TV Column: THE REAL MARIGOLD ON TOUR + DAVID BOWIE: FINDING FAME

This article was originally published in The Courier on 16th February 2019.

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

NEXT WEEK’S TV

THE REAL MARIGOLD ON TOUR

Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

The ageing dream team of twinkly Paul Nicholas, rambunctious Sheila Ferguson, cheeky Wayne Sleep and that nice Jan Leeming (mercifully, there’s no sign of tiresome professional eccentric Miriam Margolyes) pitch up in wintry yet passion-fuelled Argentina this week, where they take late-night Tango lessons, explore local art and music, visit a university offering a range of stimulating classes for senior citizens, and – perhaps inevitably - sing Don’t Cry for Me Argentina beneath the balcony where Eva Peron delivered her famous speech. Five-times-married Jan has been single for fifteen years, so it’s rather charming when a man she meets at her life drawing class invites her out on a date. Alas, it ends up being quite awkward.

JAMES MARTIN’S GREAT BRITISH ADVENTURE

Monday, STV, 2pm

This afternoon retreat starring the top TV chef and Richard Herring lookalike trundles along merrily throughout the week. The latest gentle barrage begins with a Lancashire trek in the company of Michelin-starred chef and Great British Menu titan, Lisa Allen. She’s the cheerfully subdued yin to his borderline manic yang. Whenever he enthuses about “great tucker”, he looks like he’s about to burst through the screen and shove some fennel in your face. As a Mini lurks conspicuously in the background – these shows always have to include a classic car of some description – they cook up some savoury fish, bake Eccles cakes, chow down on freshly farm-milked buffalo cheese and, inevitably, provide a recipe for the ultimate Lancashire hotpot.

MARTIN CLUNES: ISLANDS OF AMERICA

Tuesday, STV, 9pm

If we must have celebrity-fronted travelogues on TV, then they may as well be fronted by the affable Clunes. At least this one goes slightly off the beaten track to explore parts of America that haven’t been overexposed. The latest leg of his empathetic journey takes him to America’s only Spanish-speaking island, Puerto Rico, as well as the Sea Islands along the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas. There he meets members of the Gullah Geechee people, descendants of the African slaves who once toiled on local plantations. A prominent spokeswoman explains how they proudly celebrate their cultural identity – which includes its own language - while educating others about their history and sadly dwindling way of life.

MONTY DON’S JAPANESE GARDENS

Friday, BBC Two, 9pm

The nation’s favourite curly-haired horticulturalist is on a mission to unearth the culture that lies behind some of the world’s most beautiful gardens. His final scenic pit-stop takes place in a crisply red-leaved autumn, where he finds out how one of Japan’s greatest public gardens is looked after in preparation for the harshness of winter. He also continues to trace the colourful history of these idyllic beauty spots. It’s a consummately comforting hour of artisan relax-o-vision. It would, of course, be remiss of me to end any Don-based critique without reminding you that the Montydon is my favourite herbivore dinosaur by far. You can have that one for free, I’m here all week etc.

LAST WEEK’S TV

DAVID BOWIE: FINDING FAME

Saturday 9^th, BBC Two

The final part of director Francis Whately’s highly acclaimed trilogy of feature-length documentaries about the Dame traced the fascinating saga of how struggling musician David Jones eventually metamorphosed into a pansexual alien rock superstar. Like Whatley’s previous films, it was an impressively researched, artfully compiled essay that benefitted from a sharp focus on a specific period of Bowie’s life and career. Courtesy of incisive contributions from various collaborators, friends, relatives and lovers, a portrait emerged of a bright, sensitive, talented and tenacious artist gradually finding his voice and refusing to be ground down by a string of failed bands and flop records. He somehow knew he was destined for greatness.

THE MAKING OF ME

Monday 11^th, Channel 4

Filmed over three years, this welcome new series follows nine transgender people as they go through the process of transitioning. It also featured contributions from partners and family members. In the happy case of Cairo, a transgender man, they were fully supportive. However, he expressed his frustration about being mis-gendered in public. Vicky, a transgender woman, has joint custody of her children, who took the situation in their stride. The only vaguely wobbly story in this otherwise positive portrayal involved 56-year-old Jackie, a transgender woman, and her wife Julie. The latter, while broadly supportive, admitted that she sometimes missed her husband. Thankfully, they made it work and renewed their wedding vows.

