TV Column: STORYVILLE: UNDER THE WIRE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 9th February 2019.

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

THIS WEEK’S TV

STORYVILLE: UNDER THE WIRE

Monday, BBC Four, 10pm

Marie Colvin was one of the greatest war correspondents of her generation. While covering dangerous conflicts in the likes of Afghanistan and Iraq, she focused on the lives of ordinary civilians caught in the crossfire. In this gripping documentary, her photographer Paul Conroy, with whom she formed a close friendship and hugely productive professional relationship, pays tribute to “a complete and utter one-off”. Colvin and Conroy were the only British newspaper journalists on the ground in the besieged district of Baba Amr during the Syrian Uprising of 2012, when Assad’s merciless regime massacred their own people. It’s a powerful and at times harrowing paean to real journalism, a vital public service personified by Colvin’s dedication, bravery, passion and integrity.

THE SECRET LIFE OF SLIM PEOPLE

Monday, Channel 4, 8:30pm

The only people who benefit from Britain’s obesity crisis are fast food manufacturers and the C4 producers who churn out programmes based on the subject. But wait, this one has a twist: how come so many people struggle with their weight while others remain slim while eating rubbish and doing what they like? Rinia and Hayley don’t eat healthily and never exercise, but they’re both technically underweight. Cameras are installed in their homes for a week to monitor their diets, while medical experts attempt to come up with an explanation for their fat-free resilience. Warning: if you’re concerned about your weight, then watching petite humans devouring cheese, chocolate, crisps and double cream won’t make you feel any better.

A VERY BRITISH HISTORY

Monday, BBC Four, 9pm

This enlightening new series examines key 20^th century moments for minority communities in Britain. Hosted by figures from those communities, it begins with writer Damian Le Bas harking back to the 1960s to show how societal pressures, prejudices and government legislations gradually forced Romany people to abandon their nomadic way of life. Aided by fascinating archive footage and contributions from older members of Le Bas’ extended family, it depicts 21^st century Romany people proudly celebrating their heritage and tacitly functions as a refreshing antidote to the mocking tone of the mercifully defunct Big Fat Gypsy franchise. It also unearths the little-known story of how romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland found a permanent home for ostracised travellers in Hertfordshire.

SKINT BRITAIN: FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS

Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm

It’s been five years since C4 unleashed the controversial Benefits Street. This sympathetic documentary series almost feels like a belated apology (it's produced by the same person). Angry and angering, it follows unemployed residents of Hartlepool as they barely cope to survive with the introduction of Universal Credit, an inhuman piece of legislation that makes it harder for people to live on benefits than ever before. Utter chaos ensues. A young man is reduced to hunting for rabbits and squirrels to cook, a desperate cancer patient gets lost within a bureaucratic maelstrom actively opposed to helping those most in need, and a partially blind man practically begs for help. It’s a frank and sickening expose of the worst extremes of sociopathic Tory ideology. Do not miss.

LAST WEEK’S TV

MAYANS M.C.

Saturday 2^nd, BBC Two

This spin-off from the hit American crime drama Sons of Anarchy revolves around a drug-running Mexican biker gang based in a fictional California border town. The protagonist is an intelligent and secretly sensitive young beefcake who’s struggling to cope with a violent lifestyle he never intended to adopt. It’s hip, stylish and boasts a great soundtrack, but those cosmetic details only serve to highlight a nagging lack of depth and pace. The characters and storyline aren’t exactly compelling, it feels like we’ve been here a billion times before. Sons of Anarchy fans might welcome this expansion of its universe, but it’s a slog for the uninitiated.

AFRICA WITH ADE ADEPITAN

Sunday 3^rd, BBC Two

The ebullient wheelchair basketball player began his informative journey around Africa – “the most exciting continent on the planet” – with visits to Cape Verde, Senegal, Ivory Coast and Nigeria (where Adepitan was born). Celebrity-fronted travelogues are often bland affairs, but this one digs beneath the sunny scenery to expose a bleak trail of tragic, brutal history and worrying present-day problems. Adepitan met fishing-reliant communities almost entirely descended from slaves and their European masters. These impoverished, hardworking people are still having their resources stolen by foreign interlopers. As one despairing fisherman put it, “There’s another kind of slavery now.” Adepitan also met Nigerians scarred by civil war. A commendably thoughtful series.

THE DEFIANT ONES

Friday 8^th, BBC Four

When legendary producers/moguls Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine sold Beats Electronic to Apple for $3 billion in 2014, it was one of the biggest deals in music history. Fast-paced, witty and irreverent, this documentary miniseries traces the unusual story of two men from working-class backgrounds, one African-American, the other Italian-American, rising up the ranks and eventually coming together to form a powerful alliance. The dynamic duo have some of the biggest names in the business on speed-dial, hence the presence of talking heads such as Snoop Dogg, Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Eminem. Interesting stuff, but I’m not sure it deserves to be stretched over six episodes.

TV Review: PRESS + WANDERLUST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 8th September 2018.

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

PRESS: Thursday, BBC One

WANDERLUST: Tuesday, BBC One

The new six-part drama, PRESS, will anger The Daily Mail. The mere existence of the BBC angers The Daily Mail, of course, but this is a BBC drama in which, broadly speaking, a fictional right-wing newspaper, The Post, is depicted as an unethical, mendacious, barrel-scraping bully.

Meanwhile, its left-leaning rival, The Herald, is shown to be essentially virtuous and principled. It’s as if the writer, Mike Bartlett of Doctor Foster fame, is deliberately trolling Mail editor Paul Dacre. You have to laugh.

It will inevitably lend fuel to those who believe that the BBC has a blatant left-wing agenda (it doesn’t: have you ever witnessed a Laura Kuenssberg news report?), but you can’t reason with people like that.

