TV Review: MAMMON and INSPECTOR DE LUCA

This article was originally published in The Courier on 29th March 2014.

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Mammon: Friday, More4

Inspector De Luca: Saturday, BBC Four

Paul Whitelaw

Home to cult hits such as The Killing and The Bridge, BBC Four is the crime-sodden kingdom of gloomy Nordic noir. So it's little wonder that their rivals have recently tried to grab some of that subtitled treasure for themselves. After all, these quality imports are relatively cheap to acquire, but very popular among discerning viewers. It's the sort of equation that TV executives drool over.

Channel 4 gambled wisely when they aired French supernatural drama The Returned, which turned out to be one of the TV highlights of 2013. Flushed with that success, they now give us Mammon, an intriguing Norwegian thriller about journalistic integrity versus corporate corruption.

Our hero is investigative journalist Peter Veras, who uncovers evidence of fraud involving Norway's elite. Unperturbed by the fact that one of the alleged fraudsters is his own brother – they hardly seemed close – he ploughed on with the story in spite of a police report claiming that no crimes had been committed.

But why did his brother resign? And if Peter really is such a hot-shot, why didn't he pick up on the screamingly obvious clues that brother dearest was about to commit suicide? He practically had “DEAD SOON” tattooed on his face. As the episode progressed, I began to suspect that, far from being a leading light of Norway's Fourth Estate, Peter Veras is in fact a blundering idiot.

He hadn't even verified the source of his story. No wonder he was so shaken when it turned out to be his own brother, who was presumably trying to bring down the system from within. That's possibly why he left behind a series of Treasure Hunt-style clues for Peter to chase, which resulted in him donning scuba diving gear and searching for something or other in a roadside lake.

The episode climaxed while he was out on this goose chase, when another millionaire embezzler crashed his car into the lake before shooting himself in the head. It was an unexpected turn of events, I'll grant you that, but it still felt like a ridiculously laboured attempt to create an explosive cliffhanger. That sort of nonsense is acceptable in a comic book thriller like 24, but Mammon appears to think of itself as more meaningful than that. Why else would it begin with a sombre quote from the Book of Revelation?

Its more wayward tendencies aside, this slow-burning and occasionally quite suspenseful drama does show some promise. With its weighty themes of guilt and morality – it's no coincidence that Peter's father is a priest – it may well add up to something quite substantial. I just hope Peter stops behaving like the Norwegian equivalent of a depressed Frank Spencer.

There was more high-powered corruption in BBC Four's latest foreign import, Inspector De Luca, only this time it involved the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.

Set in 1930s Italy on the eve of World War II, it squanders a potentially interesting period setting with a lugubrious pace and anaemic plotting. It's like watching an armchair age in slow motion. De Luca himself is your standard lonely detective: driven yet subdued, a haunted man apart. I'd quite happily never see this archetype again.

It's enough to make you long for a cop drama about a jovial detective who lives in a bouncy castle. Obviously I wouldn't like that either, but at least it would be different.

TV Review: THE WIDOWER and W1A

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd March 2014.

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The Widower: Monday, STV

W1A: Wednesday, BBC Two

Paul Whitelaw

As anyone who's ever watched Take Me Out will attest, ITV is no stranger to the banality of evil. But nowhere is this theme better expressed than in the work of their undisputed king of true-life crime, Jeff Pope, whose list of credits include highly acclaimed dramas about the likes of Myra Hindley, Peter Sutcliffe and Fred West.

Whether as a writer or producer, the defining characteristic of Pope's work is its sensitivity. They may be torn from the headlines, but there is nothing sensational, exploitative or tabloid-esque about his dramas. Few of us would deny that we have a morbid fascination with killers and psychopaths, but Pope always manages to satisfy that impulse without being disrespectful to their victims.

And so it was with his latest effort, The Widower, in which Reece Shearsmith stars as convicted murderer Malcolm Webster. In 1993, this outwardly unremarkable man killed his first wife, Claire, for her life insurance. Having succeeded in passing it off as a tragic car accident – in reality he poisoned her – he then attempted to do the same to his second wife. He was eventually convicted for his crimes in 2011, 17 years after Claire's death.

How did he get away with it for so long? Pope and Shearsmith – a superb actor better known for his darkly comic roles in The League of Gentlemen and Inside No. 9 – did an effective job of illustrating Webster's plausible nature. Superficially charming and sympathetic, he duped his wives with ease. It's clear that these women weren't stupid or naïve. Rather, they were the helpless victims of an arch manipulator.

The scene in which Webster convincingly performed grief-stricken tears in the mirror, before switching them off in a flash, was particularly chilling. But it also contained a trace of black, queasy comedy, of the type that Shearsmith is known for. Both he and Pope realise that even the most appalling events can have an undercurrent of bleak humour. That such moments never came across as distasteful is testament to their careful handling of the material.

