TV Review: THE GETAWAY CAR + PHONE SHOP IDOL

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 23rd January 2016.

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

The Getaway Car: Saturday, BBC One

Phone Shop Idol: Tuesday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

Is Dermot O'Leary being punished for crimes he committed in a former life? How else to explain the fate of this affable TV presenter, whose unassuming talents were wasted for years on The X Factor, and who now finds himself shackled to the knackered chassis of The Getaway Car? That's not a career, it's sustained abuse.

Dermot can't be blamed for this fatally ill-conceived game show. Like the loyal footsoldier he is, he's just following orders. Instead, blame the genius who thought that people driving slowly around a Mousetrap-style obstacle course was a recipe for riveting Saturday night viewing.

It's become a cliché to liken bad TV shows to something Alan Partridge might come up with, but this unhappy marriage of Top Gear and Total Wipeout really does feel like one of his pitches come to life. It even climaxes, if that's not too explosive a word, with contestants racing against The Stig, who these days resembles a tragic straggler at a long-defunct costume party.

For obvious reasons, the BBC aren't going to risk putting members of the public through a death-defying driving test, hence why The Getaway Car unfolds at such a laughably sluggish pace. The obstacle course is situated in sunny South Africa, presumably because basing it in drizzly Britain would add even more pathos to an already pathetic spectacle of non-entertainment.

The idea of people driving into a massive photograph of Roger Moore to win £10,000 might sound amusing on paper, but in practice it's ridiculous (and not in a good way). I'd rather watch an hour of Dermot hoovering his car seats.

As if to compound this patience-testing ordeal, most of the contestants in episode one were deeply annoying. There was no one to root for, unless you count our hapless host. His weak witticisms make Dave Lamb from Come Dine With Me sound like imperial Groucho Marx. 

Clearly, some of those half-hearted, fate-tempting quips – “This is car crash telly!” - were desperate cries for help. At one point he claimed “We're laughing here” with all the natural exuberance of a condemned prisoner. Someone, please, rescue him.

I encourage anyone who derives masochistic pleasure from watching bad television to experience at least ten minutes of this abject failure. A total waste of time, but at least you'll be able to state with solemn authority that, much like Don't Scare the Hare, it actually happened. We must keep these memories alive as a warning for future generations.

The annual Phone Idol competition, which aims to find Britain's best mobile phone salesperson, is apparently the industry equivalent of the Oscar, Pulitzer and Booker combined. Its rewards are potentially life-changing.

In Phone Shop Idol we met a former winner who was head-hunted by Sony. He now drives a company car filled with complimentary gadgets. He's living the dream.

Treating the ability to sell phones as if it's a rarefied craft may sound silly, but it's a respectable gig like any other. With its chummy narration and chortling Apprentice-style score, this thin series doesn't take the competition particularly seriously, but nor does it belittle the sincerity of the contestants. It's a modest celebration of nice, everyday folk taking pride in their work and doing it well.

It isn't of the slightest bit of interest to anyone – there are few things in life more tedious than the discussion of phone tariffs - but at least it doesn't sneer.

TV Review: JERICHO + BEOWULF: RETURN TO THE SHIELDLANDS + TRACEY ULLMAN'S SHOW

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 16th January 2016.

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

Jericho: Thursday, STV

Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands: Sunday, STV

Tracey Ullman's Show: Monday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

By virtue of its scant competition, Jericho has the distinction of being the best British western since Carry On Cowboy. I can think of no higher praise.

The setting is an 1870s Yorkshire Dales shanty town full of rough and tumble navvies toiling to construct a viaduct. All the standard frontier archetypes are here – handsome hero, stoic heroine, brothel madam with a heart of gold etc. - but they're written and performed with enough charm to keep tiredness at bay.

