TV Column: GUILT + CHILDREN IN NEED: GOT IT COVERED

This article was originally published in The Courier on 26th October 2019.

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

NEXT WEEK’S TV

GUILT

Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

In this new black comedy from Bob Servant creator Neil Forsyth, two brothers accidentally run over and kill an elderly man. When they try to cover it up, their lives become increasingly complicated. The brothers are a study in contrasts. Max (Mark Bonnar) is a rich, amoral lawyer. Jake (Jamie Sives) is a humble, sensitive record shop owner. Max’s plans to get away scot-free are compromised by his hapless brother’s pesky conscience and burgeoning relationship with the dead man’s niece. Guilt is great, a sharp farce-cum-thriller that confirms Forsyth’s status as one of Scotland’s best comedy writers. It’s also buoyed by an enjoyably demonic performance from the always reliable Bonnar, who’s positively Limmy-esque at times.

WHO ARE YOU CALLING FAT?

Monday and Tuesday, BBC Two, 9pm

Britain is in the grip of an obesity crisis, but there’s a growing movement in favour of reclaiming what it means to be overweight. In this challenging two-part experiment, nine people who identify as fat or plus-size spend a week together under the same roof to share their experiences of living with obesity. Sharp differences of opinions ensue. That’s hardly surprising, as the participants include a pair of anti-diet, body-positive activists, a man who swears by his liposuction, a woman who’s ashamed of her body, and the CEO of a charity that regards obesity as a disease. It’s guaranteed to trigger debate and, alas, idiotic comments on Twitter. You know what people are like.

CHILDREN IN NEED: GOT IT COVERED

Wednesday, BBC One, 7:30pm

Earlier this year, ten well-known British actors assembled at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London to record an album for Children in Need. Under the tutelage of a team including hit-making songwriter and producer Guy Chambers, these warbling novices were asked to choose songs that have personal meaning to them. Hence this rather pleasant documentary in which we’re treated to the unlikely spectacle of Jim Broadbent doing a countrified version of Blue Moon, Olivia Colman performing Portishead’s Glory Box with her Fleabag co-star Phoebe Waller-Bridge on ukulele, and genuinely touching versions of Yellow by Coldplay and Sunshine on Leith by The Proclaimers performed, respectively, by Doctors Jodie Whittaker and David Tennant. Don’t worry, it’s not as luvvie-ish as it sounds. Cynics need not apply.

GET RICH OR TRY DYING: MUSIC’S MEGA LEGACIES

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

Hosted, with commendable dedication to maximum archness, by Ana Matronic from Scissor Sisters, this depressing, number-crunching documentary explains how the estates of superstar music artists continue to rake in billions posthumously. We meet a financially secure roster of producers, publicists, lawyers and family members, all of whom seem blissfully happy. Deceased legends and born again ‘brands’ under review include the Ramones, David Bowie, Bob Marley (“Sustainability was so important to him,” smarms the American businessman in charge of his estate), Prince and Elvis Presley, who laid the lucrative blueprint for the entire so-called legacy industry. The King has been dead for 42 years and currently has over 14 million followers on Twitter. It’s what he would’ve wanted.

LAST WEEK’S TV

TRAVEL MAN

Monday October 21, Channel 4

The relentlessly ironic Richard Ayoade began his latest series of supposedly affordable 48-hour travel breaks in Dubrovnik, Croatia. His celebrity companion on this occasion was Stephen Merchant. I’ve never understood the point of Travel Man, it’s so lightweight you never get a satisfying sense of the destinations it visits. That’s sort of the point, but so what? Come back Cliff Mitchelmore, where e’er you may be.

TV Column: THE ACCIDENT + THE WALL

This article was originally published in The Courier on 19th October 2019.

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

NEXT WEEK’S TV

THE ACCIDENT

Thursday, Channel 4, 9pm

Sarah Lancashire stars in this disquieting new drama about a small Welsh community struggling in the wake of a local tragedy. Scenes of a traumatic nature ensue when a group of teenagers break into a construction site for some recreational drug and spray paint fun. The Accident feels at first like an elaborate ‘80s Public Information Film, but it gradually reveals its wider meaning when writer Jack Thorne (This Is England; National Treasure) starts asking provocative questions about guilt, revenge and corporate accountability. Clearly influenced in part by the Grenfell Tower tragedy, it’s a timely piece. Lancashire, who excels as usual, is ably supported by a cast including Joanna Scanlan (The Thick of It) and Sidse Babbett Knudsen (Borgen).