SHETLAND

Tuesday 12^th, BBC One

Series five of this hit crime drama began with the discovery of dismembered body parts washed up on the shore. Yes, it was grisly business as usual for clue-sniffing copper DI Jimmy Perez (Douglas Henshall), as he set about unpicking a tangled web of organised crime. The victim? A young Nigerian man. I find it all but impossible to concentrate on whatever appears to be going on in this pot-boiling murder mulch, as I’m constantly distracted by the quotidian dialogue and wooden acting from practically every member of the cast, Henshall included. It’s like watching a bunch of fence posts slowly eroding in the bitter northeast rain.

FLAT PACK POP: SWEDEN’S MUSIC MIRACLE

Friday 15^th, BBC Four

Did you know that the slick sound of modern pop was largely crafted by anonymous Swedish songwriters and producers? Yes, you probably did, as it’s a well-known fact, so the supposedly lid-lifting premise of this documentary fell flat. It also neglected to mention that, in the 1960s, Phil Spector and the team behind the Monkees operated along the same model as these obsessive backroom boffins: they didn’t invent the concept of formulaic yet irresistible perfect pop. Nevertheless, music journalist James Ballardie still managed to present a fairly interesting ‘secret history’ of how some modest Scandinavians created a distinctive melodic/robotic R&B sound in the 1990s that still resonates today.

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.”

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 SECRET HELPERS + THE FUNERAL MURDERS

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

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

THE SECRET HELPERS: Wednesday, BBC Two

THE FUNERAL MURDERS: Monday, BBC Two

When gazing in despair upon this hate-strewn boulder of ours, it’s easy to forget that good people still exist. THE SECRET HELPERS is a charitable reminder. Maybe humanity will prevail after all.

The premise behind this quietly heartening new series couldn’t be simpler. Brits dealing with difficult circumstances receive friendly advice from pragmatic strangers around the world. While monitoring them via camera, these earthbound guardian angels beam trouble-shooting words of wisdom into the brains of our protagonists through hidden earpieces.

Their loved ones are obviously aware that a documentary is being filmed, but they have no idea about the secret helpers. That adds an element of mild peril to an otherwise upbeat project; will they get found out while chatting, seemingly to no one, during an advice session?

They’re essentially being asked to live a lie for a week, albeit for benign reasons.

First up was Dan, who’d suffered a massive double stroke. Despite having recovered for the most part, he now experiences anxiety and chronic tiredness. He was on the verge of getting married, and worried that his symptoms would make mincemeat of his duties at the wedding.

Fortunately, his secret helpers got him through it. They included twinkly Sister Una from Ireland, a traditional South African healer, two retired New York cops and a health and lifestyle guru (and former Playboy model) from Norway.

Their simple yet non-patronising advice helped Dan with his speech, stress levels and diet. Watching him overcome his fears via the kindness of strangers was surprisingly touching. Sure, they're presumably getting paid for taking part, but only a dead-inside cynic would doubt their sincerity.

The helpers getting dressed up to watch Dan’s wedding from their corners the world was rather charming. For a few days this disparate group became emotionally invested in the lives of people they’ll probably never meet. That connection extends to the audience too. We’re all entwined by the same fears and empathetic impulses.

Our second Brit-in-need Brett was assisted by Dan's team plus a pair of female Italian chefs. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to cope with premature new-born twins and a wife recovering from major surgery. Sister Una, a former nurse and midwife, was of particular help. The South African sage taught him a lullaby to send the twins to sleep. It was awfully sweet.

If mishandled, this show could easily come across as cloying and twee, but it’s put together with such a winning lack of cynicism it works a charm.

Let’s not get carried away, though. Human beings are also capable of heinous acts of violence and prejudice. In THE FUNERAL MURDERS, the estimable documentary film-maker Vanessa Engle presented a sobering account of the lethal attacks that took place during two Irish Republican funerals in March 1988.

