This column was originally published in The Courier on 8th June 2019.
WILD BILL
Wednesday,
STV, 9pm
Just
when you thought the world couldn’t get any stranger, here’s Hollywood actor
Rob Lowe in an ITV cop show. He plays a high-flying American police chief who,
together with his teenage daughter, relocates to Boston in Lincolnshire. Why?
Boston, so we’re told, has a worryingly high crime rate, so he’s been shipped
in to bring down the numbers. If episode one is anything to go by, it makes
Midsomer look like Toytown. The tone is all over the place, it bounces messily
between laconic humour, bog-standard police procedural shenanigans and gruesome
violence, seemingly uncertain of what the hell it’s trying to be. Still, the incongruous
spectacle of Lowe navigating the means streets of Brexit Britain is something
to behold. For about five minutes.
THATCHER: A VERY
BRITISH REVOLUTION
Tuesday,
BBC Two, 9pm
The
penultimate instalment of this rigorous examination of Margaret Thatcher’s epic
reign of terror shows how her stubbornness, hubris and lack of empathy sowed
the seeds of her undoing. It begins in the mid-‘80s, when rapidly escalating
unemployment and wanton free market capitalism triggered rancorous public
dissent. Did Thatcher care? She was certainly stung by the criticism, but
couldn’t understand where it came from. Her lack of self-awareness was
astonishing. Nevertheless, she won a third term in 1987. Packed with
fascinating reams of rare archive footage, including her uncharacteristically
emotional interview with Dr Miriam Stoppard, plus frank contributions from the
likes of cadaverous lickspittle Norman Tebbit and avuncular mortal enemy Neil Kinnock, it’s another sturdy chapter in a
highly impressive series.
DEATH ROW: COUNTDOWN
TO EXECUTION
Thursday,
STV, 9pm
Here’s
a sobering fact: there are currently more American death row convicts being
profiled by documentary crews than ever before. In this unsurprisingly grim
series, Susanna Reid travels to Huntsville, Texas, the execution capital of
America (it even boasts a death row-themed museum). She’s there to meet maximum
security prison inmate Patrick Murphy, who was once part of a notorious crime
gang responsible for the biggest prison breakout in Texas history. This is his final
television interview. We also hear from his Buddhist priest advisor and the
wife of the police officer he’s convicted of killing. However, Murphy didn’t
actually pull the trigger. Even the pro-death penalty locals Reid meets agree
that this broaches a murky grey area. It's a vaguely acceptable piece of tabloid television.
I CAN GO FOR THAT: THE
SMOOTH WORLD OF YACHT ROCK
Friday,
BBC Four, 9pm
Though
never considered a genre at the time, the slick, soulful Californian pop
recorded from the mid-‘70s to the mid-‘80s by artists such as Steely Dan, Hall
& Oates and Michael McDonald has since been defined and re-evaluated as
Yacht Rock. In this excellent new series, Katie Puckrik, a devout acolyte, is
your witty, charming, erudite guide to a deep blue bay of tidy beards,
aviator shades and satin bomber jackets. An array of journalists and academics
help her to place this “millionaire’s make-out music” in acute historical and
socio-political context. They begin by tracing its sensitive singer-songwriter
and soft rock roots, when popular music mounted an introspective campaign
against the tumult of the ‘60s.
