TV Review: ORION: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING and THE CORONER

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 21 November 2015.

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Storyville: Orion – The Man Who Would Be King: Monday, BBC Four

The Coroner: Monday to Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

Among the many offbeat footnotes from the Elvis Presley saga, the little-known tale of Jimmy Ellis is one of the saddest.

Two years after The King's death in 1977, Ellis appeared in the mysterious guise of Orion, an uncanny Elvis soundalike in a tacky Lone Ranger mask who managed to convince some gullible fans that he was the genuine article. And so the urban myth that Elvis faked his death was born.

That was hardly Ellis' intention. On the contrary, he wanted to be taken seriously as an artist in his own right. And yet he was unable to escape from Elvis' shadow. His remarkable vocal resemblance was a curse.

After several unsuccessful years in the business, he was desperate to achieve stardom, and so allowed himself to become compromised by a gimmick foisted upon him by opportunistic music biz sharks: a Faustian pact in the dark heart of Nashville.

Although he enjoyed a brief flurry of cult novelty fame in the early '80s, by the end of his life he was making a meagre living performing in high schools, still wearing that ridiculous mask. A forgotten man, in 1996 he was shot dead during a botched pawnshop robbery. His story, in its way, is as tragic as the rise and fall of Elvis himself.

Thankfully, the extraordinary documentary, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, finally afforded him the dignity he was never granted in life. Despite the bizarre truth-is-stranger-than-fiction nature of the tale, this was a sensitive, sympathetic account of a troubled man in search of his own identity. An adopted child, he never really knew who he was.

One wonders if he ever truly appreciated the irony of trying to make his name using the unmistakeable vocal style of one of the word's most famous singers. The film couldn't clarify whether he consciously aped Elvis' sound, or whether it was simply a strange coincidence. But it did present Ellis as a mass of contradictions.

Friends insist he would've been a star had Elvis never lived. But surely he wouldn't have sounded like that were it not for the existence of Elvis?

He was a hapless pawn, exploited by the unscrupulous owner of Sun Records (yes, he was actually signed to Elvis' original label). Contractually obliged to wear the mask in public, he was embarrassed by the whole Orion charade. Yet still he went along with it in the hope of finding fame. Sadly, it ruined his credibility.

During an audio interview recorded towards the end of his life, he recalled how people always told him that he'd never become a star by sounding like Elvis. “It didn't do Elvis any harm,” was his stock reply. The twisted logic of that statement encapsulates the mind-boggling weirdness of the whole sad story. He even recorded a song called I'm Not Trying To Be Like Elvis while sounding exactly like Elvis.

Director Jeanie Finlay, who also made the similarly fantastic The Great Hip Hop Hoax, treated Ellis with the compassion he deserves. Steeped in a vivid atmosphere of Deep South melancholy, it's one of the best pop culture documentaries I've seen in some time.

A new daytime drama, The Coroner stars Claire Goose as the titular cadaver-poker and crime-solver. Based in a picturesque Devonshire coastal town, squint and you could mistake it for Broadchurch on the cheap.

Goose and Matt Bardock as her ex-partner turned local police sergeant are fine, but the supporting cast overact wildly in that uniquely daytime drama way. A serviceable pot-boiler, but nothing more.

TV Review: LONDON SPY and JOSH

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 14th November 2015.

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

London Spy: Monday, BBC Two

Josh: Wednesday, BBC Three

Paul Whitelaw

A few years ago Ben Whishaw starred in Criminal Justice, a gripping BBC drama about a young man trapped in a waking nightmare after being wrongly accused of murder. Last week he starred in London Spy, a gripping BBC drama about a young man trapped in, well, you get the picture.

It's easy to see why Whishaw, a fine, interesting actor, gets cast in such roles. His ability to project boyish, vulnerable charm makes him an ideal candidate for torture of this kind. The scrawny sod, he's innately sympathetic.

In London Spy he plays Danny, a lonely gay romantic on a path of self-destruction. Early one morning by the Thames, after a solitary night of hedonism, he has a chance encounter with Alex, a fellow lost soul.

In typical romantic fiction style, they couldn't be more different. Danny is garrulous and indie-kid scruffy, while Alex is an inscrutable model of Savile Row elegance with the face of a sad-eyed camel. After a faltering start, they eventually embark upon an intense eight-month relationship.

Socially maladroit Alex claims to be a virgin, so Danny – who has a complex sexual past – takes care of that. They fall madly in love. It's all rather touching, and hardly what you'd expect from a drama titled London Spy. We're all expecting some sort of thriller twist, of course, but the slow-burning build created an unexpected, disarming mood.