Though it sounds ridiculous in theory, series creator Steve Thompson (Sherlock; Doctor Who) has managed to transpose the dusty tropes of Wild West fiction to 19^th century England without making a dang fool of himself. It works because he playfully acknowledges his obvious influences while avoiding outright pastiche. It's a brisk, broad, enjoyable production.

Not that it's perfect. Essentially a sanitised Deadwood by way of Little House on the Prairie, it all looks far too clean. This supposedly rough-hewn town reeks of IKEA-fresh timber. The costumes bear not a speck of grime. Jessica Raine's wig looks like a plastic Lego turban. No one ever swears.

Nevertheless, I can't deny the intriguing, novel promise of a drama in which an enigmatic African-American sheriff (the excellent Clarke Peters from The Wire) presides over a white community of working-class Victorian northerners. Loosely inspired by historical events, Jericho, in its wholly escapist way, is more ambitious than yer average period circus.

By contrast, turgid fantasy drama Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands is a hairy heap of grunting nonsense signifying zilch. A U-rated Game of Thrones, this supposedly child-friendly romp suffers from a flabby narrative and chronically dull, poorly defined characters. The glowering Beowulf himself resembles a dazed Neil Oliver wandering through a poorly policed battle re-enactment.

This charmless non-adventure fills the early evening slot recently vacated by the flawed yet far more likeable Jekyll & Hyde. A more natural home would be a mouldering ditch.

You get the slot you deserve. Despite being hyped as a triumphant return to our shores after 30 years working in America, Tracey Ullman's Show has been buried in a post-watershed graveyard trough. It's as if the BBC, having procured the ex-pat comedienne's services, forgot to provide her with a project worth returning for.

This painfully thin confection of half-baked sketches suffers from a flat, lifeless atmosphere that stifles whatever potential it may have had. Ullman's impersonations of Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith are impeccable, but without strong material to support them they're little more than top-flight party tricks. 

The Dench skits are typical in that they take a very basic premise – Dame Jude exploits her National Treasure status to get away with bad behaviour – without bothering to build on it. A shrugging sense of “Will this do?” hangs over the whole sorry enterprise.

Her depiction of Angela Merkel as a boozy, thin-skinned brawler who's bought into her own beige sex symbol hype was mystifyingly weak. A potentially damning musical number attacking Tory cuts proved utterly toothless. A recurring sketch about a bemused woman returning home after 28 years in a Thai prison worked only as a comment on Ullman's long absence from British TV. It certainly wasn't funny.

She should cut her losses and buy a one-way ticket back to the States. Anything to escape from this misfire.

TV Review: WAR AND PEACE + DEUTSCHLAND '83

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 9th January 2016.

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

War and Peace: Sunday, BBC One

Deutschland '83: Sunday, Channel 4

Paul Whitelaw

The prospect of reading War and Peace is so notoriously daunting, its mythical reputation as an insurmountable literary Everest is probably more well-known than the contents of the book itself.

Most of us know the gist of Tolstoy's epic tome, thanks to endless references in popular culture. But have you actually read this gargantuan Napoleonic saga? I haven't. However, I've seen Woody Allen's hilarious parody, Love and Death, more often than I've seen my own reflection. Isn't that enough?

Even Andrew Davies, who adapts classic novels for breakfast, hadn't read it until the BBC asked him to write a six episode adaptation. Despite his trepidation, he eventually discovered that it wasn't an impenetrable chore after all, but a page-turner packed with romance, drama, action and satire. 

Of course, this will come as no surprise to anyone who's read it, but as we've established, no one ever has.

Davies is the ideal man for this ambitious task. He has a gift for condensing classic texts without sacrificing the essentials. His adaptations are accessible, but hardly dumbed down. The opening scene of this impressive production was a deft case in point. Set during a lavish drawing room ball, it introduced a banquet of characters without any fuss or confusion - unless you were playing familiar TV actor Bingo, in which case you probably missed most of the dialogue.

