TV Review: THE INTERROGATION OF TONY MARTIN + DAVID CASSIDY: THE LAST SESSION

This article was originally published in The Courier on 24 November 2018.

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

THE INTERROGATION OF TONY MARTIN: Sunday, Channel 4

DAVID CASSIDY: THE LAST SESSION: Friday, BBC Four

On the night of 20 August 1999, farmer Tony Martin shot and killed teenage burglar Fred Barras. Martin always claimed he acted in self-defence, despite the intruder being unarmed. Martin shot Barras in the back. He eventually served three years of a life sentence, after the original murder charge was reduced to manslaughter.

This case became a political cause celebre. Right-wingers were generally supportive of Martin’s right to protect his property. People capable of more nuanced thought patterns were dismayed by the notion of a binary society in which violent vigilante justice is considered acceptable.

Was Tony Martin a victim? Of crime, certainly. Were his actions justified? Absolutely not. However, what do we really know about him? The claustrophobic factual drama, THE INTERROGATION OF TONY MARTIN, sought to reveal more about this infamous figure via verbatim transcripts of his police interviews.

Largely set within the confines of an interrogation room, it began on the day after the crime took place. Martin (a mesmerising performance from Steve Pemberton) initially came across as a lonely, frightened, confused and vulnerable man experiencing a waking nightmare. He seemed quite sympathetic.

One of Pemberton’s greatest gifts is his unerring ability to imbue ostensibly off-putting characters with traces of ambiguity and pathos.

Martin tried to explain his fearful personality – in the words of his mother, “My son is very highly strung and has a tendency to worry about things.” – by tentatively discussing the sexual abuse he’d suffered as a child. Since then he’d shut himself off from the world in a remote farmhouse shrouded in darkness.

He claimed he’d been burgled several times, but eventually stopped going to the police as he felt he wasn’t being taken seriously. He slept every night, fully clothed, with an illegally-owned shotgun under his bed.

As the drama progressed, my initial impression of Martin changed. His account of that night was vague and contradictory. He came across as arrogant and blasé. When the police eventually picked his slippery story apart, he seemed genuinely astonished that he’d been charged with murder.

To this day, he maintains that he did nothing wrong. How do we know this? The man himself appeared in a chilling coda, during which he returned to the farm for the first time in 19 years. Unrepentant, he said he’d do the same thing again without hesitation. Does he regret killing Barras? Not in the slightest. Tony Martin isn’t a well man. He needs help.

This discomfiting drama won’t have changed anyone’s mind about Martin’s crime, but it did deliver some insight into his damaged psyche.

A raw profile of a man nearing the end of his life, DAVID CASSIDY: THE LAST SESSION followed the reluctant teeny-bop idol as he struggled with dementia and other serious health issues.

With admirable candour, the frail Cassidy invited a documentary crew to record his struggles. He reflected on a life during which he battled with alcoholism for many years, while recording what would prove to be his final tracks - poignant pre-rock tributes to a troubled showbiz father with whom he had a strained relationship.

The programme also featured rare extracts from an in-depth audio interview he taped at the height of his fame in 1976. Even at that age, he came across as an intelligent and introspective man.

This was the tragic saga of a manufactured idol, a typecast fantasy construct, battling with the cruel vicissitudes of real life. It was terribly sad, but never voyeuristic or exploitative. A sensitive tribute.

TV Review: THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL + THE FIRST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 3rd November 2018.

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

THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL: Sunday, BBC One

THE FIRST: Thursday, Channel 4

A six-part adaptation of the spy novel by John le Carre, THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL is a disappointingly flat affair.

In something of a coup for the BBC, it’s directed by the highly acclaimed South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook (The Handmaiden; The Vengeance Trilogy) and stars the great American character actor Michael Shannon (he of the tombstone visage and imposing screen presence). With that much talent involved, how could it possibly fail? Well, simply put, it’s boring.

Chan-wook has opted for a muted approach, which in theory at least suits the Cold War-era source material. However, instead of coming across as an intensely slow-burning thriller steeped in downbeat, chilly atmosphere a la the BBC’s classic adaptation of le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, it ends up feeling lifeless.

In episode one, I never got the impression that Chan-wook was particularly interested in the subject matter. As you’d expect, it’s elegantly shot, but as a piece of drama it’s curiously remote and unengaging, a glacial exercise in spy thriller style. We are expected to sit through six hours of this.

I’m all for Europe-trotting Cold War confections in which characters have grave, clandestine conversations in dimly lit rooms, but only when a strong story supports those familiar genre tropes.

In The Little Drummer Girl, the meandering plot involves Charlie, an idealistic fringe theatre actress (promising TV newcomer Florence Pugh) who, after what felt like an eternity, was eventually recruited by Shannon’s Israeli spymaster, Kurtz. Shannon delivered a typically arresting, subtly detailed performance, but he overshadowed everything around him. His character is more interesting than the plot.

Kurtz is in pursuit of a Palestinian terrorist. Charlie doesn’t know how she can be of any help. That’s supposed to provide a magnetic layer of intrigue, but The Little Drummer Girl suffers from a fatal lack of tension.

Momentum only built in the final scene, when Charlie was abducted by an enigmatic German member of Kurtz’s team (Alexander Skarsgard). By that point, however, it was too little too late.

The first episode of a TV thriller has one basic job: to set the wheels in motion and draw you in. In this instance, the wheels whirred far too lethargically.

An Anglo-American co-production, eight-part science-fiction drama THE FIRST burns slowly to far more compelling effect.

Set in the near future and partly inspired by the Challenger space shuttle disaster, it began with a tragically aborted human mission to Mars. Sean Penn – looking for all the world like a kindly, careworn couch – stars as a former astronaut tasked with comforting the grieving relatives of a doomed team of cosmic pioneers. 

His quietly convincing performance is matched by the excellent English actress Natascha McElhone, who plays the conflicted CEO of the company responsible for sending these astronauts to their death. Penn’s character will, inevitably, lead another mission to Mars, but I’m looking forward to seeing how that pans out.

Framed through a prism of hand-held pseudo-documentary realism, The First is a humane, understated drama. It’s essentially the polar opposite of The Little Drummer Girl in that, quietly, gently, it establishes a mood of queasy intrigue. It hooks you in. The Little Drummer Girl is nothing more than a series of loosely-knitted, drab occurrences.

Suffused with potent melancholy, The First presents a pair of potentially interesting protagonists and a strong ‘what if?’ scenario. It arrived on TV with very little fanfare last week, but it deserves your attention.