Then one day Alex mysteriously disappears. Danny is heartbroken. Under curious circumstances, he eventually manages to enter Alex's apartment, where he's shocked – as you would be – to discover a secret attic full of bondage gear drugs, sex toys... and Alex's corpse squeezed inside a trunk.

Suddenly, and quite brilliantly, a sensitive love story has transformed into a bizarre, dark conspiracy thriller. Naturally, Danny is suspect number one, but how can he answer questions about a partner who'd apparently lied to him all along? It's a classic Hitchcockian 'Wrong Man' premise, made all the more effective for taking its time to establish character first.

Handsomely shot, thoughtfully written and superbly performed – Jim Broadbent, without a hint of “old queen” cliché, is wonderful as Danny's wealthy saviour/mentor – London Spy is one of the boldest dramas of the year so far. Despite playing along with standard spy conventions, it's emotionally richer and more offbeat than yer average thriller.

Writer Tom Rob Smith is the partner of Ben Stephenson, the Controller of BBC Drama Commissioning. Normally that would set off the nepotism klaxon to cacophonous levels, but in this case it's clearly been commissioned on its own merits. No, really. It's excellent.

By contrast, Josh, a new sitcom vehicle for comedian Josh Widdicombe, is entirely standard stuff. Based around three flatmates in their early thirties, plus their know-it-all landlord (Jack Dee, clocking in), its humour is almost exclusively based around tired, overdone pop culture puns and references: vaguely amusing pub banter at best.

It's also cursed by a particular kind of 21^st century comedy performance style that's like Kryptonite to myself and anyone else who's latched onto it. It's basically an irksome marriage of Alan Partridge emphasis, Martin Freeman awkwardness and Bill Nighy vagueness, which around 80% of British comic actors under 40 have appropriated in the last decade. 

Widdicombe is particularly guilty. He sounds like a helium-addled Partridge with lockjaw.

Still, nice use of Big Maybelle's version of 96 Tears over the end credits. I'll give them that.

TV Review: DOMINIC SANDBROOK: LET US ENTERTAIN YOU + JOANNA LUMLEY: ELVIS AND ME

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 7th November 2015.

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

Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You: Wednesday, BBC Two

Joanna Lumley: Elvis and Me: Wednesday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Last week, to my delight, I was reminded that The Beatles' return to England following their first US tour was covered live on Grandstand. Such was its import as a major world event, even the BBC's flagship sport show was forced to interrupt its cricket coverage and treat it with due reverence.

Alas, that grainy archive footage was one of the few surprises in episode one of Dominic Sandbrook: Let Us Entertain You, a new series in which the noted historian examines how, following the post-war decline of Britain's industrial, economic and political influence, it gained a potent new superpower as the world's greatest exporter of popular culture.

The likes of James Bond, Agatha Christie, Doctor Who, The Beatles and Harry Potter have all become symbols of Britain's vaunted position as purveyors of beloved escapist entertainment. Only a madman would reject this inarguable statement of fact, but it wasn't Sandbrook's central thesis I took issue with.

A recurring problem with documentaries of this nature is that anyone interested in watching them will already be quite knowledgeable about the territory they cover. Sure enough, swathes of Sandbrook's narrative felt awfully predictable.

He also has a habit of stating the bleedin' obvious. Quoth our learned guide, “The '60s only swung for a tiny minority.” You don't say? And here was me thinking Dundee city centre was once our shaggy equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.

A stout defender of the British Empire, it's hardly surprising that Sandbrook argued in favour of Victorian values being at the heart of every world-shaking explosion since. He was almost visibly vibrating with pleasure when paying tribute to the “cultural uplift and commercial self-interest” that made Britain great again. It was most unseemly.

Yes, popular culture has always been driven by commerce, but Sandbrook seems to revel in that fact above all else.

It was essentially an extended tribute to post-war commercial entrepreneurs such as J. Arthur Rank, Brian Epstein, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Charles Saatchi, whose marketing nous was a pivotal factor in the electoral success of Margaret Thatcher. They were all drawn from the same cloth, he argued.

That's a rather simplistic view. He's been given four episodes to analyse this subject, you'd expect more nuance.

Describing Britain's vast cultural contribution to the world in purely commercial terms is, of course, anathema to groovy non-bread-heads. This is art, not product. It belongs to us, not The Man. I dare say Sandbrook, who seems like an affable soul with a genuine interest in popular culture, has some sympathy for this dangerously idealistic viewpoint. But that didn't stop him from coming across as the sort of point-missing, number-crunching dullard who values record sales over artistic merit.

