CORONATION STREET ICONS + THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th August 2020.

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CORONATION STREET ICONS

Wednesday, STV, 8:30pm

And here we go again, yet another piece of emergency Covid schedule filler. Still, archive clips of Corrie are always a fun distraction. Episode one pays tribute to Ken Barlow, the longest-serving character in TV soap history. It reminds us that Ken, the street’s resident Guardian-reading paragon of righteous sense and virtue, a soft leather elbow patch in human form, has actually experienced his fair share of brawls and romantic entanglements over the years. No one who's never seen Corrie before will watch this programme, but if they do they'll be left with the impression that Ken has spent the last six decades embroiled in a never-ending orgy of mindless sex and violence, alleviated only by the occasional slapstick scrape. A lord of chaos living on the edge of reason.

AFRICAN RENAISSANCE: WHEN ART MEETS POWER

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Africa is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. It’s also demographically the youngest continent, with six in every ten people being under the age of 25, and far more culturally diverse than anywhere else on Earth. In this enlightening new series, British journalist Afua Hirsch visits three African countries - Ethiopia, Senegal and Kenya – to examine the ways in which they’ve reasserted their identities as leading cultural lights. The through-line in her opening essay is the extraordinary story of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, a powerful yet complex symbol of the country’s proud history of fierce independence. Hirsch also meets renowned artists who are keeping Ethiopia’s fecund cultural legacy and defiant spirit alive in the 21^st century.

MANCTOPIA: BILLION POUND PROPERTY BOOM

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

The Manchester skyline is in a state of flux. Expensive high-rise homes are popping up with such velocity, the city centre looks nothing like it did just a few years ago. Manchester’s population is set to double in the next few years. Manctopia, an incisive four-part series, examines the drastic impact this unprecedented regeneration is having on existing residents. We meet a local millionaire property developer, a man with a vested financial interest in eradicating homelessness, who plans to transform the red light district into a luxury residential hub, and a single working mum who can no longer afford to stay in the increasingly gentrified area she’s lived in all her life. The free market in action, folks.

UNREPORTED WORLD

Friday, Channel 4, 7:30pm

As you read this, billions of locusts are devouring crops and vegetation all across Kenya. As a result, farming families are starving and destitute. If this devastating plague continues, Kenya will be brought to its knees. The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the catastrophe. In the latest edition of this august foreign affairs series, reporter Sahar Zand travels to a country where agriculture provides a livelihood for more than 80% of the population. She hitches an urgent ride with one of the teams responsible for spraying infested areas with pesticide. Seeing as most areas in Kenya appear to be infested – in one particularly horrifying scene, Zand visits a town where the walls are caked with locusts – their task is Herculean.

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THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Sunday 9th August, BBC Two

The indigenous Australian football star Adam Goodes never set out to be an inspirational spokesperson for racial equality. All he ever wanted to do was play his beloved sport at a professional level. But as a prominent black public figure who has experienced blatant and casual racism throughout his life, he felt he had to make a brave stand and speak out. This intensely angering documentary examined the backlash he faced after forcing white football fans to confront the toxic vein of racism that has coursed through Australian society for centuries. And you don’t need me to tell you that institutional racism isn’t a problem specific to Australia. It’s all around us right now. Goodes’ message was clear: we need to talk, listen and learn. That’s our only hope of ever developing more empathy and understanding of what racism actually means. The film is still on iPlayer, I highly recommend it.

HOW TO BEAT… PAIN

Tuesday 11th August, Channel 4

Do you remember that late ‘80s/early ‘90s vogue for splicing kitschy old clips of public domain American films into contemporary TV documentaries? The geniuses behind this otherwise blandly presented health series certainly do. It’s as tiresomely unfunny now as it was then, a literally cheap trick.

 

 

MANDY + ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ + THE YORKSHIRE JOBCENTRE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 8th August 2020.

