TV Review: TROY: FALL OF A CITY + HOLD THE SUNSET + MUM

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

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

TROY: FALL OF A CITY: Saturday, BBC One

HOLD THE SUNSET: Sunday, BBC One

MUM: Tuesday, BBC Two

For the love of Zeus, has the BBC lost its mind? It’s ploughed a heaving galleon of cash into the supposed Saturday night blockbuster TROY: FALL OF A CITY, a ham-fisted endurance test steered by one-dimensional characters and an incompetent grasp of narrative.

The Iliad is one of the greatest stories ever told, an epic poem packed with drama, action and romance, but you won’t find any of that in this dreary retelling by David ‘The Night Manager’ Farr. His turgid script sucks every droplet of juice from the saga.

It’s the polar opposite of Britannia, Sky’s current drama about the Roman conquest of Britain, which tackles ancient history with an entertaining swirl of energy and wit. Farr’s po-faced dud moves at a snail’s pace. It’s a bellicose bore, overwrought and undercooked.

The love affair between Paris and Helen has all the erotically-charged zeal of a wet bus. The leads have no chemistry. Paris wanders around like a bewildered Dave Lee Travis, glowering through his beard by torchlight. An emu turned up at one point, before an orgy scene, and looked suitably ashamed. Forgive him, please, as prominent roles for emus are thin on the ground. He has to eat.

I actually became angry while watching this failed attempt to emulate the success of Game Of Thrones. All that money wasted on a badly written drama of interminable proportions. Revolutions have been founded on less.

Still, never mind. Here’s another gentle sitcom set in affluent middle-class suburbia.

HOLD THE SUNSET is chiefly notable for being the first sitcom John Cleese has starred in since Fawlty Towers ended in 1979.

His character, a genial retiree with a twinkly line in dry sarcasm, couldn’t be further removed from Basil, so he needn’t worry about comparisons. It does follow his almost mathematical approach to farce in that it starts slowly and gradually escalates, but the tone is wry rather than manic. It is, most assuredly, not trying to be a grey pound Fawlty Towers.

Python associate Charles McKeown has devised a fairly amusing set of scripts about an older couple – Cleese co-stars with Alison Steadman – dealing with dysfunctional middle-aged children. Jason Watkins adds a tragicomic note of cheerful anxiety as a man going through a mid-life crisis. The stellar cast also includes Rosie Cavaliero and Joanna Scanlan.

You can’t argue with that talent, but you can take issue with the fact that Hold The Sunset is decidedly average. It’s neither bad nor great. It just meanders in the middle-ground, and suffers in comparison to MUM, another sitcom that unfolds in real time within one suburban setting.

Deeper and funnier than Hold The Sunset, Mum proves that it’s possible to create a non-bland comedy in which almost every character is a nice person. Even the titular mum’s snooty sister-in-law elicits sympathy, as she’s clearly so unhappy.

The brilliant Lesley Manville plays the recently widowed Cathy, who patiently endures an inadvertent assault of condescension from her amiably oblivious adult son and his sweet but dim girlfriend. Peter Mullan, his kindly face crinkled with pathos, plays Cathy’s old friend and would-be romantic partner. Manville and Mullan can say so much without words. That’s what Mum is about: a polite failure to communicate deep-seated feelings.

It’s a lovable little gem full of subtle character beats. Spending time with these people is a delight. If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to make its acquaintance.

TV Review: COLLATERAL + TRAUMA

This article was originally published in The Courier on 17th February 2018.

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

COLLATERAL: Monday, BBC Two

TRAUMA: Monday to Wednesday, STV

It’s typical. You wait ages for one homicide-themed drama starring John Simm, then two come along at once. Now that we’ve got that obvious zinger out of the way, let’s turn our attentions to the four – count ‘em - hours of Simm we were treated to last week.

Fans of this always watchable actor were spoiled for choice on Monday when he cropped up in both COLLATERAL and TRAUMA, written respectively by veteran playwright David Hare and Mike Bartlett of Doctor Foster renown.

Simm isn’t the star of Collateral, he’s part of an impressive ensemble including Carey Mulligan, Billie Piper and Nicola Walker. This is heavyweight territory.

Mulligan plays an inexplicably smug detective investigating the mysterious murder of a pizza delivery man. Piper was the last person to see him alive before he was shot on her doorstep. She’s also the ex-wife of a Labour MP (Simm). Walker, meanwhile, plays a gay vicar whose troubled migrant partner saw the murder take place.