THE BRITISH TRIBE NEXT DOOR

Tuesday, Channel 4, 9:15pm

This presumably well-intentioned series could easily come across as massively offensive. Preview copies weren’t available, so I can only hope against hope that Scarlett Moffatt and her Gogglebox family living in a replica of their terraced home in the middle of a Namibian tribal village – yes, really - turns out to be a sensitive study of vast cultural differences. Moffatt is an exceedingly likeable person, she’s smart, funny and nobody’s fool. That means, in theory at least, that the results of this gimmicky social experiment will be quite interesting. I’m nothing if not a cockeyed optimist. In episode one she’s forced to confront her body-image insecurities when asked to wear the traditional Himba dress. Meanwhile, dad introduces the locals to metal detecting. Hmm.

BILL TURNBULL: STAYING ALIVE

Thursday, Channel 4, 10pm

In November 2017, former BBC Breakfast presenter Bill Turnbull was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. It’s an incurable illness, he’s been told he has no more than ten years left to live, but he wants to know if it really has to be a death sentence. So, in this emotional documentary, he explores various potential methods of prolonging his life. Interviewees include a teenage cancer patient who is certain that cannabis oil, which is illegal in the UK, has kept him alive, and an altruistic man who provides free medicinal cannabis to seriously ill people. Turnbull tries some and gets the uncontrollable giggles, which isn’t something I ever thought I’d witness. He also examines the benefits of a meat-free diet.

K-POP IDOLS: INSIDE THE HIT FACTORY

Friday, BBC Four, 9:30pm

The biggest boyband in the world today aren’t, as history has taught us to expect, from Britain or the USA. They’re called BTS and they hail from South Korea. BTS are merely the tip of a slick, machine-tooled phenomenon known as K-Pop, which in recent years has managed the unthinkable and punctured the West’s long-standing dominance of the music industry. To find out how this happened, music journalist James Ballardie travels to South Korea to meet some of K-Pop’s top movers and shakers. Chief among them is Soo-man Lee, a Midas-like mogul who basically invented the genre. Over the last 30 years he’s produced a never-ending line of strictly-controlled, wholesome pop acts.

LAST WEEK’S TV

THE WALL

Saturday 12th October, BBC One

Hang on, what’s this? A Saturday night game show hosted by Danny Dyer? What a time to be alive. It’s a perfectly adequate crumb of nothingy filler dominated by a large pachinko-like pegboard and Dyer’s carefully honed, one-note personality. Contestants answer non-taxing general knowledge questions asked, for no reason I can fathom, by the disembodied voice of Angela Rippon. Balls drop down the board. Cash prizes are won. Dyer runs through his hammed-up glossary of cockney colloquialisms. There is nothing more to it than that, but it serves its modest and instantly forgettable purpose.

HIDDEN LIVES

Thursday 17th October, BBC One

This excellent new series, in which various writers explore overlooked aspects of contemporary Scottish society, began with a lyrical film from the estimable journalist Peter Ross. He visited the small coastal town of Burghead to celebrate an ancient fire festival known as The Clavie. This lively annual event, which involves hardy souls carrying a flaming barrel of tar on their backs, is a potent symbol of proud community heritage. As Ross observed, the tradition isn’t maintained for tourism or the local economy, it’s maintained “because it’s always been done and it must, and shall, always be done.” A delightful piece of television.

TV Review; KIRI + HARD SUN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 13th January 2018.

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

KIRI: Wednesday, Channel 4

HARD SUN: Saturday, BBC One

Miriam is an experienced social worker who one day makes an error of judgement that leads to tragedy.

She arranges an unsupervised visit between foster child Kiri and her birth grandfather. While Miriam is gone, Kiri is apparently abducted by her ex-con father. A few days later, her body is found. The finger of blame points towards Miriam.

This is KIRI, a compelling new drama starring the great Sarah Lancashire. It’s written by Jack Thorne, author of the Yewtree-inspired National Treasure. Kiri is inspired by another explosive issue torn from the headlines, namely the unjust vilification of social workers.

Miriam becomes a convenient scapegoat. The media hounds her. The public turns against her. She’s thrown under the bus by her employers. She drowns herself in booze.