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MANDY

Thursday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

Now this, at last, is a proper Diane Morgan vehicle. Hitherto best known as Philomena Cunk from those Charlie Brooker shows and their lacklustre spin-offs, Mandy is written and directed by Morgan. She plays a permanent jobseeker, an insecure working-class oddball with a fishhook grimace, but Mandy is such an exaggerated cartoon of an unemployable person (at one point she attempts to deny her prominent involvement in a series of online gambling adverts), it’s clearly not intended as reactionary social satire. Mandy idly flattening tarantulas on a banana conveyer belt. Mandy getting her skew-whiff bouffant caught in an extractor fan. Mandy and Maxine Peake as estranged Touch the Truck contestants. I laughed. Mandy plays to Morgan’s strengths. She’s a very funny person with an innate gift for silly, deadpan farce.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

And so, this starkly illuminating series reaches its end. But the story remains open-ended. In 2011, the coalition forces finally left Iraq. Victory Day. Within a few months, sectarian tensions resurfaced, tensions stoked by Iraq’s new President. America shook his hand and turned a blind eye. Problem solved, nothing to see here. Enter ISIS. The catastrophic legacy of the Iraq war has, as far as I’m aware, never been essayed on British television in such acutely human detail. It revolves around a diverse array of talking heads, most of them exhausted, traumatised, by the sheer horror of it all. If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to watch the whole thing on iPlayer.

THE YORKSHIRE JOBCENTRE

Monday, Channel 4, 9pm

I have mixed feelings about this series. Filmed in a busy Leeds jobcentre just prior to the Covid crisis, it confronts Britain’s dire unemployment situation (there are 29,000 unemployed in Leeds alone). It follows claimants from various walks of life to illustrate the point that anyone can find themselves in need of benefits, a fact which shouldn’t need restating, but one which blinkered people find difficult to comprehend. It features sympathetic insight from jobcentre employees and vulnerable people living on a pittance. It highlights the chaotic injustice of Universal Credit. But… it also strikes a patronising tone: “Aww, these likeable claimants all get short-term happy endings!” I, Daniel Blake it ain’t. Well-meaning yet uneasily compromised.

GREAT CONTINENTAL RAILWAY JOURNEYS

Wednesday, BBC Two, 8pm

Michael Portillo is living proof that Tory politicians can always reinvent themselves, especially if they affect a sort of ersatz chumminess. If you didn’t know any better, you would assume – if you could even be bothered - that this primary coloured slab of uncooked giblets was a harmless train enthusiast; at worst, a tediously sensible village green Lib-Dem. Nah. He’s a voracious Thatcherite, a nasty piece of work. Do not trust him, don’t ever forget. And here he is again, for his umpteenth series of travelogues funded by the notoriously socialist BBC. This week he’s in Germany, where he waxes solemnly about the rise of fascism. It’s like being lectured on the dangers of smoking by Keith Richards.

LAST WEEK’S TV

PHIL SPENCER’S STATELY HOMES

Wednesday 5 August, Channel 4

Well this was just appalling. Phil Spencer, a blandly humanoid C-3P0 who makes his genuinely unpleasant Location, Location, Location (so bad, they named it thrice) co-star Kirstie Allsopp look like a fluorescent Mrs Claus riding a rocket full of sweets to the moon, presides over an offensive celebration of stupid old toffs and their ridiculous houses. Haven’t we suffered enough of late? Phil Spencer cooing over a gold-upholstered bath which was once soiled by King Ralph of Freedonia is volcanically insulting. I’m all for mindless escapism, I crave silliness and whimsy. Hell’s clanging bells, we don’t have to be angry all the time. Imagine how exhausting that would be. But programmes such as this are indicative of the rot at the heart of British society. Tug your forelock, know your place. We. Are. Doomed.     

EVERYTHING: THE REAL THING STORY + A SUITABLE BOY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 1st August 2020.