For an Elvis fan such as myself, there was an alarming moment near the start of Joanna Lumley: Elvis and Me in which the actress teetered on the verge of regurgitating the tired fallacy that Elvis' post-army career was worthless. Thankfully, it soon became clear that rebellious teen idol '50s Elvis was simply her favourite model, hence why it was the focus of this heartfelt travelogue in which she travelled to Memphis to meet those who knew and loved him.

For once it wasn't simply a case of attaching a famous face to a subject they know little about. Lumley's deep affection for the young, smouldering King was abundantly obvious.

That it was entirely non-critical didn't matter, as it wasn't intended as a sweeping Sandbrook-ian essay on Elvis' cultural significance. Rather, it was a charming tribute to a malleable idol from an eternally smitten fan. 

TV Review: JEKYLL AND HYDE and DETECTORISTS

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 31 October 2015.

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

Jekyll and Hyde: Sunday, STV

Detectorists: Thursday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Ever since Doctor Who reasserted its position as the reigning champ of weekend family viewing, ITV has made a few, almost grudging, attempts at establishing a suitable rival.

Time-hopping dinosaur romp Primeval was their most successful effort, but even its biggest fans would concede that it never troubled Doctor Who in terms of capturing the wider imagination. And the less said about Demons – which only shell-shocked TV critics and around 50% of those who made it choose to remember anyway – the better.

So it's perhaps surprising that it's taken them this long to enlist the talents of Fast Show alumnus Charlie Higson, a critically acclaimed, best-selling author whose success with the Young James Bond novels has secured his reputation as a gifted purveyor of intelligent children's fiction. On the basis of episode one, Jekyll and Hyde already feels like ITV's first serious challenger to Doctor Who's crown.

However, it's not without its flaws. An unofficial sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic exploration of a vexing split personality disorder, it follows Jekyll's grandson, Robert, as he gradually unearths his poisoned family lineage.

Raised by a family in Ceylon – hence his impeccable upper-class English accent – he's introduced as a kindly colonial physician capable of superhuman feats of strength when emotionally piqued. He's basically a 1930s Hulk, and Higson doesn't stint on the comparisons. With its canted angles, stylised action sequences and somewhat campy feel, the show is framed as a live-action comic book.

That heightened-reality approach ensures that its flashes of violence and horror don't feel inappropriate for a family audience. Children can differentiate between this world and ours. Granted, the sight of a dog-hybrid 'Harbinger' – Higson's Jekyll universe if full of bizarre creatures - was unsettling for even a man as robust and fearless as myself, but God forbid I should represent the psyche of the average child.

More troubling, perhaps, was the fiery death of Robert's adoptive Indian family, murdered at the hands of an intriguingly sadistic villain in British military uniform. Then again, I doubt many children were conscious of its significance as an historical metaphor. They were probably just perturbed by the spectacle of some kindly people being incinerated by a greasy Englishman with an evil moustache. So that's okay.

Though peppered with clunky exposition – hopefully that will subside after this attention-grabbing scene-setter – this was a decent introduction.

The charismatic Tom Bateman handles his twin roles impressively: a Colin Firth-esque bumbler in Jekyll repose, a lascivious demon in two-fisted Hyde mode. From Frederic March to Jerry Lewis, Jekyll/Hyde tales rely upon acting versatility. Higson's reinvention shows promise, but Bateman is selling it so far.

There's something deeply heartening about the deserved success of writer/director/actor Mackenzie Crook's award-winning sleeper hit Detectorists. Maybe it's because no one ever expected Gareth from The Office to come up with a sitcom of such depth, wit and sensitivity.

It makes Derek, the saccharine dogs dinner served up by his former employer, Ricky Gervais, look even worse by comparison.

A low-key sitcom about two charmingly co-dependent metal detectorists - the other played by the great Toby Jones - when it returned last week I instantly eased back into its rural rhythms. Space precludes me from writing more, but I urge you to befriend this wonderful show. It's one of the best British comedies of the last ten years.

TV Review: PSYCHEDELIC BRITANNIA and SAS: WHO DARES WINS

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 24 October 2015.

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

Psychedelic Britannia: Friday, BBC Four

SAS: Who Dares Wins: Monday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

A kaleidoscopic tapestry of wonderful archive footage, seasoned talking heads and mind-blowing music, Psychedelic Britannia paid bewitching tribute to one of the most colourful periods in British pop history.

It chronicled those forward-thinking years between 1965 and 1970 when bands such as Pink Floyd, The Yardbirds and yer Beatles swapped their beat/blues roots for experiments in jazz, classical, the avant-garde, Indian drones and holy modal chanting. It was a time of studio experimentation and long, wiggy improvisations, where anything went and usually did.