If a visiting alien were to switch on a TV at random, he'd be forgiven for thinking that the only working actors in Britain are Stephen Rea, Jim Broadbent, Tuppence Middleton, James Norton and Rebecca Front. They're all great, but must they appear in everything?

A refreshing presence among this plethora of ubiquitous faces was American actor Paul Dano as nebbishy hero Pierre. The illegitimate son of a wealthy nobleman, his liberal idealism is tested when he suddenly inherits a vast fortune. 

Played by Dano as a fretting, fumbling, bespectacled mouse caught in the sights of an oncoming lawnmower, Pierre contends with a scheming uncle – Rea, looking as always like a camel sucking a lozenge wryly – and an arranged bride (Middleton) who'd rather have his money than his milksop body. 

She's also having an incestuous relationship with her brother, a bizarre sub-plot which, according to Davies, is subtly implied in Tolstoy's novel. I'll take his word for that.

Despite his respect for his source materials, Davies is a mischievous adaptor. I can't be alone in detecting the ribald double-meaning of lines such as: “You need to let the old Count see you before he dies.” That's no accident, it's a cheeky Max Miller gag.

Director Tom Harper (This Is England '86; Peaky Blinders) also deserves credit for creating such a visually sumptuous, pacey treat. It doesn't drag in the slightest. A co-production with the Weinstein Group, no expense has been spared on striking costumes and palatial European locations. The grimly insane battle scenes, though presumably populated by just a few dozen extras, are a bold lesson in creative editing. Yes, the cast is over-familiar, but they fill their roles with aplomb. It's a stunning production oozing with charm, wit and class.

Old Tolstoy will be delighted by the boost in book sales.

Showing as part of Channel 4's admirable new commitment to foreign drama, Deutschland '83 is a Cold War thriller steeped in suitably pallid period detail. Unfortunately, it squanders an intriguing premise – a young East German solider is press-ganged into working undercover in the West – with a curiously superficial tone. It's so light and predictable, all potential tension is lost.

I'm usually a sucker for any '80s-based political drama stacked against the backdrop of nuclear annihilation, but even I must concede that Deutschland '83 is, at best, only mildly diverting.

A disappointment, but looking on the bright side there should hopefully be some gems in the rest of Channel 4's new overseas consignment. Onwards and upwards, as Brezhnev used to say.

TV Review: WE'RE DOOMED! THE DAD'S ARMY STORY and FROM ANDY PANDY TO ZEBEDEE: THE GOLDEN AGE OF CHILDREN'S TV

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 26th December 2015.

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

We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story: Tuesday, BBC Two

From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's TV: Monday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

The BBC, especially at Christmas, is entitled to wallow nostalgically in its own legacy. Last week it even wallowed twice with barely a hint of self-congratulation. On the contrary, We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story depicted certain BBC executives as the myopic villains of the piece.

An affectionate comedy-drama about the troubled origins of the much-loved wartime sitcom, it showed how writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft (who also produced) struggled to convince their overlords – particularly BBC One Controller Paul Fox, perhaps unfairly portrayed by Keith Allen as formidably humourless – that a comedy about the Home Guard could work. With WWII still in living memory, might it be deemed insensitive?

It's laughable to think that a sitcom as benign as Dad's Army could ever be thought of as tasteless, but it was clearly a real concern in 1967.

So, while the story hit familiar behind-the-scenes beats – writers search for a great idea, slave over scripts and shape their vision, are forced into compromise by unsympathetic bosses before being proved all along that they were right – it was told in such a breezy, charming, witty way, it never felt redundant.

Packed with touching detail, good gags – I loved the fleeting references to Jon Pertwee and Trevor Eve - a nice sense of bright, smoky '60s period, and winning performances from an adroitly chosen cast of fine character actors – John Sessions' total transformation into the endearingly temperamental Arthur Lowe was miraculous – it was a refreshingly warm antidote to the BBC's notorious, and hopefully extinct, glut of dubious tears-of-a-clown biopics.