The murdered girl is black. Her adoptive parents are middle-class and white. This complicates matters even further. Within days of Kiri’s disappearance, yer actual John Humphrys is on Radio 4 chairing a debate on the ramifications of children being matched with families from different cultural backgrounds. Right-wing tabloids accuse social services of “ticking their lefty boxes”. It all feels depressingly real.

Thorne is fascinated by the ways in which the media manipulates, exploits and simplifies complex emotional issues. It constructs binary narratives blithely untroubled by shades of grey. It gorges on grief and enflames prejudices it helped to create in the first place.

Though his writing becomes slightly didactic when his passion and sincerity gets the better of him, for the most part he devises plausible scenarios, searching arguments and convincing characters. Miriam, with all her quirks and flaws, is a gift for Lancashire, who’s always at her best when suffering in a pool of anguish and gallows humour.

Thorne succeeds in his goal of humanising social workers. They are, after all, human. They sometimes make mistakes, but they also do a lot of good. You never read about that in the press, of course. Kiri shows what happens when social workers, who devote their professional lives to helping people, end up needing help themselves.

A nuanced polemic and compassionate character study, Kiri is a valuable piece of work.

“Nuance” isn’t in Neil Cross’ vocabulary. The Luther creator deals in heightened pulp fiction powered by graphic violence and a grim world view. He probably wrote Victorian Penny Dreadfuls in a previous life.

His obsessions reached some kind of crazed apogee in HARD SUN, a propulsive sci-fi conspiracy thriller which, like Luther, treads a fine line between entertaining largesse and outright nonsense.  

Blokey Jim Sturgess and the quietly charismatic Agyness Deyn are mismatched London coppers who discover that the Earth will be destroyed by an unspecified solar catastrophe in five years (yes, the Bowie song does appear). The governments of the world want to keep this rotten news under wraps, lest the human race goes bananas.

What’s more, Sturgess appears to be a dodgy copper up to his neck in all sorts of chicanery, while Deyn’s mentally ill son tried to kill her via stabbings and arson. She’s also secretly investigating Sturgess. What a carve up.

In typical Cross fashion, Hard Sun revels in audacious set-pieces and gore. In order to enjoy it you have to set your brain into the appropriate gear. Suspension of disbelief is key.

It is, by its very precarious nature, a show that could go either way, but episode one set things off in agreeably crackerjack style. I’m a sucker for paranoid dramas wreathed in apocalyptic futility, and Hard Sun doesn’t disappoint on that front.

TV Review: McMAFIA + GIRLFRIENDS + DERRY GIRLS

This article was originally published in The Courier on 6th January 2018.

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

McMAFIA: New Year’s Day and Tuesday, BBC One

GIRLFRIENDS: Wednesday, STV

DERRY GIRLS: Thursday, Channel 4

A monumental bore of global proportions, McMAFIA is a turgid crime drama which proves that it’s possible to surf a wave of hype while wearing concrete boots.

Two years ago, the BBC scored a direct hit with the similarly expensive The Night Manager. The only chance McMafia has of emulating that success is if millions of viewers suddenly develop an inexplicable urge to watch one-dimensional gangsters discussing investment funds and business mergers.

The non-fiction book it’s based on claims that organised crime accounts for roughly 15% of the world’s GDP. A potentially ripe source of drama, but McMafia fails to deliver on its promise. There are no characters to care about. It’s utterly soulless, a slowly meandering iceberg.

James Norton, an otherwise versatile actor, looks hopelessly lost in the underwritten central role of a successful British-born investment banker who can’t escape from his Russian family’s mafia connections. Like young Michael Corleone from The Godfather, he wants to stay legit, but they keep pulling him back in. That’s where comparisons with The Godfather end.

Norton wanders through an interminable procession of ham-fisted scenes stolen from countless other gangster dramas. The uninvolving narrative flits between Mumbai, London, Tel Aviv, Moscow - everyone’s talking ‘bout Pop Muzik! – in a doomed attempt to conjure a sense of epic scale. It makes most of Daniel Craig’s Bond films look exciting by comparison.

Slow-burning dramas only work when they’re fuelled by atmosphere, intrigue, tension and emotion, all of which are conspicuously absent from this frozen turkey.

Occasionally, a jolt of violent action will occur. These moments don’t succeed as shocking flashpoints breaking a spell of finely-tuned suspense, they’re just a cattle-prod used to keep us awake. McMafia is an empty bottle of expensive vodka. What a way to bring in the New Year.