If Shearsmith's performance at times felt ever-so-slightly theatrical, I took that as a deliberate choice on the actor's part. Webster, after all, was a man who was constantly performing. A congenital liar and dangerous fantasist, his entire existence was founded on duplicity. Shearsmith's embodiment of this murderous Walter Mitty is never less than mesmerising.

A strange story skilfully told, The Widower exerts an uncomfortable pull.

A sequel to the affable sitcom Twenty Twelve, W1A deposits Ian Fletcher, the former Head of Olympic Deliverance, into the bowels of the BBC as their newly installed Head of Values.

Anyone expecting a savage media satire would've been disappointed. But that's not really writer/director John Morton's style. He's more interested in poking sly fun at corporate gibberish and incompetency. Fine, just as long as it's funny.

But therein lies the problem: the jokes are far too obvious. The concept of Britain's Tastiest Village may be an accurate parody of bland, populist BBC output, but it's a cheap and easy gag.

Plus Morton's signature writing style, that tortured stew of deliberately clumsy language, has finally worn out its welcome. It no longer surprises or amuses, and narrator David Tennant always sounds like he's winking knowingly at the audience.

It's frustrating, as the rest of the cast are impeccable. But they can't do much with such underwhelming material.

TV Review: INSANE FIGHT CLUB and EDL GIRLS: DON'T CALL ME RACIST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th March 2014.

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Insane Fight Club: Tuesday, BBC One

EDL Girls: Don't Call Me Racist: Monday, BBC Three

Paul Whitelaw

Where would documentary film crews be without little-known subcultures? Were it not for these eccentric cabals of people doing unusual things, their work would dry up overnight. So BBC Scotland must've been delighted when they stumbled across the blood-caked soldiers of Glasgow's Insane Championship Wrestling league.

As their bright, likeable, articulate leader Mark admitted in Insane Fight Club, wrestling is pantomime for adults. “It's a drama, a comedy, a soap opera. It's performance art,” he said, between busy bouts of promoting gigs and writing storylines. Yet despite the cheerful fakery, the physical pain and gallons of blood are excruciatingly real. ICW takes the standard theatrics of professional wrestling and adds a gruesomely violent twist. Fights tend to spill out of venues and into the streets. One clip depicted a wrestler being bounced off the side of a passing bus.

The programme followed this tight-knit group of friends in the months leading up to their biggest fight night so far. Their usual stomping ground was the Garage nightclub in Glasgow. But Mark had his eyes on a bigger prize. The nearby ABC holds twice the usual ICW crowd, and Mark was hoping for a sold-out event. Their goal of turning professional and making a decent living out of wrestling obviously meant a lot to them. A colourful tag-team of self-supporting underdogs, you couldn't help rooting for them.

It gradually became apparent that wrestling presented a form of escape from life's mundane status quo. For the likes of star wrestler Grado – an affable, gregarious, overweight fool – it's a way of transforming yourself into a beloved folk superhero. No wonder the camera focused on him. 

With his camp, skin-tight leotards and bellowed catchphrase - “IT'S YERSEL!!” - he was a magnet for comedy, both planned and unintentional. The scene in which he encountered baffled celebrity hairdresser Nicky Clarke was one of the oddest mismatches I've seen on TV in a long time.

But there was an unexpected layer of poignancy lurking beneath the programme's extrovert veneer. The gang's mutual respect and affection was palpable, as was Mark's heartfelt ambition. Having raised his autistic son in a disadvantaged area of Glasgow, he wanted to do everything he could to improve their lives.

At one point, with tears in his eyes, he recalled his son worrying about not fitting in with the other children at nursery. Mark pointed to his own life as a wrestling promoter, and told him that it's okay to be different. He and his friends were all oddballs, and that's something to be proud of. It was a surprisingly moving moment.

While the programme at times felt like an extended promotional video for Mark's burgeoning business, I can't begrudge the gang any success that comes their way. There's something quite heroic in their dogged insanity.

An altogether more dispiriting community of outcasts could be found in EDL Girls: Don't Call Me Racist, in which female members of the notorious far-right movement stated their case.

Confused, angry and naïve – I'm not sure the girl who photographed herself dressed as Hitler really knew who he was – they were typical racists in that they couldn't sensibly articulate their arguments beyond half-baked complaints about a perceived cultural enemy. Their efforts to “protect” England from some non-existent invasion are utterly pointless

TV Review: SILK and JONATHAN CREEK

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

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Silk: Monday, BBC One

Jonathan Creek: Friday, BBC One

Paul Whitelaw

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TV Review: MY MAD FAT DIARY and EDGE OF HEAVEN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd February 2014.