Despite its relatively brief running time, writer Stephen Russell managed to add depth to most of the principle players. The pathos of the frail Arnold Ridley, the flinty insecurity of Arthur Lowe, and the core dramatic struggle of Perry, a frustrated actor who desperately wanted a part in the show until he realised that writing was his calling, were handled with commendable sensitivity.

A poignant highlight was the scene of Perry shedding tears as his ageing comedy hero Bud Flanagan (Roy Hudd, who else?) recorded the Dad's Army theme song in one avuncular take. And yes, it ended with a “You Have Been Watching” roll call. Delightful stuff.

Another nostalgic labour of love, From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's TV celebrated the pioneering origins and reign of the BBC's generation-shaping children's output from the '50s to the early '90s.

Despite some curious narrative leaps – forgiveable, perhaps, given the 60 minute running time – this was a tender cut above most archival clip shows. It scoured the vaults with an evident sense of craft and care. It also made a point of explaining how innovative and important the likes of Play School, Vision On and, for all its dryly middle-class faults, Blue Peter were in educating and entertaining children. 

And kudos for devoting time to the inadvertently nightmarish spectre of Noseybonk from Jigsaw; truly The Child Catcher of '80s TV.

On a cheerier note, the sight and sound of eminent talking heads such as Johnny Ball, Bernard Cribbins and the man who injected some rare jazz/soul groove into kid's TV, Derek Griffiths, was enough to inspire a Proustian rush. You know you're watching a decent documentary about popular entertainment when it's inhabited by relevant, knowledgeable contributors, rather than fatuous modern comedians.

As former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis observed only half-jokingly, a channel entirely devoted to Cribbins' soothing presence could cure the world's ills. Now that really would be public service broadcasting.

I also challenge anyone to refute that the ambient voice of Oliver Postgate is the voice of God Himself. Merry Christmas.

TV Review: LUTHER + LOVE YOU TO DEATH: A YEAR OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 19th December 2015.

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

Luther: Tuesday, BBC One

Love You To Death: A Year of Domestic Violence: Wednesday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

There was a moment in the latest episode of Luther so perfect in its knowing heavy-handedness, I suspect that writer Neil Cross has been waiting to use it ever since he created this uniquely ludicrous series.

As we reconvened with TV's most dysfunctional maverick cop, he was living in a remote cottage on a much-needed leave of absence. The location of his hideaway? On the edge of a precipitous cliff. That's right, he's literally living on the edge. In case you didn't pick up on this hilariously blatant visual metaphor, Cross even had a character point it out. That one moment encapsulated the tongue-in-cheek absurdity of this bombastic thriller.

After being told that Alice, his psychotic paramour, wasn't dead after all, Luther (Idris Elba) returned to London to find out the truth. This involved a series of, even by his standards, insanely reckless set-pieces. Only Luther would breeze into a pub full of armed criminals and, while staring down the barrel of a gun, defuse the situation with insouciant amusement rather than chair-tossing aggression. King of the barely calculated risk, he makes Jack Bauer look like an over-cautious pen-pusher.

Later he barged into a building rigged with explosives and emerged, via an air duct, without a scratch. Luther, played by Elba with a fascinatingly unfathomable, charismatic eccentricity/wooden sincerity (possibly both), is basically an indestructible superhero living in a heightened universe of grotesque, violent fantasy. The back-in-business scene of him putting on his familiar grey overcoat was the “Hell yeah!” equivalent of Tony Stark climbing into his Iron Man costume.

Typically, his latest nemesis is no mere murderer. No, he's a grandiloquent serial killer with a penchant for cannibal erotica. I wouldn't expect anything less.

Some have argued that Luther wallows irresponsibly in OTT violence, but surely that's the point? We're not supposed to take it seriously. Cross is fully aware of all the cop show tropes and clichés, hence why he has such fun with them. It's why Luther is far more entertaining than most UK detective dramas. It is, like the man himself, a brazenly confident, self-amused barnstormer.