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EVERYTHING: THE REAL THING STORY

Friday, BBC Four, 9pm

In 1976, the Real Thing became the first all-black British band to top the charts. You to Me Are Everything, a shimmering bauble of Philly soul perfection, came straight outta Liverpool. They were authentic, handsome, effortless; that charmingly cocky moniker fit them like a pair of snug satin strides. Other hits followed, but the Real Thing, a talented vocal group who also wrote their own socially conscious songs, struggled to escape from their teeny-bop image. This excellent feature-length documentary gives them their due. The group’s problems were compounded by falsetto pin-up Ray Stone’s mental health and drug issues. His bandmates pay tribute to that troubled soul man with palpable warmth, candour and sadness. It’s a deserved, if overdue, profile of a pioneering outfit.

CUBA: CASTRO VS. THE WORLD

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

This absorbing two-part series attempts to explain how, during the Cold War, the tiny island of Cuba successfully challenged sabre-rattling superpowers. Fidel Castro’s relationship with the Soviet Union was at the heart of his mission to spread Marxist revolution across the continents, but the alliance was often strained to breaking point. While the surface narrative in episode one is familiar – the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion followed by the world-threatening Cuban missile crisis – it’s fleshed out by insightful contributions from an array of elderly men who were directly involved in the struggle. A clear-eyed and authoritative essay, it’s yet another feather in the cap for acclaimed documentarian Norma Percy (The Death of Yugoslavia).

SEMI-DETACHED

Thursday, BBC Two, 10:05pm

I’m all for tragicomedy when done well, but this sour new sitcom is utterly depressing. Lee Mack plays against type as a needy, desperate middle-aged man struggling to adjust to fatherhood with a partner twenty years his junior. It plays out in real time, presumably in an attempt to ramp up comic tension. Instead, it merely cultivates an air of queasy housebound claustrophobia which is inimical to farce. Small-scale, real-time domestic sitcoms such as Friday Night Dinner and The Royle Family succeeded because the characters are all essentially likeable. Comedy characters don’t have to be Good People, of course, but this pathetic shower are exhausting. It’s frenetically charmless and squanders the talents of a fine supporting cast.

SQUEAMISH ABOUT…

Thursday, BBC Two, 10:30pm

In this hastily cobbled together new series of comedy shorts, Matt Berry narrates incongruous nonsense over obscure archive footage. He does so in the guise of social historian Michael Squeamish, i.e. the same character Berry always plays. I’m usually quite partial to his absurdly-enunciated whimsy, but this is weak sauce. It’s not enough to just place clips out of context, you have to write some good gags too. Series creator Arthur Mathews (aka the Father Ted co-creator who isn’t a raging transphobe) should know better. Toast of London, the sitcom he co-wrote with Berry, was often very funny, but they’re on autopilot here. Comedians such as Peter Serafinowicz and Rhys Thomas have mined similar territory with far superior results.

LAST WEEK’S TV

A SUITABLE BOY

Sunday 26th July, BBC One

Set in a newly post-independence, post-partition India, this ambitious BBC drama is the first to feature an all-Asian cast. In that sense it's a welcome landmark. It follows a young woman faced with an impending arranged marriage to one of three ‘suitable boys’. A promising premise, but episode one was painfully slow. Adapted by That Man Again Andrew Davies from Vikram Seth’s epic novel, it failed to properly establish an extensive array of characters who were presumably more sharply-defined on the page. A frustrating state of affairs, as a major BBC production examining this tumultuous period in history has potential. Seth has said that he wouldn’t have allowed it to go ahead without Davies at the helm. Fair enough. Davies, however, has somehow managed the impossible: an inert drama rife with activity. Wild idea, I know, but maybe an Asian writer would’ve handled it better?

THE CONFESSIONS OF THOMAS QUICK

Monday 27th July, Channel 4

Sture Bergwall – aka Thomas Quick – was once regarded as the Swedish Hannibal Lecter. After confessing to 39 horrific murders, he was incarcerated for life. Years later, Bergwall was released. His confessions were fabricated. This extraordinary docudrama recounted the tragic, complicated saga of a mentally ill man and some highly dubious psychologists.

RODNEY P'S JAZZ FUNK + ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ

This article was originally published in the Courier on 18th July 2020.