The key question of course is: why would someone randomly assassinate a pizza delivery man? Well, they wouldn’t would they? The crime was premediated and carried out by a slick professional military officer. But why? The murdered man was an innocent Syrian refugee. The obvious conclusion is that he wasn’t the intended victim. And off we go.

Driven by Hare’s eminently sincere thoughts on illegal immigration and the way we treat vulnerable asylum seekers, Collateral is a sombre state-of-the-nation address disguised as a thriller. It’s sometimes rather earnest and clunky. You’d think that after all these years, Hare would’ve learned how to deliver exposition more smoothly.

By and large, however, his cast paper over the cracks. Piper, an underrated actor, is particularly compelling as a cynical character wreathed in ambiguity.

Where it goes from here is anyone’s guess, but episode one established a fair amount of intrigue. Its slow-burning momentum and overt political subtext are quite effective, but I have a nagging feeling that Hare’s lofty ambitions are in excess of his reach. We’ll see.

While one can’t argue with the calibre of Collateral’s cast, you should never trust the judgement of talented actors when it comes to choosing material. God only knows why John Simm and Adrian Lester hitched their collective star power to TRAUMA, a melodramatic maelstrom of utter tosh which never convinced for a moment.

Simm played the father of a teenage boy who was stabbed and killed for no discernible reason. Lester played the surgeon who couldn’t save the boy’s life. Simm somehow managed to barge into the operating theatre at the moment of his son’s death, and immediately blamed Dr Lester for failing to do everything he could.

He became obsessed with proving that Lester wasn’t fit for purpose. His stalking campaign even stretched to finding work in the hospital’s coffee shop. That was the point where I gave up on the possibility of Trauma being based in any kind of plausible reality. It was laughable.

Simm did his best, but his relentlessly angry, unbalanced character came across as a strident mouthpiece rather than a three-dimensional human being. His vendetta never rang true. I had similar misgivings about the equally contrived and unlikely Doctor Foster, which suggests that Bartlett isn’t a writer unduly troubled by notions of dramatic authenticity.

Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but expecting us to go along with a total absence of logic is quite another.

This was ostensibly a drama about the unimaginable trauma of losing a child, but the sensitive subject matter was fatally cheapened by Bartlett’s lack of subtlety.

ITV would no doubt argue that stripping Trauma over three consecutive nights was an attempt to create so-called event television, but I suspect it was more a case of getting it out of the way as swiftly and painlessly as possible.

TV Review: REQUIEM + ALL TOGETHER NOW

This article was first published in The Courier on 3rd February 2018.

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

REQUIEM: Friday, BBC One

ALL TOGETHER NOW: Saturday, BBC One

A fairly enjoyable slice of hokum, six-part drama REQUIEM blends psychological horror with a dose of the supernatural.

Or does it? The ghostly trappings are possibly a red herring. Either way, it’s quite intriguing and boasts a patina of self-awareness that nudges it beyond bog-standard haunted house territory.

Lydia Wilson stars as Matilda, a young woman who falls down a rabbit hole of secrets when her mother inexplicably kills herself. On the day of her death, Matilda’s mother (Hello, Floyd fans!) was apparently visited by a hoarse spectre. Did this scrofulous wraith encourage her to slit her throat in front of Matilda?

24 hours earlier, an old country squire from a Welsh village also received an unearthly visitation. His response was to smash every mirror in his mansion and jump off the roof.

These startling events were connected, of course. Matilda visited her late mother’s house and discovered a box containing press cuttings relating to the 1995 disappearance of a young girl named Carys from that same Welsh village.

Why was she so interested in this case? Mildly intrigued, Matilda and her mate – who provides an adequately droll running commentary during their amateur Scooby-Doo investigation – travelled to Wales to find out more.

There they met some standard issue suspicious locals and a bland Australian who by sheer coincidence – or was it supernatural guidance? – was moving into the mansion he’d inherited from his recently deceased uncle/that aforementioned gravel-bound squire. Naturally, Matilda and her pal moved in too.

This spooky pile of bricks plays host to that hardy perennial, a mysteriously locked room that the protagonist is instantly drawn to. What’s more, the door is affixed with a number 9, which must surely be a nod to Pemberton and Shearsmith’s wonderful anthology series (I’ll ignore the fact that private residences don’t tend to contain numbered rooms).

The possibly inadvertent meta references continued when Matilda discovered an actual black mirror – Wilson appeared in the very first episode of Charlie Brooker’s techno-fearing Twilight Zone. Gazing into this matte disc suddenly brought her nagging sense of déjà vu into dizzying focus. Not only had she been here before, she thinks she actually is Carys.