It was also a time of drugs. Lots and lots of consciousness-expanding drugs. After all, that's how the genre got its name and most of its untrammelled vision.

One of many choice interviewees, Yes/Tomorrow's Steve Howe, aka the librarian ghost from Ghostbusters, said he once played his guitar for ten hours continuously while on acid. Time, alas, hasn't archived this marathon.

Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt claimed that one of the reasons they played endless jams at London's legendary UFO club was because they didn't allow any gaps for the crowd to boo. They were probably too zonked to care anyway.

Wyatt also revealed that he barely knows what a CV is. “I was too young to take any notice of that crap,” he chuckled. Wyatt was typical of the many young hairies who dropped out of conventional society to form a bohemian counter-culture steeped in a unique British fusion of pastoral Edwardian whimsy and cultural revolution. Within months it had infiltrated the mainstream.

Of course, not everyone from his generation was impressed by this new Arcadian Age. One of the programme's many great finds was a clip of a young mod at Alexandra Palace's 14 Hour Technicolour Dream. A BBC reporter asked him what he was expecting. “Sumfink better than this,” he sniffed. It was pure Quadrophenia.

I was always going to enjoy this beautifully assembled programme, as British psych is one of my favourite genres. But I was particularly impressed by the way it managed to gently mock its sillier excesses, while simultaneously treating it with respect. That's precisely the right approach, as the pie-eyed eccentricity of British psych is one of its defining and most charming characteristics.

Even the choice of narrator, Nigel Planer, alias Neil from The Young Ones, was inspired. His affectionately droll script correctly argued that this is when British pop found its first truly original voice.Only 60 minutes long, I can excuse its exclusion of the lesser-known, one-shot acts that gave British psychedelia much of its quirky identity. Only an hour, but it was quite a trip.

It's probably safe to assume that “Turn on, tune in, drop out” isn't part of the SAS handbook. But what does it take to join this rock hard military unit? SAS: Who Dares Wins attempts to explain by following a group of ex-Special Forces soldiers as they put 30 civilians through a recreation of the gruelling selection process that they once endured.

Despite the insight it affords into this grimly serious world, it's basically a generic boot camp show of the type we're all familiar with. It even finds the judges/trainers sitting around a table to decide which of the contestants/recruits should stay in the competition/process: The Great British Bloke Off. On that point, why aren't there any women involved?

Such mysteries aside, the programme does at least reveal that psychological strength is essentially more important than physical fitness in the SAS. Alpha males aren't necessarily welcome. And for the shallower among us, we can all get a kick from the fact that the chief instructor has clearly modelled himself on the classic bearded Action Man.

TV Review: RIVER and THE RETURNED

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 17 October 2015.

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

River: Tuesday, BBC One

The Returned: Friday, More4

Paul Whitelaw

Just when you thought the hoary old cliché of the troubled detective with an extensive vinyl collection had been pummelled beyond repair, along comes River to show that there's life in the old dog yet.

The effectiveness of this new cop drama from Abi Morgan (The Hour) is enormously surprising, as from the moment I first heard about it I assumed the worst. After all, the very concept of a maverick cop named John River sounds ridiculous. 

It reminded me instinctively of Simon Day as John Actor in The Fast Show's Monkfish sketches (“John Actor is a tough, uncompromising inspector/doctor/vet...”).

However, putting aside the vast unlikelihood of the great Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard playing a character named John River, this is undoubtedly the most confident attempt yet at transplanting the existential angst of Nordic noir to British climes. Face facts, From Darkness.

The opening ten minutes alone offered some of the most arresting drama I've seen on TV all year. Scored to Tina Charles' disco classic I Love To Love, the sequence immediately established a warm, understated chemistry between the endearingly discomfited River and his more exuberant partner DS Stevenson (the always believable Nicola Walker, who also shines at the moment in ITV's above-par crime drama Unforgotten).

Their affectionate banter was punctured suddenly when River spotted a petty drug dealer. Chasing him on foot, our wheezy, ageing hero unwittingly drove the suspect to his death. The scene that followed seemed standard at first: River's weary chief (the wonderful Lesley Manville of Mike Leigh renown) arrived to chastise him for causing the young man's demise.

As Stevenson offered him support, the camera span around slowly to reveal a gaping wound on the back of her head. She'd been killed in action, and now exists only in grieving River's mind. It's a measure of how well this twist was handled that its invocation of another great comedy sketch – Chuffy, the imaginary sidekick from Armstrong & Miller – didn't make me laugh. It was so unforeseen, I admired its audacity.