Does Kay Mellor ever sleep? She seems to average at least two hit dramas per year. Her most recent series, Love, Lies and Records, ended just before Christmas. Now she’s back with GIRLFRIENDS, in which Phyllis Logan, Miranda Richardson and Zoe Wanamaker star as three life-long pals in their late fifties.

Mellor tackles her driving theme of age discrimination with typical compassion and humour. When Linda (Logan) loses her beloved husband in mysterious circumstances, she finds herself alone for the first time in 30 years. Gail (Wanamaker) is recently divorced, and no longer feels desirable. Sue (Richardson) is the glamorous features editor of a bridal magazine – she’s never been married – who fears growing old and dying alone.

They’ve been forced to feel irrelevant by a society that discards women when they reach a certain age. Older men are allowed the luxury of becoming distinguished. Older women become invisible. Girlfriends is a cry of anger and frustration in the covert guise of a populist drama. It’s far more important than McMafia.

So is DERRY GIRLS, a very funny, smart and charming new sitcom about a misfit gang of Catholic teenagers in the Troubles-torn Northern Ireland of the mid-1990s.

These kids aren’t defined by their bleak backdrop and religious upbringing, it’s just part of their everyday lives. They struggle with the same growing pains as everyone else. Adolescence is universal, regardless of theological or political context.

Written by Lisa McGee, this semi-autobiographical farce fizzes with cheerful profanities and affectionate observations. Her engaging characters are vividly performed by an excellent cast. The unforced period detail is commendably accurate. The tone – darkness swaddled in warmth - is perfectly pitched. Derry Girls is a delight.

TV Review: DOCTOR WHO + LITTLE WOMEN + ERIC, ERNIE & ME + ERIC & ERNIE'S HOME MOVIES

A version of this article was first published in The Courier on 30th December 2017.

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

DOCTOR WHO: Christmas Day, BBC One

LITTLE WOMEN: Boxing Day to Thursday, BBC One

ERIC, ERNIE & ME: Friday, BBC Four

ERIC & ERNIE’S HOME MOVIES: Friday, BBC Two

A piece of television history occurred on Christmas Day when Peter Capaldi regenerated into Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to play the lead in DOCTOR WHO.

As epochal though that moment was – Whittaker’s brief burst of screen time was suitably tantalising - it didn’t overshadow the brunt of this enjoyable festive special, during which outgoing show-runner Steven Moffat gave Capaldi the emotional farewell he deserved.

Instead of signing off with an epic bang, Moffat marked the end of this era – the first twelve years of ‘Nu-Who’ basically - with a relatively low-key, character-driven hour in which the dying Doctor, having fought, loved and lost for thousands of years in an eternally evil-scarred universe, couldn’t go on any longer. He didn’t want to regenerate, he just wanted to quietly die in the Arctic tundra.

And not, as it turned out, for the first time. Moffat, who can’t resist sewing new fragments into Doctor Who’s vast ongoing tapestry, conjured a bittersweet storyline in which the Doctor’s original incarnation – David Bradley doing a pretty good job of replacing the late William Hartnell, despite the first Doctor’s political incorrectness being jarringly overplayed  – also tried to stave off his imminent regeneration. 

Here were two iterations of the same Time Lord separated by aeons, yet united by fear, confusion and weariness. Nothing says Christmas quite like a double dose of existential fatalism.

It wasn’t as depressing as that sounds, of course. Moffat juggled pathos and gags while building towards an uplifting final act in which both Doctors came to realise the importance of their place in the universe. They lived to fight another billion days.

The Twelfth Doctor’s turnaround was admittedly rather sudden – all it took was a group hug from his loyal companions – but in the context of a moving recreation of the Christmas Armistice of 1914, I’ll let that pass. Moffat’s heartfelt Christmas messages – death can never erase memories of loved ones, human beings are essentially kind – never came across as trite.

Moffat had his faults, as did Russell T. Davies before him, but this was a dignified last stand. He’ll always be one of the best and most ambitious writers Doctor Who has ever had.

One of the modern show’s most talented directors, Rachel Talalay did a typically beautiful job. I hope we’ll see more of her standout work during the Whittaker era.

