KILLING EVE + MONKMAN AND SEAGULL'S GENIUS GUIDE TO BRITAIN

This article was originally published in The Courier on 22nd September 2018.

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

KILLING EVE: Saturday, BBC One

MONKMAN AND SEAGULL’S GENIUS GUIDE TO BRITAIN: Monday, BBC Two

One of the best new TV shows of 2018, KILLING EVE is an addictive eight-part comedy-drama that subverts typical spy thriller tropes with offbeat panache. It debuted on BBC America earlier this year, and was instantly met with a barrage of glowing reviews and an eventual brace of award nominations. I’m not surprised.

It’s based on a series of novellas by Luke Jennings and adapted by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, author and star of the justly acclaimed BBC sitcom Fleabag. Similar to Waller-Bridge’s previous work in that it switches effortlessly on a dime between dry, caustic comedy and visceral drama, Killing Eve is witty, knowing and stylish, but never feels pleased with itself.

Eve Polastri (a tremendously likeable performance from Asian-Canadian actor Sandra Oh) is a bored, deskbound MI5 security officer who becomes obsessed with tracking down a female assassin at large in Europe. Unfortunately, that’s not part of her job. She’s basically a pen-pusher.

However, in episode one, her perceptive handling of a technically illegal investigation managed to impress a female senior officer. Eve, a woman in her late forties, is on the verge of fulfilling her dream of becoming a bona fide secret agent.

She isn’t a kick-ass action hero, she’s a normal, relatable human being. She’s happily married and gets on with her boss (the great David Haig on droll form). A quietly subversive creation, Eve is a refreshing antidote to all those tiresomely troubled male crime-busters who usually populate our screens.

The expert assassin, Villanelle, is also unusual. Perfectly played by Jodie Comer as a sort of casually spoiled student on a murderous gap year, she’s a darkly amusing parody of psychopathic villainy. Whenever this beautiful young Russian isn’t gleefully murdering Mafia bosses by stabbing them through the eye with a customised hairpin, she’s tipping ice cream over sweet little girls and refusing to help old ladies with their heavy bags. She may be a homicidal maniac, but Villanelle is a fun character to be around.

The plot is triggered when she assassinates a Russian diplomat in Vienna. Eve is tasked with looking after the sole witness, a drug-addled Polish woman whose incoherent babble may hold the key to the killer’s identity. Eve asks her genial Polish husband to translate these ramblings (a convenient coincidence, but I’ll let it pass). An obscure Polish slang word for “flat-chested” confirms Eve’s suspicions that the killer is a woman. And the game is on.

Despite featuring several recognisable staples of the spy genre – e.g. various glamorous European locations – Killing Eve feels fresh. Oh and Comer make for an arresting pair of antagonists; you somehow find yourself wanting both of them to prevail. A controlled explosion of pulp hokum, it’s a genuinely funny and surprising affair.

From the sublime to, well, two popular University Challenge contestants driving around the UK. In MONKMAN AND SEAGULL’S GENIUS GUIDE TO BRITAIN, best friends Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull hit the road in search of various examples of British ingenuity.

Richly narrated by Simon Callow, it’s a harmlessly generic travelogue in which our big-brained hosts engage in amusingly esoteric conversation while visiting destinations such as Jodrell Bank, a ginormous broadcasting mast, and a lawnmower museum (where they were delighted to discover a mower that once belonged to Brian May). Naturally, they provide interesting nuggets of learned information along the way.

They’re a likeable pair, but Monkman in particular is a TV natural. A nerdy Canadian with a Cheshire Cat grin and a head seemingly crammed with all knowledge, he’s possibly on his way to becoming an eccentric national treasure. 

BLACK EARTH RISING + TRUST

This article was originally published in The Courier on 15th September 2018.

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

BLACK EARTH RISING: Monday, BBC Two

TRUST: Wednesday, BBC Two

There’s a lot going on in BLACK EARTH RISING, a globe-trotting political thriller from esteemed auteur Hugo Blick. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite hang together.

Blick, who authored impressive dramas such as The Honourable Woman and modern classic The Shadow Line, basically has complete creative control over his projects. That hasn’t been a problem in the past, but episode one of this long-winded and rather starchy drama suggested that he’s finally succumbed to self-indulgence.

It’s frustrating, as Black Earth Rising is a potentially interesting, torn-from-the-headlines meditation on morality and forgiveness.

