering dramatic courtroom speeches without ever overselling them, was as solid and affecting as ever, while Neil Stuke, as morally ambiguous chief clerk Billy, handled his terminal cancer sub-plot with admirable restraint.

Although Silk is essentially a case-of-the-week courtroom drama – and therefore fairly forgettable in the grand scheme of things – it's realised with such skill that it rarely fails to engage. Plus this week's episode treated us to the sight of Peake dancing badly to Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart. Beat that, Law & Order: UK.

Despite its layers of black comedy, whimsical mystery drama Jonathan Creek has always struck me as rather too cosy for comfort. I admire David Renwick as a writer, but I've never been taken with this particular creation. At its worst it's little more than Midsomer Murders with a self-aware sense of humour.

To give Renwick his due, the latest episode did feature an enjoyably sly dig at the success of Sherlock, an increasingly tricksy and self-regarding show that's usurped Jonathan Creek in the nation's affections. Creek, competently played as always by Alan Davies, was lumbered with an unwanted sidekick: a young, cocky David Tennant lookalike who constantly rattled off detailed yet entirely incorrect deductions a la Sherlock on a bad day. But it was Creek, of course, who solved the case.

Even so, Renwick's attempts to spice up the formula by showing us, a la Columbo, how the murder happened in the first act felt half-baked. The inherent pleasure of Columbo is in watching the faux-naive detective lure his quarry into a trap. But Creek has none of that character's endearing charm. He's just a dull middle-aged man solving crimes in his spare time.

While the episode hung together more coherently than some of the recent feature-length specials, tonally it didn't quite gel. The story of a mentally ill mother hanging herself after losing her baby and murdering an actress jarred rather harshly against the jokes about Piers Morgan and unsubtle Alien references. With the addition of a superfluous sub-plot involving Paula Wilcox and an urn of ashes, it all felt like something of a hodgepodge. 

I was more entertained by the notion that the moment where Creek was bitten by an angry theatre-goer was a cheeky nod to the real-life incident in which Davies bit a homeless man's ear. Do I deduce correctly?