Capaldi and Bradley were ably supported by the excellent Pearl Mackie in her final performance as companion Bill – oh if only she’d been paired with Capaldi from the start – and Mark Gatiss delivering a sensitive guest performance as a World War One Captain (and grandfather of classic Doctor Who stalwart Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) stoically facing down death.

This was a touching celebration of everything the Doctor and the hit TV series Doctor Who stands for. The Twelfth Doctor’s pre-regeneration speech, though grandly performed by the great Peter C, was a tad overlong but just about succeeded as both a meta and in-universe declaration of the selflessly heroic Time Lord’s core attributes.

If incoming showrunner Chris ‘Broadchurch’ Chibnall heeds Moffat’s checklist, then Doctor Who and Jodie Whittaker should be in safe hands. I remain cautiously optimistic.

The umpteenth adaptation of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott, LITTLE WOMEN hopefully managed to introduce this immortal coming-of-age saga to a new generation.

After all, its themes are eternally relevant. Young women in the late 19^th century share the same fundamental concerns as their modern counterparts. Attitudes may have evolved, but the human condition is unchanging.

Heidi Thomas, creator of Call the Midwife, captured the charm, wit and gender-political thrust of Alcott’s source material, while newcomer Maya Hawke (daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) shone brightly as proto-feminist Jo.

You’d have to be a total numbskull to botch this timeless celebration of female strength and charity. Thomas is not that numbskull.

Morecambe & Wise were always a gifted double act, but it wasn’t until the brilliant writer Eddie Braben refined their onscreen personae that they found a permanent place in the nation’s collective heart.

Eric was an innate comic genius. Ernie was the consummate foil. It was Braben, however, who lit the Eureka bulb of making them both funny in different ways. Inspired by Laurel and Hardy, these three wise men (including one Wiseman) struck cascading comedy gold.

Braben received his due in ERIC, ERNIE & ME, an affectionate drama starring Stephen Tompkinson as an inspired freelance writer who was eventually driven to extremes of nervous exhaustion by the crushing burden of creating an annual Christmas spectacular for millions of expectant viewers.

I’m automatically suspicious of tears-behind-the-laughter biopics, but this one had no truck with voyeuristic sensationalism. How could it? There’s no dirt to be found beneath the fingernails of this story, just sweat, toil and the nerve-straining demands of cheering people up for a living.

The boys themselves were the stars of ERIC & ERNIE’S HOME MOVIES, a truly heart-warming documentary boasting recently unearthed silent footage – most of it shot by Eric – of them enjoying their offstage lives in the ‘50s, ‘60s and early ‘70s.

One usually endures other people’s family mementoes with a polite smile while scanning for the exit, but watching these priceless documents in the intimate onscreen company of delighted friends and family members – most of whom had never seen them before either – was an honour.

I was glad when it ended, but only because the lump in my throat was becoming painful to the point of asphyxiation.

Morecambe and Wise were the beloved funny uncles we never knew in person.

This beautiful programme confirmed what we’ve always known. We loved them because they loved each other.

My Favourite Television Programmes... Ever!!

As every two-bit observational comic will tell you, men love making lists. It's one of those sweeping generalisations that happens to be broadly true. So here's an unbidden dead sea scroll of my favourite television programmes of all time.

I'm not for a moment suggesting that these are necessarily the best TV shows ever made - although most of them admittedly are - as it's an entirely subjective rundown of my own particular favourites.

Should future generations develop an inexplicable urge to find out what that obscure, forgotten TV critic once held up as the pinnacles of televisual excellence in the 20th and early 21st centuries, let this list provide them with empirical evidence. (I will almost certainly have made some glaring omissions).

So, in time-saving alphabetical order, here it is.  

Abigail’s Party

Arena

The Armando Iannucci Shows

Arrested Development

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

Better Call Saul

Big Train

Blackadder

Brass Eye

Breaking Bad

Cheers

Columbo

The Comic Strip Presents…

Cracker

Curb Your Enthusiasm

The Day Today

Deadwood

Detectorists

The Dick Cavett Show

Doctor Who
The Elvis '68 Comeback Special

The Fall & Rise of Reginald Perrin

The Fast Show

Fawlty Towers

Getting On

Ghostwatch

Hancock’s Half Hour

Happy Valley

I’m Alan Partridge

In Bed With Chris Needham

The Incredibly Strange Film Show

Inside No. 9

The Killing

Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge

The Larry Sanders Show

Late Night with David Letterman/Late Show with David Letterman

The League of Gentlemen

Line of Duty

Mad Men

Marion & Geoff

M*A*S*H

The Monkees

Monty Python’s Flying Circus

The Morecambe & Wise Show

The Muppet Show

My So Called Life

The Naked Civil Servant

Not the Nine O’ Clock News

Nuts in May

The Office (UK)

Only Fools and Horses

Outnumbered

Parks & Recreation

Peep Show

Pennies from Heaven

Porridge

Prime Suspect

The Prisoner

Ready Steady Go!