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RODNEY P’S JAZZ FUNK

Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

This lovingly-curated documentary captures the energy and excitement of Britain’s first home-grown black music culture. Hip hop legend Rodney P reveals how jazz funk began as a thriving underground club scene, before going on to shape the sound of early ‘80s British pop. It was created by the first generation of suburban and inner city black kids born in Britain, and although it was influenced by the heavy fusion innovations of American musicians such as Herbie Hancock, it allowed them to create their own distinct identity. That pioneering scene was also an early example of multiculturalism and gender equality, during an era when overt racism, sexism and homophobia were rife. A valuable, funky social document.

THE REAL EASTENDERS

Tuesday, Channel 4, 10pm

The Isle of Dogs was once the healthy heartland of London’s docklands community. A place where you’d find ‘proper’ working-class cockneys. Today it stands in the oppressive glistening shadow of Canary Wharf. The only boats you’ll find nearby are on the other, more affluent side of the river. Hak Baker, a local resident and musician, presents this insightful, tender ode to his neighbours. It’s not a sentimentalised account, razor-edged shards of sadness often poke through, but it never wrings its hands in a patronising way. The stars of the show are the kids Baker meets. They’re funny, smart, innocent, brilliant. Boris Johnson will never watch or understand this beautiful programme.

EASTENDERS: SECRETS FROM THE SQUARE

Available now on BBC iPlayer

While EastEnders prepares to resume production, super-fan Stacey Dooley visits the set to meet some of Albert Square’s more notable residents. The banter flows thick and fast when she sits down for a socially distanced chinwag with Danny Dyer and Kellie Bright, who play Mick and Linda Carter. Dyer and Bright come across well, they have natural chemistry. Dyer claims that he occasionally adds authentic cockney slang to his dialogue, while admitting that his career was in the doldrums when he got the part. Carter first appeared on the show in 1986, as an extra at Michelle and Lofty’s wedding, and reveals that she channels elements of Carmella Soprano into her performance. A harmless piece of cheap emergency filler.

MIRIAM MARGOLYES: ALMOST AUSTRALIAN

Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

Six years ago, Miriam Margolyes became an Australian citizen. “It was a day of supreme happiness,” she beams at the start of this typically honest and thoughtful travelogue. The self-described “78-year-old Jewish lesbian”, whose partner is Australian, embarks upon a 10 thousand kilometre voyage to find out whether the so-called Australian Dream still exists in 2020. Did it ever exist? Margolyes' findings are pretty bleak. She meets the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Victorian parliament, which only happened in 2017, and is shocked to discover that women over 55 now make up the fastest growing homeless population in Australia. She also uncovers the devastating effects of drought on farming communities, and encounters a young Afghan man who has been denied permanent residency.

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IMAGINE… THIS HOUSE IS FULL OF MUSIC

Sunday 12th July, BBC One

Filmed during lockdown, this documentary visited the Kanneh-Mason family from Nottingham. Mum and dad looked on proudly as their seven children, all of them virtuoso classical musicians, performed various pieces. It existed for pure pleasure alone, a calming symphony of respite.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN IRAQ

Monday 13th July, BBC One

This riveting series is essayed through the eyes of the civilians, journalists and soldiers who lived through the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the years of chaos which followed. It’s an expertly woven, detailed patchwork of brutally frank talking head interviews; an essential document, scathing and humane. Notwithstanding the extravagantly whiskered Iraqi man who still regards Saddam as a martyr, the most troubling figure in episode one was a tequila-swigging American marine who was trained to view his mission as a glorified Rambo adventure. He looked broken, haunted. Meanwhile, a sharp-witted young man, who initially viewed the invading forces as emissaries of freedom, vividly encapsulated the utter insanity of the situation. When Saddam’s statue was toppled, he, like so many Iraqis, assumed the nightmare was finally over. As one war correspondent put it, with a rueful gallows smile, “What we didn’t realise was that the invasion wasn’t the war. The war was to come.”

THE RISE OF THE MURDOCH DYNASTY + THE KEMPS: ALL TRUE

This article was originally published in the Courier on 11th July 2020.