That might explain why Matilda is such a blank character. She’s suffering an identity crisis. Yes, that must be it. How else to explain her almost breezy demeanour following a harrowing event that would traumatise most people?

This mechanical maze could easily descend into outright nonsense without a firm guiding hand. It’s already balancing precariously on that knife’s edge, but episode one did manage to establish the central mystery quite effectively.

It’s stuffed to the shivering gills with affectionate references to the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, The Haunting, The Exorcist and – with its gurgling, guttural, pipes-banging audio effects – the classic ‘70s BBC production of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape and notorious early ‘90s cause celebre Ghostwatch. Chiefly for those reasons, I’m cautiously on its side.

It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves: what would happen if you mixed Celebrity Squares and The Voice into one great shrieking casserole of Saturday night folderol?

The answer at last is ALL TOGETHER NOW, a pointless talent show in which a bunch of singing hopefuls perform in front of 100 judges seated in a large Connect Four/Guess Who? grid. If they enjoy the performance then they stand up and sing along. The bigger the chorus of support, the closer the contestants get to the grand £50,000 prize.

It really is that simple.

Despite the presence of a studio audience, this aching headlock of forced gaiety has a curiously airless atmosphere. Whatever energy it may have possessed has been heavily edited and neutered. There’s no tension or sparkle. It’s a shiny blast of nothing.

Chirpy comic Rob Beckett does a passable job of hosting, but Geri Halliwell is lumbered with a redundant supporting role. No good will come of this. 

TV Review: CALL THE MIDWIFE + A VICAR'S LIFE

This article was originally published in The Courier on 27th January 2018.

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

CALL THE MIDWIFE: Sunday, BBC One

A VICAR’S LIFE: Friday, BBC Two

There is something quite magical about CALL THE MIDWIFE. Even after six years of sticking to a proven formula, it never feels cynical or tired. Why? Because it’s written, produced and performed with such obvious love and care.

When it first arrived in 2012 I dismissed it as just another cosy rose-tinted period drama. How wrong I was. Yes, it tugs at the heartstrings, but that emotion is earned. It springs from a sincere and intelligent commitment to confronting grim reality.

Eternally relevant social issues are sensitively handled by series creator Heidi Thomas and her writers. Poverty, prejudice, domestic abuse and addiction are grist to their mill. Whenever sentimentality threatens to overwhelm, a sobering bowl of icy water is always on hand to dampen the flames. There’s humour too. The tone is beautifully judged.

The latest series began in the brutal winter of 1962/1963, with the tireless surrogate family members of Poplar’s nursing convent huddling for warmth while ominous reports of power cuts flickered around them.

The two main storylines dovetailed into a tender circle-of-life meditation on the importance of love and self-respect.

We met a lonely pregnant stripper who’d previously endured a backstreet termination. The midwives felt a breach birth was in order. Typically, it was shown in as much visceral detail as the timeslot will allow. Her instant bond with the baby changed her mind about giving it up for adoption. Perhaps they could rise above their misfortune together.

Meanwhile, an old German-Jewish man faced up to the fact that his beloved wife was dying of tuberculosis. They also had to contend with plans to demolish their street to make way for new flats (which will probably be knocked down 40 years later). This couple had fled from the Nazis. They’d worked hard to secure a good life for themselves in Britain. They weren’t going to let urban regeneration and death trample over their love, pride and dignity.

In lesser hands such pathos would by horribly overegged, but Thomas, as usual, yielded genuinely moving results.

There was also a new addition to the principal cast, a young West Indian nurse. Her inclusion is typical of Call the Midwife’s historical accuracy. The understaffed NHS was on its knees until an influx of nurses arrived from the Commonwealth to support it.

The convent welcomed her with open arms and a warming nip of brandy, while expressing concern about the ignorant attitudes of certain members of their parish. Racism will inevitably rear its ugly head.

This exemplary series will, I’m sure, handle that issue with all the boldness and compassion we’ve come to expect.

There was more ecclesiastical altruism in A VICAR’S LIFE, a gentle documentary series about Church of England vicars struggling to remain relevant in our increasingly secular society.

Whether you’re a believer or not, there’s no doubting the charitable sincerity of the likes of Father Matthew. A commendably non-judgemental sort, the cassock-wearing curate came to the aid of a homeless woman living in a tent on a roundabout.

Her sad story was an example of how people can easily slip through the cracks. Father Michael revealed that he’d also been homeless as a younger man. After being rescued by a benefactor, he vowed to always help the most vulnerable members of society whenever he could.

Well, how about that? The kindness of strangers can still prevail in this Godforsaken world. There may be some hope after all.