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.

TV Review: THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS + CUNK ON BRITAIN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 5th May 2018.

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

THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS: Friday, BBC Four

CUNK ON BRITAIN: Tuesday, BBC Two

In 1956, during the Cold War stalemate, Eisenhower’s government figured that their best chance of beating the Soviets would be to establish a positive consensus about America around the globe.

Via the newly established United States Information Agency, they set about selling the benefits of a prosperous capitalist society, while playing down inconvenient truths such as racial segregation in the south.

This was an era when even a widely beloved African-American star such as Louis Armstrong couldn’t perform in his home town of New Orleans, as racially integrated concerts were verboten; Armstrong’s band included two white musicians.

Nevertheless, the government decided to enlist the nation’s greatest jazz musicians as cultural envoys tasked with putting an upbeat spin on the black experience by playing diplomatic concerts in the newly liberated nations of Asia and Africa.

It was thought that a friendly dose of hot jazz would encourage them to embrace American values and abandon any pesky notions of turning Communist.

This was propaganda versus propaganda: during the Cold War, the Soviets repeatedly highlighted the injustice of racial segregation as a prime example of America’s hypocrisy and moral repugnancy. Without acknowledging their guilt outright, the American government knew their enemy had a point.

The story of how Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Dave Brubeck tried to rescue the world from the brink of Armageddon was told in the enlightening feature-length documentary THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS.

This remarkable collision of entertainment and foreign policy was instigated by African-American congressman Adam Clayton Powell, an unsung hero who convinced Eisenhower that America’s global standing would be radically improved if they tackled racism head on.

Naturally, the musicians he enlisted, while happy to spread positive American vibes, weren’t prepared to ignore the noxious shadow of Jim Crow. “I wasn’t going over there to apologise for America’s racist policies,” declared the politically active Dizzy Gillespie.

Armstrong renounced his role as an Uncle Sam ambassador following the Little Rock crisis, when nine black students were prevented from entering a racially segregated school. “The government can go to Hell!” he roared in the press. Duke Ellington later wrote an article proclaiming that racism in America was losing the Cold War.

This wasn’t the sort of PR that Eisenhower expected when he greenlit the program.

However, Armstrong did manage to stop the Congolese civil war for 24 hours when he arrived to play a concert. You couldn’t ask for a more potent symbol of the miraculous power of music than that.

When Benny Goodman and his mixed-race band eventually toured Russia in 1961, they conducted illicit private jams with local musicians under the noses of an oblivious KGB. Jazz – 1; The Man – 0.

This fascinating saga of weaponised music expressing the complex spirit of America was told through a sharp prism of informed talking heads and terrific archive footage. It was a powerful statement on behalf of the unifying textures of extraordinary, freedom-fuelled art.

Funny in small doses as part of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, gormless roving reporter Philomena Cunk wears out her one-dimensional welcome over the space of half an hour.

The spoof historical travelogue series CUNK ON BRITAIN occasionally came up with some good gags (and some absolute clunkers), but they were overshadowed by the repetitive strain of a limited comic palette. Malapropisms and faux-dim misunderstandings only work within a more varied context.

Diane Morgan, who plays Cunk, is an inherently funny performer; her delivery and facial expressions are wonderful. She deserves better.  

TV Review: THE CITY & THE CITY + KISS ME FIRST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 7th April 2018.

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

THE CITY & THE CITY: Friday, BBC Two

KISS ME FIRST: Monday, Channel 4

If you’ve ever wondered what a cross between Blade Runner and DCI Banks might look like, then look no further than THE CITY & THE CITY, a four-part adaptation of the weird fiction novel by fantasy author China Mieville.

Reeking of cheap cigars and pound shop leather, a hirsute David Morrissey stars as extreme crime specialist Inspector Borlu from the fictional European city of Beszel. This dystopian police state occupies the same geographical space as the affluent city of Ul Qoma, but they’re divided by a sort of temporal wall which must never be breached. Citizens are trained from birth to automatically ignore – or un-see – everything in their neighbouring city.

Episode one did a halfway decent job of building this imaginative world, but it was so preoccupied with establishing the central concept it forgot to introduce a compelling storyline.

I’m all in favour of television that demands our undivided attention, and The City & The City deserves some credit for refusing to explain itself in instantly digestible terms, but once you’ve got to grips with its overarching thrust, all you’re left with is a semi-parodic police procedural where ideas and surface style take precedence over emotional depth. There’s a gaping hole where its heart should be.

The retro-futurist art direction is undeniably impressive. Beszel, a blatant avatar for East Berlin and Brexit Britain, is steeped in off-kilter Cold War iconography and analogue grime. It’s been brought to life with careful attention to detail. If only they’d spent as much time on everything else, the stuff that really matters.

Bring on your sombre socio-political allegory by all means – when living in an urban climate of fear and paranoia, human beings tend to employ wilful ignorance as a selfish survival mechanism – but don’t forget to say something more substantial than “Hmm, do you see?!”

Judging The City & The City on the basis of one episode is difficult, and perhaps that’s testament to its lack of compromise. It’s an ambitious piece of sci-fi, a bluntly allegorical statement about the far-reaching perils of ignoring the societal injustice that exists all around us, but so far I’m finding it difficult to care about the characters and their plight.

I haven’t read the novel, it possibly has more depth. This adaptation may well reveal those depths as it unfolds, but first impressions count. I don’t think I can summon the willpower to withstand three more hours of a standard-issue troubled cop with a standard-issue dead (or possibly missing) love interest moping his way through an uninviting conspiracy thriller.

Another adaptation of a science-fiction novel, KISS ME FIRST is more arresting than The City & The City. The latter is waterlogged with arch, self-conscious loftiness, whereas the former – so far at least – explores its theme of post-adolescent alienation with a relatively subtler touch.

Judiciously scheduled to coincide with the release of Spielberg’s nominally similar Ready Player One, it focuses on Leila, a shy, sheltered, lonely young woman who only feels alive when she’s immersed in a virtual reality video game.

One day she unwittingly gains access to a secret off-map section of this world, where she meets a mysterious gang of similarly dysfunctional (if unrealistically good-looking) outcasts who’ve been monitoring her from afar. Gradually, their fantasy selves intersect with real life to intriguing and sinister effect.

Unlike episode one of The City & The City, this intriguing drama appears to have some soul. The photo-realistic computer-generated scenes are more than mere exercises in gimmicky style, they’re seamlessly blended and integral to the plot.   

This is, potentially, a thoughtful and timely series about the quadruple-edged benefits of building an online community of remote access friends; loneliness, 21^st century style.

It’s been adapted by Bryan Elsley, co-creator of risible youth drama Skins, so I’ve lowered my expectations accordingly. Everyone deserves a second chance, however. I hope it lives up to its promise.