Sadly, thanks to Elba's rising international profile, it's only back for two episodes this time. I hope he always finds time in his schedule to return to this preposterous role.

Mindless escapism is all very well, but we should never ignore the reality of unflinching documentaries such as Love You To Death: A Year of Domestic Violence. A sad, humane, compassionate film, it shed light on the shocking issue of fatal violence against women.

In 2013 alone, 86 women were murdered either by their partner or ex-partner. The programme honoured them all by listing their names and the circumstances of their deaths. Its point was clear: these were human beings, not mere newspaper headlines.

Some of the women received more attention via emotional testimonies from their friends and families. These accounts were necessarily blunt and upsetting. Shying away from the violent details of such crimes would rob them of their awful truth.

A heavy sense of tragic inevitability permeated each of these stories. It was a sobering litany of oppressive, violent, mentally ill men terrorising women behind closed doors. Meanwhile, their loved ones were left behind to grieve and pick up the pieces.

Without doubt one of the most important pieces of television I've seen in some time.

TV Review: DOCTOR WHO and PREY

A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 12th December 2015.

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

Doctor Who: Saturday, BBC One

Prey: Wednesday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

Farewell then, Clara Oswald, I'm sure I speak for many when I say you were definitely a companion in the hit sci-fi series Doctor Who. Please don't come back.

A fortnight after she was killed off, Clara returned in this year's series finale. Head writer Steven Moffat just couldn't let her lie, thus undoing the impact of her demise. But at least he only revived her to give her tangled story an absolutely final happy ending. Didn't he?

Having essentially become a surrogate Doctor after all that time spent with him, she whizzed off in her American diner-shaped TARDIS to have intergalactic adventures with a female companion of her own. In a bittersweet twist – one that explicitly mirrored/subverted the tragic demise of Donna Noble - the Doctor, after spending 5 billion hellish years trying to reverse Clara's death, had all his memories of her erased.

This, in its vaguely underwhelming way, was actually one of the nicest, most poetic send-offs a companion has ever had. It's just a shame it was wasted on Clara.

Had she been a more engaging character, her exit would've carried greater emotional weight. Instead it came across as merely clever. A neat conjuring trick. Moffat the technician. Unlike most previous companions, Clara was a bland non-event. Introduced as little more than a mysterious plot device during the Matt Smith era, she never developed a personality beyond Moffat's standard quipping, sassy auto-bot setting

I didn't dislike her. How could I? It was impossible to feel any strong emotions about such a thin, inoffensive character. She was pretty. Her clothes were nice. Clara Oswald, a life.

It wasn't Jenna Coleman's fault, she's a competent actress. But even the greatest board-treader would struggle with such an unfocused role. It didn't help that she was paired with Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, two of the most magnetically charismatic actors to ever fill the Time Lord's boots. She didn't stand a chance.

So why did Moffat keep her around for so long? Possibly because he was determined to fix a character who simply didn't work. He wanted to make her seem important in the grand scheme of DW lore because he regretted having created such an insubstantial character. But she never came alive.

Still, at least we can look forward to a new companion next year, one who will hopefully prove worthy of Peter Capaldi's magnificent central performance. He commands the screen with total assurance.

The unevenness of the finale – which, though beautifully directed and full of interesting ideas, didn't quite cohere - was frustrating given that this series was one of the best in years.

Capaldi's electrifying anti-war speech from the Zygon adventure was the most powerfully direct political statement in DW history, while the extraordinary episode in which the Doctor found himself trapped within an hallucinatory Kafka-esque nightmare has rightly been hailed as an all-time classic.

It was a reminder that, when inspired, Moffat is one of DW's greatest ever writers. If, as rumoured, the next series is his last, I hope he exits on the high note he deserves.