Eve Ashby (Harriet Walter) is one of the world’s leading prosecutors in international criminal law. During the Rwandan genocide, she rescued and adopted a young Tutsi girl (Michaela Coel). She named her Kate. Now grown up, Kate suffers from survivor’s guilt and works alongside her mother as a legal investigator.

Their close, loving relationship is, to say the least, put under strain when Eve agrees to prosecute a Tutsi general accused of war crimes. His retaliating army brought an end to the bloodshed in Rwanda, but he’s since carved a career as a mercenary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Kate argues that this man, who was once considered a hero, shouldn’t be punished for crimes that pale in comparison to those perpetrated by the genocidal warlords who still roam at large. Eve, however, feels that she’s doing the right thing.

Does this honourable woman deserve to be accused of “self-righteous western paternalism”? Is she seeking solutions to problems that would never have occurred if the first world hadn’t intruded upon Africa in the first place? And why do the African characters converse in English after a cursory exchange of subtitled lines? So many questions.

It’s a solid premise and an intriguing set of themes, but Blick failed to set the scene with much finesse. Episode one was awash with info-dumping exposition. So far, Black Earth Rising feels well-intentioned yet heavy-handed.

I hope it improves. Blick deserves the benefit of the doubt. However, at this early stage its only truly arresting aspect is the luminous Michaela Coel’s powerful, witty, intelligent and vulnerable performance.

Created by Simon Beaufoy, author of The Full Monty and Slumdog Millionaire, and directed by Danny Boyle, TRUST is an enjoyably slick and acerbic factual drama about the outrageously affluent Getty dynasty.

Set in 1973, it focuses on the notorious kidnapping of heir-to-the-fortune John Paul Getty III. His weird, priapic grandfather is played, formidably, by the great Donald Sutherland. ‘Owner’ of a harem of lovers, the elderly oil baron’s eccentricities infected his dysfunctional brood. If Beaufoy’s account is to be – yes – trusted, then they were a deeply unhappy bunch of idle billionaires.

Sutherland’s Getty is a bored, icy capitalist ogre whose sole source of pleasure is loveless sex and acquiring more money. He barely communicates with his extended family, they disappoint him, but he sparks into life when the bright, young, long-haired JP III returns to the fold. Unfortunately for him, the kid is a drug addict in hock to the Mafia.

This engrossing 10-part series is a frankly despairing exploration of the corrosive effects of wealth and power. It’s hell-bent on leaving a sour taste in the mouth.

Lurid tabloid television? Well, I suppose, but when it’s executed with such wit and panache, you can excuse the prurience. I find myself helplessly swept up in the sheer madness of it all.

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: THE BLETCHLEY CIRCLE: SAN FRANCISCO + WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

This article was originally published in The Courier on 28th July 2018.

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

THE BLETCHLEY CIRCLE: SAN FRANCISCO: Wednesday, STV

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?: Wednesday, BBC One

 A drama loosely based on the British women who worked as codebreakers during WWII, The Bletchley Circle was a sizeable hit when it aired between 2012 and 2014.

Its spin-off, THE BLETCHLEY CIRCLE: SAN FRANCISCO initially appeared to be a slick pulp hokum mystery that abandons the more or less historically factual remit of its predecessor. There is, however, ever so slightly more to it than that.

  

Former Bletchley Park experts Jean (Julie Graham) and Millie (Rachael Stirling) provide a link to the original series, as they travel to San Francisco in 1956 to investigate the unsolved murder of one of their colleagues fourteen years earlier.

A dedicated English codebreaker suspicious of US motives, she was brutally slain by a visiting GI. That established the unsubtle tone. It’s a lurid metaphor for the strained “special relationship” between Britain and America!

Episode one had similarly blunt fun with the period setting. It plunged into a hip underground jazz club where the resident African-American pianist was once a brilliant US Army cryptologist.

She’s also, like her British counterparts, chained to a life of paranoid secrecy.

Despite its pulpy trappings, this series contains nuggets of solemn factual interest. The Bletchley women were told that they’d have to resign if they ever married. They may have helped to win the war, but they couldn’t be trusted to contain official secrets while indulging in idle pillow talk.

It’s essentially the story of backroom heroes who played an invaluable world-saving role, before being abandoned by their governments. It has something to say about war veterans, tinderbox race relations in Eisenhower’s America, and the plight of the poor versus Brave New World property developers. It’s also the story of some fictional spies on the trail of a fictional serial killer.

These seemingly incompatible elements cohabit quite effectively. It’s hardly profound, but it hits its targets.