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THE RISE OF THE MURDOCH DYNASTY

Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Rupert Murdoch has for decades used his vast media Death Star as a devastating political weapon. He has the power to dictate the results of a UK general election. He made sure that Brexit happened. He made sure that Corbyn never had a chance. His influence is terrifying. This grimly absorbing series depicts him as a ruthless, bitter man driven by an obsession with the future of his empire. It features a motley roster of talking heads including Nigel Farage (who claims that he received Murdoch’s blessing to participate), Alastair Campbell and former News Corporation employee Piers Morgan. Tony Blair, Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs themselves are conspicuously absent. It begins in 1995, when Blair and Campbell made a pact with the Devil. Both parties got what they wanted.

                                            

AMAZING HOTELS: LIFE BEYOND THE LOBBY

Tuesday, BBC Two, 8pm

                                      

The latest series of this globe-trotting exploration of how the filthy rich live when they’re not at home begins in the self-governing Chinese city of Macau, which is the gambling capital of the world (face facts, Las Vegas). Hosts Monica Galetti from MasterChef and obnoxious word-churner Giles Coren have a playful nose around the MGM Cotai, a luxury hotel designed to look like glittering Chinese jewellery boxes stacked on top of each other. It’s a soulless spectacle, inside and out, but the focus as always is on the everyday activities of the hotel staff. Galetti visits the preposterously well-stocked kitchen and joins employees as they clean apartments belonging to elderly people from the local community. Great PR.

BEARS AROUND THE HOUSE

Wednesday, BBC Two, 8pm

Warning: this valuable series contains sickening tales of animal cruelty. It doesn’t show any bears being harmed, but the details of their circumstances prior to being rescued are upsetting. That, however, is necessary in order to highlight the importance of conservationist Giles Clark’s mission. He’s involved in the construction of a pioneering bear sanctuary in Laos, which is home to numerous orphaned sun and moon cubs. These beautiful, vulnerable creatures are victims of the illegal Asian wildlife trade. Without the intervention of Clark and his colleagues, they were destined for a horrific life in captivity. Now they’re being prepared for a life in the wild. The programme follows Clark as he gradually nurses five-month-old Mary back to health.

PAUL O’GRADY’S FOR THE LOVE OF DOGS: BACK IN BUSINESS

Wednesday, STV, 8pm

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home was forced to close its doors to the public for the first time in 160 years. In this special edition of his irresistible love letter to our canine comrades, O’Grady returns to Battersea just before it goes into lockdown. The staff have a herculean task on their hands: they need to find homes for more than 150 dogs and cats. It’s urgent. Preview copies weren’t available, but inevitably it involves the hugely likeable O’Grady offering to foster one of the dogs. He already has five dogs at home and admits that he doesn’t really want another one, but all bets are off when he meets an adorable little puppy who falls asleep inside his jacket.

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THE KEMPS: ALL TRUE

Sunday 5th, BBC Two

This enjoyable spoof documentary starred Gary and Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet as themselves. Written and directed by Rhys Thomas in the sharply edited, gag-packed style of his Brian Pern comedies (Simon Day had a cameo), it appeared to be partially inspired by that notorious 2018 Bros documentary, which was hilariously and tragically real. The Kemps portrayed themselves as boastful, antagonistic, yet weirdly endearing buffoons. They displayed good, semi-naturalistic comic timing throughout (they are experienced actors after all) and fully embraced the daft spirit of it all. I particularly enjoyed the disastrous table-reading for Martin’s time-traveling crime drama, and their desperate attempt to hijack the Radio 2 playlist. Great fun. 

MRS AMERICA

Wednesday 8th July, BBC Two

Phyllis Schlafly was an ultra-conservative campaigner who devoted her career to making life more unpleasant for people; an American fusion of Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse. This series dramatizes her campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, which brought her into conflict with the Women’s Liberation Movement. Written by Mad Men alumnus Dahvi Waller, it’s a sharp, kinetic ‘70s period piece anchored by a typically fine performance from Cate Blanchett. It doesn’t portray Schlafly as a one-dimensional monster, but nor does it make excuses for her. Terrible person, interesting story.