Series one of Prey starred John Simm as man wrongly accused of a terrible crime. The loosely connected second series finds his old Life On Mars mucker Philip Glenister in a similar predicament. Last year, Ashes to Ashes' Keeley Hawes found herself wrongly accused and framed in Line Of Duty 2. Is that entire cast suffering from a paranoid persecution complex? Do they have something to tell us?

As a prison guard blackmailed into allowing a female inmate to escape, Glenister plays his standard role with practised hangdog aplomb. I'm a sucker for a Wrong Man scenario, and Prey riffs on the theme quite assuredly. It's a pot-boiler, but competently brewed.

However, the real star of this reasonably diverting thriller is Rosie Cavaliero as the engagingly cynical, humanely downbeat detective on his trail. I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of this fine character actress in future.

TV Review: CAPITAL and ARENA: NIGHT AND DAY

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 28 November 2015.

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

Capital: Tuesday, BBC One

Arena: Night and Day: Sunday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Like a sinister live-action Pigeon Street, Capital unfolds on a single London street populated by residents from various economic and ethnic backgrounds. Modern Britain in microcosm.

One morning they each receive a mysterious postcard through their letterboxes, bearing the stark legend: “We Want What You Have.” The sender of this subtly threatening missive had yet to be revealed by the end of episode one of this intriguing new drama, but whoever they are it's probably safe to assume that they're making a vigilante stand against rocketing property prices in the area.

Adapted by leading TV dramatist Peter Bowker from the best-selling novel by John Lanchester, Capital makes no bones about its satirical intent. Yes, it's occasionally heavy-handed – the closing montage of our miserable protagonists scored to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! was straight out of an EastEnders Christmas special – but that's surely intentional.

Credulity may have been stretched by the closing shot of “We Want What You Have” daubed in enormous letters along the length of the street, but only if we approach Capital as an earnest piece of social realism. It's not. It's a tragicomic polemic.

That layer of discomfiting humour is typified by Detectorists co-stars Toby Jones and Rachael Stirling as an investment banker and his spendthrift wife. Owners of a multimillion pound property that would've once been home to lower middle-class families, their unhappy, sterile existence is a nightmare vision of success. Their children are just another accessory, an achievement on a par with their house extension.

Upon being informed that he'd received less than half of his promised £1m bonus, a furious Jones delivered the key, soul-shrivelling line: “What use is £30,000 to anybody?!”

Neighbours include Gemma Jones as an elderly widow with a terminal illness who's witnessed decades of change first-hand, a Zimbabwean refugee living under a false identity, a Polish builder tasked with building dream homes for his employers, and a Muslim family with two adult sons, one righteously devout, the other more measured in his beliefs.

However it pans out, it's refreshing to see a primetime TV drama tackling immigration, greed and social inequality in a witty, thoughtful, timely manner. Despite being set in a city where, unlike anywhere else in recession-hobbled Britain, property prices continue to soar, its themes strike a chord nationwide.

A harbinger of quality, that bobbing neon Arena bottle scored to Eno's Another Green Day is the most weirdly moving ident in British television history. Arena: Night and Day paid suitably esoteric tribute to its record-breaking 40-year reign as our greatest arts strand.

Introduced by John Lloyd as “an evocation” of its irreverent, witty spirit, this new film was a beautifully edited, dawn-to-dusk archive mosaic starring such diverse luminaries as Orson Welles, Poly Sytrene, Francis Bacon, Tony Hancock, Kendo Nagasaki, Gerald Scarfe, Yoko Ono, Mel Brooks, Sister Wendy and Elvis Presley's personal cook.

Its diversity was illustrated via highlights such as a massed ukulele recital at a George Formby convention in Blackpool, Andy Warhol and William Burroughs schmoozing at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, a politely baffled Mick Jagger being introduced to every single member of a Moroccan drumming troupe, and Jeffrey Bernard avoiding deadlines while boozing with Tom Baker in Soho.

A mere best-of compilation wouldn't have done justice to Arena's unconventional vision. This charming celebration was the perfect birthday gift.