You could argue that reconfiguring the genuine achievements and sacrifices of the Bletchley women for the purposes of a made-up potboiler crudely undermines their legacy. I’d argue – and this, bear in mind, is an argument I’m having with myself in my head – that it doesn’t. Not really.

Even while placing them in a fictional context, The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco still treats them with respect. It’s a well-made piece of entertainment rooted in sincere admiration and compassion.

In the latest episode of WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?, Boy George uncovered a tragic litany of abuse, prejudice and injustice as he traced his Irish roots.

At the age of six, his maternal grandmother was essentially kidnapped by the cruelly overzealous N.S.P.C.C. for the crime of looking abandoned. She was basically sitting on her family doorstep at the time. The more he delved, the more complex it became.

Who knew that a Boy George documentary could provide a fairly nuanced guide to the birth of the IRA?

This long-running series has become ripe for parody, sometimes for good reason. Occasionally, however, it delivers episodes that function as revealing socio-political documents fuelled by anger and despair, like elongated One Show segments hijacked by genuine feeling.

George, an intelligent, sensitive man, didn’t shed contractual tears during his ‘journey’. Good. He was subtly yet evidently moved, there was no need for grandstanding.

All programmes of this nature are contrived and manipulative, but that doesn’t matter when they’re driven by dissonant chords of truth and sincerity.

Mind you, the opening titles – during which even the likes of Lee Mack attempt to look serious and meaningful – are hilarious. Sorry.

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.

TV Review: MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING + EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT

This article was originally published in The Courier on 23rd June 2018.

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

MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING: Wednesday, BBC Two

EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT: Monday, BBC Four

Comedians Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse have been friends and occasional colleagues for nearly 30 years. During that time they’ve made an enormous impact on British comedy. Their legend is secured.

They also both suffer from heart problems. Paul has had three stents fitted. In 2015, Bob underwent triple bypass surgery. This frightening experience affected him deeply.

Devised by Paul as a form of relaxation therapy for his on-the-mend chum, the six-part series MORTIMER AND WHITEHOUSE: GONE FISHING also works as a soothing tonic for the rest of us.

The premise couldn’t be simpler. Paul, an experienced angler, and Bob, a total novice, go fishing in some magnificent English lakes. They chat about this and that, make each other laugh, and occasionally catch some fish (don’t worry, they throw them back in).

This could easily come across as dull and self-indulgent if it weren’t for the fact that Bob and Paul are exceedingly genial and amusing. Spending time in their company is delightful.

Bob in particular is one of planet Earth’s most naturally funny and loveable humans. A world without him doesn’t bear thinking about. My favourite moment in episode one was when he performed a jaunty little stroll towards his yurt (Bob takes care of the accommodation). I can’t think of any other living comedian who could turn such a throwaway bit of business into a thing of joy and beauty. He’s such a benign vessel of pure silliness.

However, we get to see another, more contemplative side of him in Gone Fishing. Though primarily light-hearted, there are moments when the rambling conversation takes a tentative detour into more serious territory. Bob discussing his life-threatening illness was particularly poignant.

You don’t have to be interested in fishing to enjoy this serene series. It’s not really about that.

As episode one unfolded, a subtext gradually emerged. There’s more to Gone Fishing than two balding comedians talking nonsense against a backdrop of glorious scenery. It’s about friendship and ageing and the way men interact. Whenever their more reflective ruminations are interrupted by a potential catch, their focus shifts immediately. They’ve suddenly got more important things to think about than mortality. Men – not all men – are like that.

Watching these two old friends, these gifted comics who’ve given us such joy over the years, in sedentary action is a bittersweet, quietly life-affirming treat.

One of many programmes shown to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of British women winning the right to vote, EMMELINE PANKHURST: THE MAKING OF A MILITANT was a brisk yet respectable overview of how a working mother from Manchester changed the course of history.

Presented by former Coronation Street actor and fellow proud Mancunian Sally Lindsay, it put the legendary Suffragette leader’s achievements in perspective by examining her private life. What made her the woman she was?

Born into a liberal activist family, she was aware from an early age that women were treated as second-class citizens. Her intelligence, compassion, righteous anger, social conscience and tireless political tenacity were a potent combination.

An inspirational leader who understood the positive power of negative publicity, her sometimes violent protests ensured that the issue of female emancipation became a headline-grabbing, national talking point. The rest, as they say…

This wasn’t the most in-depth study of one of our greatest national heroes – a hero who’s only just been commemorated with a statue in Manchester - but it nevertheless succeeded as a useful introduction to her extraordinary story.

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.”