Is Press biased in favour of its Guardian surrogate? Of course it is. Good. In spite of what anti-BBC types stubbornly maintain, it’s actually very rare to find a BBC drama that openly challenges right-wing dogma. It’s generally too scared to rock the boat. On this occasion, it should be applauded for having the guts to oppose its most vociferous critics.

Bartlett’s propulsive drama is a timely and engrossing meditation on journalistic ethics. It examines the power of the press, for good or ill. It feels necessary.

What’s more, Dacre and the Mail should actually be quite pleased that the scene-stealing star of the show is Ben Chaplin as the Post’s antihero editor. He’s a sharp, slick, crass manipulator who values a good story above all else, but he’s also horribly charming and clearly very good at his (dubious) job. Sure, he’s a tragicomic villain, but Bartlett and Chaplin still make sure that he comes across as a nuanced human being. Press depicts journalists as people, not some abstract ‘other’.

Stories under review in part one included the suicide of a gay footballer and the release of thirty-year-old incriminating photographs of a female cabinet minister. Bartlett has presumably done his research, as the handling of these strands felt authentic. Press is a political thriller that’s grounded in reality.

I obviously have a vested interest in this programme, as it examines the industry I work in, but you don’t have to be a journalist to appreciate it. After all, the mainstream media affects us all. It shapes our society. Bartlett is urging us to think about the news we consume, and whether we can trust it. That’s why the right-wing press will hate it. The last thing they want is a society that questions what it’s told to believe (man).

At first glance, WANDERLUST appears to be yet another comedy-drama about a middle-class white family with an enormous kitchen. However, depending on your tolerance for first world people kvetching about their emotional problems, it’s actually a wryly amusing and faintly depressing (in a good way) study of middle-aged frustration, stagnation and despair.

Toni Collette and Steven Mackintosh, both excellent as always, play a married couple whose sex life has become extinct. They still love each other, but the thrill has gone. When they admit to having brief extramarital flings, they hit upon an unorthodox plan to save their marriage: why don’t they continue to sleep with other people?

Packed with ‘scenes of an adult nature’, Wanderlust is a provocative drama that’s bound to prove divisive. The Daily Mail almost certainly won’t approve.

Yes, it sometimes feels a bit too pleased with itself. It wears its provocation on its sleeve, but it's also quite smart, funny and thoughtful. I could never truly dislike a drama in which a character says: “I find it unfathomable that you’ve never heard of Warren G.”

TV Review: REPORTING TRUMP'S FIRST YEAR: THE FOURTH ESTATE + INSIDE THE AMERICAN EMBASSY

This article was originally published in The Courier on 30th June 2018.

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

REPORTING TRUMP’S FIRST YEAR: THE FOURTH ESTATE: Sunday, BBC Two

INSIDE THE AMERICAN EMBASSY: Monday, Channel 4

 Maggie Haberman, White House Correspondent for The New York Times, has been reporting on Donald Trump for 20 years. Imagine being immersed in the world of that petulant, bullying man-baby for so long. No wonder she seemed so jaded during episode one of the riveting documentary REPORTING TRUMP’S FIRST YEAR: THE FOURTH ESTATE.

“Everything is through the lens of himself,” she explained. “He’s obsessed with the Times. Even though he was born rich, he doesn’t see himself that way. He sees himself as this guy who made it big and plopped himself down in the world of Fifth Avenue, but he still wasn’t treated seriously… now he’s in the biggest piece of real estate in the country and he’s still not being treated seriously. He’s always going to care enormously about what the Times writes.”

When that revered newspaper opened its doors to director Liz Garbus, they knew she’d be documenting a unique moment in American history. No one, however, was prepared for the incessant barrage of chaotic drama and theatre that would spew from the White House in the ensuing months.

As Executive Editor Dean Baquet admitted, Trump is a gift for journalists. “What a story. Great stories trump everything else,” he said, so caught up in his muddle of excitement he didn’t seem to notice his play on words. 

Garbus captured the caffeinated buzz and escalating tension of a newsroom dealing with a relentless workload. The staff came across as diligent and unflappable, even in the face of torrential stress. Everything Trump says is either a gross exaggeration or an outright lie, so they faced an almost impossible task in trying to bring truth to power.

As Haberman said, Trump feels threatened by anyone who doesn’t support him unconditionally. In one particularly chilling scene at a pro-Trump rally, we witnessed him coining his infamous “fake news” catchphrase. A “failing New York Times” reporter sat stoically as everyone around him cheered at a deeply insecure and paranoid President declaring that the media was “the enemy of the people”.

 It felt like one of those flashback scenes from The Handmaid’s Tale in which we discover how America became a fascist state.

Thankfully, this stellar series is also a heartening reminder that decency, sanity and democracy still exist in Trump’s America. It reminds us, too, that his administration is populated by risible men with very high, silly voices. Their staff meetings must sound like the aftermath of an explosion at a helium balloon factory.

Yeah, take that Trump.

The shell-shocked commemorations of his first year in office continued with INSIDE THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, a series taking an exclusive behind-the-scenes peek at the everyday dealings of his Britain-based lickspittles.

It began with a profile of Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson IV during his first months as US ambassador.

An invidious septuagenarian billionaire with no previous ambassadorial experience, Johnson is expected to bring his business expertise to the world of international diplomacy. Like his boss, he’s a salesman.

He came across as a chilly corporate drone failing to promote our “special relationship” against a fervent tide of anti-Trump sentiment in the UK. I almost felt sorry for him. Much like the team at The New York Times, Johnson and co have their work cut out for them. It’s like dealing with a spoiled, recalcitrant child.

Viewed in tandem, these documentaries exposed a presidency that almost certainly won’t last its full term. Take some comfort from that.