BLACK EARTH RISING + TRUST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th September 2018.

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

BLACK EARTH RISING: Monday, BBC Two

TRUST: Wednesday, BBC Two

There’s a lot going on in BLACK EARTH RISING, a globe-trotting political thriller from esteemed auteur Hugo Blick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite hang together.

Blick, who authored impressive dramas such as The Honourable Woman and modern classic The Shadow Line, basically has complete creative control over his projects. That hasn’t been a problem in the past, but episode one of this long-winded and rather starchy drama suggested that he’s finally succumbed to self-indulgence.

It’s frustrating, as Black Earth Rising is a potentially interesting, torn-from-the-headlines meditation on morality and forgiveness.

Eve Ashby (Harriet Walter) is one of the world’s leading prosecutors in international criminal law. During the Rwandan genocide, she rescued and adopted a young Tutsi girl (Michaela Coel). She named her Kate. Now grown up, Kate suffers from survivor’s guilt and works alongside her mother as a legal investigator.

Their close, loving relationship is, to say the least, put under strain when Eve agrees to prosecute a Tutsi general accused of war crimes. His retaliating army brought an end to the bloodshed in Rwanda, but he’s since carved a career as a mercenary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kate argues that this man, who was once considered a hero, shouldn’t be punished for crimes that pale in comparison to those perpetrated by the genocidal warlords who still roam at large. Eve, however, feels that she’s doing the right thing.

Does this honourable woman deserve to be accused of “self-righteous western paternalism”? Is she seeking solutions to problems that would never have occurred if the first world hadn’t intruded upon Africa in the first place? And why do the African characters converse in English after a cursory exchange of subtitled lines? So many questions.

It’s a solid premise and an intriguing set of themes, but Blick failed to set the scene with much finesse. Episode one was awash with info-dumping exposition. So far, Black Earth Rising feels well-intentioned yet heavy-handed.

I hope it improves. Blick deserves the benefit of the doubt. However, at this early stage its only truly arresting aspect is the luminous Michaela Coel’s powerful, witty, intelligent and vulnerable performance.

Created by Simon Beaufoy, author of The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire, and directed by Danny Boyle, TRUST is an enjoyably slick and acerbic factual drama about the outrageously affluent Getty dynasty.

Set in 1973, it focuses on the notorious kidnapping of heir-to-the-fortune John Paul Getty III. His weird, priapic grandfather is played, formidably, by the great Donald Sutherland. ‘Owner’ of a harem of lovers, the elderly oil baron’s eccentricities infected his dysfunctional brood. If Beaufoy’s account is to be – yes – trusted, then they were a deeply unhappy bunch of idle billionaires.

Sutherland’s Getty is a bored, icy capitalist ogre whose sole source of pleasure is loveless sex and acquiring more money. He barely communicates with his extended family, they disappoint him, but he sparks into life when the bright, young, long-haired JP III returns to the fold. Unfortunately for him, the kid is a drug addict in hock to the Mafia.

This engrossing 10-part series is a frankly despairing exploration of the corrosive effects of wealth and power. It’s hell-bent on leaving a sour taste in the mouth.

Lurid tabloid television? Well, I suppose, but when it’s executed with such wit and panache, you can excuse the prurience. I find myself helplessly swept up in the sheer madness of it all.