It transpired that River is haunted by other ghosts, namely a murdered teenage girl whom he'd failed to rescue, and – there's no way of describing this without it sounding ridiculous – a 19^th century serial killer (Eddie Marsan, another gifted Leigh veteran). They're voices in his head, a manifestation of his troubled psyche. Ghosts who assist him in solving problems. 

If his noggin wasn't already crowded enough, the episode ended with a bedtime visit from the innocent man he "murdered" at the top of the episode. It's quite a party in there.

Judged incorrectly, this swirling cavalcade of psychological eccentricity could easily descend into farce. But so far at least, River gets the tone just right. It's rather subversive and unusual in an intelligent, dry-witted way. Skarsgard inhabits the role of River with sad-eyed charm and intensity. For once, the old cop-with-a-difference cliché seems justified.

Bathed in shades of medicinal green and nocturnal red, it's also directed with a sharp eye for striking composition. Delightfully, this highly promising show confounded all my expectations.

One of my favourite dramas of recent years, The Returned made good on its title last week for a second series of French supernatural mystery. Despite its ambiguous finale, I actually felt quite satisfied with series one as a self-contained piece. Is another series necessary?

Steeped in glacial intrigue, the opening episode suggested that there's more to be gleaned from this everyday saga of a remote French town populated by photogenic zombies.

Granted, thanks to a two year transmission gap between series, it took me about half an hour to fully remember who the hell everyone was. But once the fog had cleared, I was cautiously hooked all over again.

God only knows if it'll ever make complete sense, but that's not really the point. It's a disquietingly atmospheric mood piece, an exercise in odd, beautiful Twin Peaks-esque style. I'm glad it's back, to linger in the memory like one of River's manifests.  

TV Review: FROM DARKNESS and UNFORGOTTEN

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 10 October 2015.

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

From Darkness: Sunday, BBC One

Unforgotten: Thursday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

You know you're watching a po-faced crime drama when the opening credits are scored to an ethereal ballad sung by a woman who sounds like a haunted Victorian doll. But the problems with From Darkness run deeper than that.

While it isn't bad exactly – no drama starring actors as great as Anne-Marie Duff and Johnny Harris could ever be truly bad – it contains nothing that we haven't seen a million times before. By the end of episode one my generic cop show bingo card was full.

A former police constable, Claire (Duff) left the force 16 years ago when a case she was working on was shut down. She'd drawn a connection between several missing prostitutes, but her superiors wouldn't listen (they never do). Traumatised by the experience, she essentially ran away – she's shown to be a keen runner, in case you missed that subtext – to the Western Isles of Scotland with her husband and daughter.

When the remains of two women are found in what was once the red light district that Claire was investigating, her former boss and lover (Harris) travels from Manchester to draw her back in. Naturally, she resists. But could this be her chance to vanquish her demons and find justice for the women she'd “failed”? Is the killer still at large?

If this all sounds familiar it's because a police chief trying to convince a retired cop to return to the fold to reopen an unsolved case is such an overused trope. It felt particularly tired here as it dominated most of the episode. We knew from the start that Claire would capitulate and start looking into the case, but it took far too long to get her to that point.

Crime dramas can work when taken at a leisurely pace, but only if the story is involving. Despite some solid work from Duff and Harris, From Darkness is just too rote to arouse interest.

Though it began with an almost identical set-up – the discovery of human remains on an abandoned urban site – Unforgotten is a far more effective thriller. Or rather, it has potential. As always with dramas of this nature, it may well turn to ash as it unfolds, but episode one established a strong, intriguing mystery with impressive efficiency.

A cold case investigation was the fulcrum around which several seemingly unrelated scenes revolved. What is the connection between these disparate characters? The vicar, the Alan Sugar-like businessman, the retired book keeper and the community worker, do they all have something to do with the murder of a young black man in 1976? It's like a Byzantine game of Cluedo.

Granted, while playing Cluedo one doesn't tend to, as Unforgotten does, address the argument that society has a responsibility to punish people for their crimes, no matter how long ago they took place. But you take my point.

Our chief detectors are nicely underplayed by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar, who feel more grounded and believable than most TV sleuths. It's perhaps unwise to gauge the quality of a production based on the strength of its cast, but the presence of actors such as Tom Courtenay, Bernard Hill, Gemma Jones, Trevor Eve and Ruth Sheen suggests that Unforgotten is a cut above.

You wouldn't normally see a roll call as stellar as that outside of a Mike Leigh film. This could be a keeper.