By speaking to representatives from all sides – IRA, RUC etc. - Engle highlighted the immovable stalemate and conflicting narratives that characterised The Troubles. Republicans and Loyalists are so diametrically opposed, it’s simply staggering in hindsight that the ongoing peace process ever got off the ground at all.

Supported by harrowing archive footage of the attacks, Engle met people whose pain and attitudes haven’t softened in the intervening years. The only difference is that now they don’t live in a divided nation scorched with almost daily acts of political violence. While that progress should never be taken for granted, those deep divisions still prevail.

“Who will be believed?” mused one commentator, when asked about historical legacy. “Whoever shouts the loudest.”

With typical sensitivity and probing open-mindedness, Engle cut to the human heart of this complex, inflammatory issue. It was a sad, blunt, riveting film, steeped in lingering shock and senseless loss.

SEVEN YEAR SWITCH + ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE

A version of this article was originally published in The Courier on 10th March 2018.

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

SEVEN YEAR SWITCH: Tuesday, Channel 4

ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE: Wednesday, Channel 4

People are strange. Whenever they feel scared or desperate, their decision-making patterns can become erratic and bizarre. That’s an absolute Godsend for television producers, as it allows programmes such as SEVEN YEAR SWITCH to exist.

I suspect that for most couples on the verge of divorce, appearing in a modified version of Wife Swap would be pretty far down their list of priorities. For the couples participating in this new partner-switching series, it obviously felt like the best course of action.

On the one hand, Seven Year Switch feels symptomatic of the rampant narcissism that’s infected first world society since the advent of reality television and social media.

On the other hand, these genuinely troubled couples felt compelled to do whatever it takes to save their marriages. It’s just that, apparently, “whatever it takes” sometimes means having your private woes beamed into millions of homes throughout the country.

So how does it work? Over the course of the series, four couples for whom the dream has gone sour take part in our old friend the TV social experiment to find out once and for all if their marriages are worth fighting for.

The idea is that by living as husband and wife for a fortnight with someone they’ve only just met, they’ll either re-evaluate their marriage or conclude that it really is all over.

The production team have a budget that has to be pointlessly spent, so the participants are flown out to a luxurious Thai island. Overseeing the whole ordeal is a relationship therapist who decides who should be switched – not swapped, it’s a very important distinction – with whom.

The twist is that there are no rules about what kind of relationship they choose to have. When you think about it, that could mean anything. What’s more, the stunned guinea pigs aren’t even told they’ll be sharing a bed until they arrive at their villas. This doesn’t go down well with most of them.

As is reality television’s wont, it’s all very contrived and manipulative.

Episode one devoted itself to introducing the couples, outlining their various problems and seeing what happened when the switched pairings met for the first time.

The shared bed bombshell triggered a gust of polite awkwardness. Watching the couples deal with this issue was admittedly rather interesting. Despite my general misgivings about the project, by the end I actually found myself wanting to see how it all pans out. It would be dishonest to claim that essentially well-made programmes such as this don’t pander to our voyeuristic impulses.

Despite the presence of an old-fashioned chauvinist, there are no outright villains in Seven Year Switch. There will doubtless be some conflict in future episodes, but it’s not designed to be explosive in the Wife Swap vein.

Whether these couples actually gain anything from the experience, or live to regret it, remains to be seen.

Will you care either way? Of course not. It’s all pointless. We’ll be dead soon, it’s just a swollen heartbeat away. Gawping passively into the soiled litter tray of other people’s heartbreak is one way of getting through it all.

Still, life goes on. One of Channel 4’s cast-iron warhorses, observational documentary ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE returned for another series of touching antenatal drama.

In a Birmingham maternity ward, we met more nurses and couples on the cusp of bringing life into this dreadful world of knockabout pain.

The straightforward human interest formula never fails to gently lift the spirits, as we eavesdrop on nice ordinary people going through a life-changing experience while personable professionals ensure a smooth transition under often trying circumstances.

They’ll probably all end up on Seven Year Switch one day.