CORONATION STREET: STORIES THAT GRIPPED THE NATION

This article was originally published in The Courier on 4th July 2020.

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CORONATION STREET: STORIES THAT GRIPPED THE NATION

Monday, STV, 8:30pm

Over the last few months, the Corrie team have carefully rationed the phalanx of episodes they recorded before the world went to pieces. Production is set to resume soon, but this emergency package of compilations should help to bridge any potential gap in proceedings. It’s pure nostalgia, shameless filler, Just Another Clip Show, but there’s a lot to be said for that in times of crisis. Don’t ever underestimate the mild power of mindless escapism, especially when it involves the greatest soap ever baked. It begins with the explosive Mike, Deirdre and Ken love triangle. Of course it does. Mercifully, for once there are no superfluous talking heads, just loads of clips and some affectionate narration from Jason Manford.

THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS

Monday and Tuesday, BBC One, 9pm     

Agatha is a lonely supermarket employee who is about to give birth. She becomes obsessed with Meghan, a pregnant woman with a perfect upper middle-class lifestyle (she’s forever chopping vegetables on her kitchen island). Inevitably, Meghan’s world isn’t as peachy as it seems. This risible Australian psychological thriller – Peyton Place with delusions of grandeur - thinks it’s blowing minds with a series of massively signposted twists etched in flaming neon letters. Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith from Downtown Abbey) almost transcends her surroundings with a fairly sensitive performance, but there’s no getting around the fact that Agatha embodies the offensive stereotype of people with mental health issues as figures to be pitied and feared. It’s 2020, we’re supposed to be better than this. 

BEING BEETHOVEN

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

Ludwig Van Beethoven was a child prodigy, a natural born genius who was never given the opportunity to be anything else. That’s the poignant theme of the first instalment in this insightful series, which strips away the layers of myth to reveal the human being underneath. An estimable symphony of classical musicians and musicologists rake over Beethoven’s traumatic childhood. One of them, with affection, describes him as “a tiny, friendless, grubby kid who was somehow always in a world of his own all the time.” Fans of that other notable pop genius, Brian Wilson, will recognise the contours of this story: Beethoven’s dad was an aggressive alcoholic and frustrated musician. Peter Capaldi narrates passages from the great man’s jottings.  

THERE SHE GOES

Thursday, BBC Two, 9:30pm

The daughter of writers Shaun Pye and Sarah Crawford was born with an extremely rare, severe and undiagnosed learning disability. They’ve funnelled their experience into this admirably honest and entirely unsentimental comedy-drama, which first appeared on BBC Four in 2018. Series two picks up the story eighteen months later. As before, occasional flashbacks are employed to place their situation in ever-changing context. David Tennant and Jessica Hynes are low-key convincing as the parents of a child whose very existence makes well-meaning people feel uncomfortable. But There She Goes gains its strength from a determined refusal to preach or judge. Life isn’t etched in black and white, it’s strange, sad, difficult and funny. Profound, I know.

LAST WEEK’S TV

COMEDIANS: HOME ALONE

Monday 29th June, BBC Two

One day, probably next year, we’ll be treated to a compilation of clips from programmes made during the Covid-19 pandemic. An important historical document. Footage from this hastily cobbled-together sketch show will almost certainly be included. Future generations will look back in confusion at that strange time when bedraggled famous faces broadcasting pointless froth from the lockdown safety of their own homes was briefly normal; like that scene towards the end of Threads, when post-apocalyptic children gaze uncomprehendingly at crackly VHS footage of Words and Pictures. The penultimate episode featured contributions from the witless Russell Kane and those insufferably smug My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast dullards. World’s Funniest Man Bob Mortimer solemnly providing a list of silly cat names (Gustav Hosiery; The Gift of Barry; Brigadier Knickers) was the sole highlight. God help us if there’s an actual war. 

ITALY'S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR'S DIARY + THE LUMINARIES

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th June 2020.