Roseanne

The Royle Family

The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash

Seinfeld

The Shadow Line

The Simpsons

The Singing Detective

Six Feet Under

Smashie & Nicey: End of an Era

The Smell of Reeves & Mortimer

Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em

Spitting Image

Steptoe & Son

Storyville

Talking Heads

The Thick of It

Threads

Top of the Pops

24

The Twilight Zone

Twin Peaks

The Two Ronnies

Vic Reeves Big Night Out

The War Game

Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads?

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

The Wire

The Young Ones

So there you are and there you have it. Be seeing you.

TV Review: HOW TO BUILD A ROBOT + EMPLOYABLE ME

This article was originally published in The Courier on 2nd December 2017.

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

HOW TO BUILD A ROBOT: Wednesday, Channel 4

EMPLOYABLE ME: Monday, BBC Two

One of the most disappointing aspects of modern life is the continuing absence of lifelike robots. It's 2017, shouldn't we have caught up with science-fiction by now?

Robots do exist, of course. They’ve become increasingly useful in the worlds of surgery, manufacturing and agriculture. But whenever they’re designed to resemble humans, they always fall prey to the notorious uncanny valley effect. That is, they look blankly unnerving and sinister. They freak us out (dude).

Not only that, we just don’t trust these sophisticated vessels of artificial intelligence, especially now that they’ve started taking our jobs. UKIP must detest them.

In HOW TO BUILD A ROBOT, inventor and puppeteer David McGoran embarked upon a mission to conquer these suspicions. He believes, quite rightly, that humans won’t fully embrace robots until they move and react just like us. He also believes he’s on the verge of creating that very thing: a robot we can relate to on an emotional level.

McGoran recently assembled a bohemian cabal of dancers, artists and engineers to help him create a robot that the general public can fall in love with. A sensitive soul with a poetic turn of phrase, he realised that human beings tend to respond positively to cute, malleable creatures. That’s why very few of us form meaningful relationships with kitchen appliances.

Following a series of false starts and crude prototypes, the team eventually designed a cuddly little Teletubby capable of interacting with people under its own painstakingly pre-programmed steam. This real-life Pixar character was then left on the streets of Bristol to discover the complexities of human intimacy. The results were heart-warming.

People actually responded to him, they picked him up and revealed simple truths about themselves. The experiment succeeded on both a technical and – yes – spiritual level.

By creating a tactile robot capable of relatively realistic interaction, McGoran may have disproved the notion that every human being is unique. After all, aren’t we all pre-programmed to carry out basic physical and emotional functions? The vast majority of us navigate our way through society in essentially the same way.

That may sound like a cold, cynical conclusion, but McGoran’s findings were actually quite uplifting. Autonomous robots could remind us that, despite our apparent differences, we’re all equal. We all belong to the same species. We’re all human.

David Tennant narrated this quietly profound documentary with exactly the same wryly emphatic inflections he used in Twenty Twelve and W1A, thus making it feel like a spoof at times. Thankfully, much like McGoran’s friendly robot, it was real.

My fluctuating faith in human nature was further restored by EMPLOYABLE ME, the valuable documentary series in which disabled job-seekers challenge the notion that employers welcome them without discrimination.

The latest series introduced us to Ryan and Andy. Ryan has a severe case of Tourette’s Syndrome. Until his stroke, Andy was the director of a massively successful business. They’d both suffered through hundreds of failed job applications.

Assisted by a specialist job-seeking project overseen by a psychologist, Ryan and Andy eventually found gainful employment. Ryan, a fish fanatic, was hired by an aquarium centre, while Andy was employed as a motivational speaker.

Without a trace of condescending sentiment, Employable Me empowers disabled people while combating casual prejudice.

Television, folks, it can sometimes be a force for good.