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My Mad Fat Diary: Monday, E4

Edge of Heaven: Friday, STV

Paul Whitelaw

As the old saying goes, if you remember the 1990s that's because they only ended 14 years ago. It barely feels like the past at all. Also, I personally find it difficult to wax nostalgically about the decade of my teens and twenties, if only because doing so makes me feel horrifyingly old.

But that's one of the reasons why I enjoy the charming teen comedy-drama My Mad Fat Diary: despite being set during the Britpop era, it never wallows in cheap nostalgia. The soundtrack may be rammed full of hits by the likes of Black Grape and Oasis, but its evocation of those years is anything but mindless and celebratory. The unfussily realised period setting is all but incidental.

The focus rests instead on the growing pains of Rae, an overweight teenage girl suffering from severe depression and anxiety. Yet despite the sombre subject matter, it manages to find welcome jabs of lightness and humour amid the gloom. It's a delicate balancing act, skilfully exercised.

Based on the diaries of author Rae Earl, it's clearly dredged from a laudable well of sincerity. It also benefits from a sensitive, likeable, vanity-free performance from Scottish actress Sharon Rooney as Rae. A realistically flawed character, she may be sweet and sympathetic but she's hardly an idealised pathos machine. Her moments of surliness, usually directed towards her well-meaning mother, are an effective way of staving off sentimentality.

Like the short-lived yet much-loved teen drama My So Called Life, starring Clare Danes and produced in the actual 1990s, My Mad Fat Diary isn't interested in depicting a bowdlerised version of teenage life. It's laudably warts and all.

As series two commenced, Rae was seemingly happy at last. Head over heels in love with her boyfriend, her only pressing concern was losing her virginity before starting college. However, in a poignant twist typical of the show, it was eventually revealed that Rae was living in denial. The narrative device of an optimistic letter to her best friend, Tix, was, it transpired, a red herring. It was a manifestation of grief. Tix, who also suffered from mental health problems, had died, presumably by suicide. Still in a trough of despair, Rae nevertheless took the important step of realising she still has a long way to go in therapy.

Few shows of my recollection have handled mental illness in such a sensitive and believable way. That it's produced by the otherwise tactless Channel 4 makes it all the more remarkable.

If I was ever tasked with making a parody of a generic, awful British sitcom, chances are I'd come up with something along the lines of Edge of Heaven. Joyless hack-work, this bland, predictable, primary-coloured comedy dutifully encompasses every miserable sitcom cliché. The daffy granny! The sex-mad mum! The fiery foreigner! The wacky gay couple! The chirpy ukulele soundtrack! It's pitiful.

And what's the point of setting it in an '80s-themed bed and breakfast? Aside from a brief snippet of Madonna's Holiday (to signify that someone was going on holiday), it didn't even feature any '80s music. Are we supposed to find the sight of a Wham 'Choose Life' t-shirt inherently amusing?

And a quick note to the production team: far from being an inspired visual gag, the conical bra-shaped keys to the hotel's Madonna suite merely illustrated your ineptitude, as Madge didn't actually adopt that look until 1990. You fools.   

TV Review: BABYLON and LINE OF DUTY

This article was originally published in the Courier on 15th February 2014.

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

Babylon: Sunday, Channel 4

Line of Duty: Wednesday, BBC2

Given the current weight of controversy surrounding police misconduct and media chicanery, you'd think an incisive black comedy satirising the whole sorry mess was just begging to be made. Unfortunately, Babylon isn't it.

Billed as a comedy-drama, the pilot failed to make much impact as either. Although clearly not intended as a rib-tickling farce, the stabs at humour were curiously mannered and self-conscious.

A scene in which Metropolitan Police chiefs were confused by incoming reports of a shooting spree was particularly laboured. And James Nesbitt, as a beleaguered police chief, delivering a convoluted description of what would befall him if he erroneously issued a citywide lock-down felt like an awkward barrage of watered-down The Thick of It.

This is hard to forgive, seeing as Babylon was written by Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, both of whom worked on Armando Iannucci's exemplary political satire. It was like a weak tribute to their own work. Creators of the excellent Peep Show, they also collaborated with Chris Morris on his thoughtful suicide bomber comedy Four Lions. Their CV speaks for itself.

And yet Babylon took tantalising elements from their previous efforts and squandered their potential. Poorly plotted and characterised, it was a tonally confused, boring mess.

Largely set in the Met's communications department, its tackling of PR, spin and corporate gobbledegook felt awfully rote and familiar. Lines such as “This is so far off the record even I don't know I'm saying it” were the stuff of half-hearted fan fiction.

