TV Review: MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING + EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT

This article was originally published in The Courier on 23rd June 2018.

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

MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING: Wednesday, BBC Two

EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT: Monday, BBC Four

Comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends and occasional colleagues for nearly 30 years. During that time they’ve made an enormous impact on British comedy. Their legend is secured.

They also both suffer from heart problems. Paul has had three stents fitted. In 2015, Bob underwent triple bypass surgery. This frightening experience affected him deeply.

Devised by Paul as a form of relaxation therapy for his on-the-mend chum, the six-part series MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING also works as a soothing tonic for the rest of us.

The premise couldn’t be simpler. Paul, an experienced angler, and Bob, a total novice, go fishing in some magnificent English lakes. They chat about this and that, make each other laugh, and occasionally catch some fish (don’t worry, they throw them back in).

This could easily come across as dull and self-indulgent if it weren’t for the fact that Bob and Paul are exceedingly genial and amusing. Spending time in their company is delightful.

Bob in particular is one of planet Earth’s most naturally funny and loveable humans. A world without him doesn’t bear thinking about. My favourite moment in episode one was when he performed a jaunty little stroll towards his yurt (Bob takes care of the accommodation). I can’t think of any other living comedian who could turn such a throwaway bit of business into a thing of joy and beauty. He’s such a benign vessel of pure silliness.

However, we get to see another, more contemplative side of him in Gone Fishing. Though primarily light-hearted, there are moments when the rambling conversation takes a tentative detour into more serious territory. Bob discussing his life-threatening illness was particularly poignant.

You don’t have to be interested in fishing to enjoy this serene series. It’s not really about that.

As episode one unfolded, a subtext gradually emerged. There’s more to Gone Fishing than two balding comedians talking nonsense against a backdrop of glorious scenery. It’s about friendship and ageing and the way men interact. Whenever their more reflective ruminations are interrupted by a potential catch, their focus shifts immediately. They’ve suddenly got more important things to think about than mortality. Men – not all men – are like that.

Watching these two old friends, these gifted comics who’ve given us such joy over the years, in sedentary action is a bittersweet, quietly life-affirming treat.

One of many programmes shown to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of British women winning the right to vote, EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT was a brisk yet respectable overview of how a working mother from Manchester changed the course of history.

Presented by former Coronation Street actor and fellow proud Mancunian Sally Lindsay, it put the legendary Suffragette leader’s achievements in perspective by examining her private life. What made her the woman she was?

Born into a liberal activist family, she was aware from an early age that women were treated as second-class citizens. Her intelligence, compassion, righteous anger, social conscience and tireless political tenacity were a potent combination.

An inspirational leader who understood the positive power of negative publicity, her sometimes violent protests ensured that the issue of female emancipation became a headline-grabbing, national talking point. The rest, as they say…

This wasn’t the most in-depth study of one of our greatest national heroes – a hero who’s only just been commemorated with a statue in Manchester - but it nevertheless succeeded as a useful introduction to her extraordinary story.

GRENFELL + BEFORE GRENFELL: A HIDDEN HISTORY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 16th June 2018.

GRENFELL: Monday, BBC One

BEFORE GRENFELL: A HIDDEN HISTORY: Monday, BBC Two

If the definitive account of the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy is written one day, if power is held to account and justice is finally served, then Ben Anthony’s extraordinary 90-minute documentary, GRENFELL, will be one of its key sources.

It should, by rights, have a socio-political impact on a par with Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home.

Anthony is an acclaimed film-maker who specialises in detailed, compassionate studies of everyday human existence; the ideal director for a film in which survivors, and the relatives of some of those who lost their lives, were allowed to speak openly and movingly about what they’ve been through.

Anthony started filming in the immediate aftermath of the fire. Over the last year he’s gathered a phalanx of testimonies. Without recourse to hand-holding narration, he encapsulated the terror, anger, confusion, chaos and injustice of a tragedy in which 72 people died.

Grenfell Tower is situated in a deprived part of one of Britain’s wealthiest boroughs, Kensington and Chelsea, which boasts the highest gap between rich and poor in the country. The local council have been blamed for failing, as a cost-cutting measure, to install the tower with fire-resistant cladding. For years, residents have been complaining about lacklustre refurbishment. One man was told, when he spoke to senior management, “If I was getting it for nothing, I wouldn’t mind.”

With clear-eyed precision, Anthony and his interviewees made the shameful, powerful, angering point that the easily preventable Grenfell fire was a towering symbol of so-called second-class citizens being neglected and ignored. It encapsulated the repulsive inequality that courses like a virus through the veins of our society.

 

Anthony met people who lost everything in the fire, people who still haven’t been adequately rehoused. He also spoke to a local Labour councillor who was appalled that his colleagues didn’t gather immediately to formulate a disaster plan.

During their onscreen interviews, Kensington and Chelsea Council leader Elizabeth Campbell and her colleague Kim Taylor-Smith came across as patronising and dismissive; they clearly can’t relate to the profound concerns of their constituents or the wider issue of economic disparity.

The only positive aspect of this tragedy was the life-affirming way in which the local multiracial community banded together to help those affected, but that civic pride altruism only served to highlight the lax incompetence of the authorities.

Amidst a wave of escalating tension, the preternaturally uncompassionate Theresa May visited the area two days after the fire, but failed to address residents before being quickly bundled into an armoured car. The class divide in microcosm.

The NHS estimates that 11,000 people have been psychologically affected by the Grenfell fire. Ben Anthony’s vital film was an important step towards letting them, and every overlooked community living in social housing, speak out on a national level. We can’t ignore this anymore.

A similarly direct companion piece, BEFORE GRENFELL: A HIDDEN HISTORY provided further context by explaining how, over the last 150 years, Kensington and Chelsea became so staggeringly divided in terms of wealth.

In a nutshell: Victorian property developers built homes for wealthy Londoners blind to the poverty in their neighbouring areas. Nothing has changed since.

The entire point of these commemorations was summed up by a local resident, featured in the second programme, who said, “Grenfell is the culmination of the disrespect, the neglect and the way we were never listened to. Grenfell would’ve never happened if there was even just some respect for our voice.”