TV Column: COLD FEET + GOOD OMENS + THE MASKED SINGER

This article was originally published in The Courier on 11th January 2020.

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

NEXT WEEK’S TV

COLD FEET

Monday, STV, 9pm

As the latest series of this likeable comedy-drama begins, Adam, the cheeky chappie’s cheeky chappie, is suspended from work for inappropriate behaviour. He’s utterly baffled until his partner, Karen, wisely points out that offence can be caused even when your jokey intentions were innocent. Context and potential impact are paramount. Series creator Mike Bullen handles the episode’s Me Too theme with typical sensitivity. Meanwhile, Jenny struggles to readjust to life following her cancer treatment. She and husband Pete also have to deal with their difficult teenage daughter, plus the awkward problem of dividing their loyalties between Adam and Kate and Kate’s disgruntled ex, David. “I’m sick of this,” sighs Jenny, “it’s like a messy divorce and we’re the kids.”

CATCHING A KILLER: A DIARY FROM THE GRAVE

Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

Caveat: previews weren’t available at the time of writing, so I haven’t actually seen this true-crime documentary. Please don’t send angry emails to me, The Courier or my cat if it turns out to be awful. It does, however, sound interesting. An elderly man dies at home. Nothing odd about that. But eighteen months later, his neighbour also dies in similar circumstances. That’s when the police start looking into what might be a sinister case. A young would-be vicar knew them both. It sounds like the sort of programme designed to make you sigh in despair before going to bed feeling worse than you did when you woke up. Again, please don’t harass my cat.

GOOD OMENS

Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Eight months after debuting on Amazon Prime, this irreverent all-star fantasia – based on a cult novel by Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett - finally lands on terrestrial firma. Perfectly content with their lives on Earth, a demon and an angel (David Tennant and Michael Sheen) form an alliance to stop the coming of the Antichrist and eventual Armageddon. Although it’s well-acted, well-directed and generally quite funny in a sub Python/Douglas Adams way, episode one is slightly too hectic for its own good. It feels like Gaiman couldn’t bear to leave out any detail from his and Pratchett’s novel; the arch narration from Frances McDormand – she plays God – is particularly convoluted. One helluva cast, though.

STEWART COPELAND’S ADVENTURES IN MUSIC

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

Ace drummer Steward Copeland is best known for being a member of The Police, but they’re just one of the 25 bands he’s been in since he first picked up sticks as a teenager. Now aged 67, his life has been utterly devoted to the music of the spheres (and songs written by Sting). In this probing new series - textbook Friday night pop fare on BBC Four, but with an anthropological, neuroscientific twist – the garrulously charismatic tub-thumper embarks upon a noble mission to define why music, that most transcendental of arts, moves, shakes and obsesses us so. It begins with an enjoyable, wide-ranging essay on music’s ability to bring human beings together. I’m with Stew: it’s been fundamental to our evolution as a species.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE GREATEST DANCER

Saturday 4th January, BBC One

This Cowell-created mash-up of Strictly, X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent serves as a sobering reminder that ol' Mardi Gras head is a yawning multimillionaire who fattens his bank balance by scribbling formulaic formats on the back of Ivy napkins. Why doesn't he retire? He's done enough damage, earned enough money and no one cares anymore.

FIRST & LAST

Saturday 4th January, BBC One

In which Jason Manford - an affable, competent comedian – secured his ideal role: hosting a game show where contestants are rewarded for being neither particularly good nor bad, just somewhere in the middle. Manford makes it just about work by mocking the format and joshing with the contestants a la Generation Game Brucie and Danny Baker’s Pets Win Prizes. It doesn’t approach those heights, of course. It's just a laughing policeman in search of a missing vehicle.  

THE MASKED SINGER

Saturday 4th January, STV

This is more like it. Sort of. Almost. A deliberately absurd music game show devised in South Korea, TMS has spread its costumed wings around the globe. Now it’s our turn to guess who the famous folk are beneath those ostentatious outfits. It’s the right kind of trash, a bonkers parody of the Cowell formula, but it’s stretched out to painfully interest-sapping lengths. With a little bit of finessing, they've got themselves a decent family-friendly show.

TV Review: TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK + ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME

This article was first published in The Dundee Courier on 18 February 2017.

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

TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK: Saturday, BBC Two

ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME: Tuesday, BBC Two

Human beings are frighteningly vulnerable. Even the sharpest minds among us can be assaulted without warning by the cruel lottery of fate. Two programmes last week shone defiant glimmers of hope into mortality’s glowering visage.

They focused on robust and somewhat eccentric characters who dealt with serious illness – one fatal, the other life-threatening – with humour, pragmatism and a healthy lack of sentiment.

The phenomenally successful fantasy author Terry Pratchett died of Alzheimer’s in 2015. He’d lived with the degenerative disease for eight years, during which he continued to write until he was no longer able.

His final project was a memoir recorded with the assistance of his PA. Pratchett never lived long enough to complete it.

Enter TERRY PRATCHETT: BACK IN BLACK, a charming tribute which sought to tell the story of his life in fittingly irreverent fashion.

Wearing the guise of a mischievous narrator, actor Paul Kaye, aka the prankster formerly known as Dennis Pennis, rescued the Discworld creator from the philosophical clutches of Death (coincidentally the most popular character from Pratchett’s novels).

Armed with trademark wizard’s beard, black fedora and nasal rhoticism – the result of a childhood accident which, in Pratchett’s words, left him sounding like “David Bellamy with his hand caught in an electric fire” – Kaye’s affectionate impersonation would, one presumes, have delighted the man who inspired it.

He led us through a prolific life and cynical/compassionate worldview forged by a childhood in which Pratchett was told he’d never amount to anything, hence why his distinctive form of satire was driven by an angry intolerance of hypocrisy, snobbery and injustice. An indelible streak of “I told you so” remained with him until the end.

But if Pratchett could be cantankerous, an essential sense of decency was his abiding characteristic. He never lost his amused yet sincere fascination with the human condition, even when he was eventually felled by the kind of unjust act of fate he always railed against.    

Andrew Marr is a kindred spirit. When he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013, the respected political journalist refused to kowtow to self-pity – which he describes as “the most nauseating human quality of all” – in a way Pratchett would’ve appreciated.

Despite clinging to the celebrity-fronted “personal journey” blueprint so beloved of modern television, ANDREW MARR: MY BRAIN AND ME was, thanks to the wryly no-nonsense nature of its star, refreshingly free of stage-managed catharsis. Marr’s journalistic eye ensured that he never became the whole story. 

 Through the prism of his own experience, he examined the available recovery options and various neurological effects of the biggest cause of disability in Britain (the inclusion of a post-stroke Marr interviewing former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith wasn’t accidental).

“I’m nothing special,” he insisted, as he met stroke survivors who made him look relatively lucky.

Marr believes two years of excessive work caused his stroke, but he appears to be working as prolifically as ever. Slowing down just isn’t an option for this intensely driven broadcaster, who cites painting as one his few sources of solace. In one revealing moment, he expressed regret that he never attended art school. A fear of failure sent him on a different course.

Yet despite his candour, Marr’s Celtic stoicism remained admirably intact.

“I know the BBC has a special contract where I have to burst into tears at one point,” he smiled, “but I can’t do it. I come from Dundee.”