Director Danny Boyle – yes, that one – did at least succeed in providing a surface sheen of energy to Babylon's hectic world of rolling news, camera phones and Twitter And the overall point about the police struggling to project an image of honesty and transparency in a world increasingly monitored by the media and a tech-savvy public was, while crushingly obvious, adequately delivered.

As a state-of-the-nation address, however, it was limp and underwhelming: a missed opportunity. Its depiction of the police may be fair – like any sprawling institution, it's populated by terrible idiots and well-meaning professionals – but Babylon rang hollow as comedy, character drama and social commentary.

By sheer coincidence, the ethical failings of the police were addressed in another TV highlight this week. But Line of Duty is a far more assured and enjoyable affair.

A satisfyingly self-contained story, series one of this dynamic thriller was hardly begging for a sequel. But on the evidence of episode one, series two promises to be just as compelling.

Once again based around a British police force anti-corruption unit, it introduced Keeley Hawes as an apparently conscientious officer suspected of involvement in the violent death of three colleagues and a mysterious witness.

As before, writer Jed Mercurio established an intriguing guessing game riddled with unexpected twists. The biggest shock of all, and one that left me grinning from its sheer audacity, was the cliffhanger death of Call the Midwife's Jessica Raine, who'd only just been introduced as a major new character.

Although I should've seen it coming – Mercurio pulled off the same trick in series one with Gina McKee's character – it still worked beautifully as a devilish bit of rug-pulling.

That barely controlled yet confident sense of anything-goes mania is what sets Line of Duty apart from the vast majority of UK cop shows. It shows Babylon how it's done.

TV Column: BIG BALLET and JA'MIE: PRIVATE SCHOOL GIRL

This article was originally published in the Courier on 8th February 2014.

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

Big Ballet: Thursday, Channel 4

Ja'mie: Private School Girl: Thursday, BBC3

Paul Whitelaw

On the face of it, Big Ballet is just another against-all-odds documentary in which a group of unlikely protagonists must overcome obstacles and defy prejudice to achieve a life-affirming goal. Choirmaster Gareth Malone has based his entire TV career peddling variations on this theme. We've been here countless times before.

And yet it gradually dawned on me while watching episode one that this wasn't really a show about a likeable troupe of overweight women who'd dreamed their whole lives of becoming professional ballet dancers. Either by accident or design, it is in fact a slyly subversive critique of the shallowness, bitchiness and body fascism which runs rampant throughout modern society. And all of it encapsulated within the pirouetting shape of just one man: Wayne Sleep.

Ostensibly hired as the show's standard-issue celebrity mentor figure, Sleep boldly flaunts convention by refusing to display even the merest whiff of sincerity or inspirational vigour. On the contrary, he seemed to find the very concept of overweight dancers hilarious. But then he obviously finds everything hilarious. He's just high on the joy of being Wayne Sleep.

With his dapper grey suit and close-cropped white hair, he's like a cackling gangland businessman toying with his lackeys. His powers of snide condescension are devastating. During the audition process, where over 200 ordinary men and women performed for his approval, he sniffed, “They're having a go, which is the main thing.” As empowering slogans go, that takes some beating.

Theoretically at least, the diminutive Sleep empathises with the women because he too was repeatedly told he'd never make it in ballet due to his physical shortcomings. But after watching this it was obviously because no one could stand being near him.

His bluntly unsentimental sidekick, prima ballerina Monica Loughman, was just as bad. Liqourice-thin and permanently scowling, she's an animated Disney villain come to wretched life. They were like a pair of sniggering children as the men – none of whom got through to the final 18 – auditioned in unflattering leotards. “They all look like they could do with not having beer for a year,” sneered Loughman. “I bet they'll have a drink after this!” quipped Sleep. The card.

Their nastiness aside, the programme itself is broadly sympathetic towards the plus-size dancers. Of course, this being Channel 4, it let itself down at times. The chortling use of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy on the soundtrack felt like a needless dig in the ribs, as did the pointed references to the north, where the women – and by extension, the fat people – come from. Hiring that nice Olivia Colman as narrator may have been an attempt to soften the blow, but even she couldn't smooth out references to the dancers' “ginormous performance”.

Sleep and Loughman would doubtless regard the wanton unpleasantness of Australian comedian Chris Lilley's Ja'mie: Private School Girl as wholly admirable.

A frustrating artist, Lilley is a gifted actor who repeatedly undermines his talent with lazy, clumsy material. Basing a whole mock-doc series around Ja'mie, the insufferable rich bitch teenager he played previously in We Could Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, feels like an act of creative desperation.

Unlike some of his more rounded characters, Ja'mie is little more than a one-dimensional monster. Acutely well-observed, yes, but what's the point if she isn't actually funny? 

Like Ricky Gervais, his British counterpart in “ironic” offensiveness, Lilley is a one-trick pony in dire need of new ideas.