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ITALY’S FRONTLINE: A DOCTOR’S DIARY

Monday, BBC Two, 9pm

This stark documentary was filmed inside an overstretched hospital at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. It follows A&E doctor Francesca Mangiatordi as she struggles to care for an escalating influx of infected patients. A shortage of beds has left staff with no choice but to park patients in corridors, sometimes for days. Mangiatordi is exhausted, candid and eloquent. She repeatedly questions the worth of her role in the face of such overwhelming suffering: “When you remove someone’s dignity, you leave them with nothing.” Gradually, some of her colleagues succumb to the virus. Their experience of treating Covid patients naturally makes them more fearful about their own chances of survival. Meanwhile, Mangiatordi frets about the prospect of a devastating second wave.

THE HIDDEN WILD OF THE MOTORWAY

Tuesday, BBC Four, 9pm

Britain’s busiest road, the M25, is a vast loop of soulless concrete. But look closer and you’ll find that the natural world has adapted to coexist around it. Inspired by J.G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad, naturalist Helen Macdonald takes a thoughtful stroll around the M25’s perimeter in this hauntological documentary. She discovers pretty woodlands and waterways scored to a background roar of traffic; some songbirds have had to alter the pitch of their calls in order to be heard. She also reveals how fungi studies could help to solve the problem of traffic congestion. An enthusiastic, softly-spoken scholar finding hidden wonders in mundane areas we take for granted, this is a quintessential BBC Four joint. We’ll miss it when it’s gone.

THE SECRET MEDITERRANEAN WITH TREVOR McDONALD

Tuesday, STV, 9pm

You could argue that sunny foreign TV travelogues are the last thing we need to see at the moment. They’re a cruel reminder of an increasingly distant time when, finances permitting, we could hop on a plane and relax our blues away on holiday. On the other hand, the sight of genial Sir Trev in sunglasses and an open-necked shirt might provide a fleeting distraction from the misery of life as we currently know it. Which sounds fine in theory, but according to the synopsis – preview copies weren’t available – episode one involves Trev boarding a superyacht once owned by Aristotle Onassis and later witnessing a bout of camel wrestling. That doesn’t sound like fun to me. Tastes may vary.

HUEY MORGAN’S LATIN AMERICAN ADVENTURE

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

In this vibrant new series, the BBC 6 Music DJ drops his usual tiresome wise-guy act to engage sincerely with the turbulent history of Latin American popular music. His perspiring odyssey begins in Brazil, where ecstatic Samba rhythms continue to represent the defiant voice of oppressed working-class people (Brazil is currently governed by ‘the Trump of the Tropics’). This is protest music in its purest most transcendent form; grooving community action. He also covers the bossa nova boom and examines the anti-capitalist politics of the tropicalia movement via interviews with the great Gilberto Gil and, from the magnificently far-out Os Mutantes, Arnaldo Baptista. These musicians challenged the jackboot status quo with some the greatest music ever made.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE LUMINARIES

Sunday 21st and Monday 22^nd June, BBC One

This turgid adaptation of Eleanor Catton’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel (which I’ve never read and never will) succeeds only as a showcase for some decent production design. It looks good, but the story, the characters, don’t engage at all. It’s set on New Zealand’s South Island in 1866. Various folk converge to pan for gold. It glistens with a hallucinatory sheen of opiated sweat and grime. The performances are fine and the setting is potentially interesting. There’s something to be said here about colonialism, racism, misogyny and greed. The Luminaries somehow manages to crush that potential into mulch with its awkward pacing and structure. An alienating mess.

THE CHOIR: SINGING FOR BRITAIN

Tuesday 23^rd June, BBC Two

Gareth Malone is a smarmy little creep, a tweedy child with an orchard full of apples for teacher. Hats off to every frontline worker involved in this experiment, you’re all brilliant, lovely people, but keep a close eye on Malone. He’s a government-sanctioned Minister of Music in waiting who can barely disguise his contempt for pop music behind that faux-groovy piano teacher facade. He makes Gary Barlow look like Che Guevara.