New British TV Show Reviews
March 27, 2011
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Accidental Farmer (3/11)
Ashley
Jensen stars as Jen in this BBC pilot as a London advertising executive
who accidentally buys a farm on her boyfriend's credit card and then
decides to move there and run it. At no time is there any explanation
whatsoever why she suddenly goes all Green Acres. Why would anyone
give up a glamorous job, nice car, and city life for the backbreaking
work of a rundown cattle farm in Yorkshire? It beggars belief.
Baker Boys (3/11)
This
new drama was only available on BBC Wales on Sunday nights. It's set
in a small town and centers around the employees of a factory-sized
bakery. We meet man-child Owen whose younger sister is about to get
married to his best friend. Owen's ex-wife Sarah is played by Torchwood's
Eve Myles and they have a 15-year-old daughter with cerebral palsy.
But the economic downturn hits the town as the international
conglomerate that owns the bakery goes into bankruptcy and everyone is
suddenly laid off. Some of the workers are former coal miners who've
seen this all before how a community dependent on one business can be
devastated when it closes. Mortgages still need to be paid and
children supported, and how will they be able to do it on £65 a
week of unemployment benefit? The employees eventually hit upon the
scheme of forming a co-op (based on a true story) where they would own
the business themselves, but raising the money to buy it and risk
everything tests many of the characters. Baker Boys is co-written by Helen Raynor, formerly the script editor on Doctor Who, and Russell T Davies is credited as a consultant on the series.
Christopher and His Kind (3/11)
Matt
Smith got to expand his acting range beyond defeating Daleks as
Christopher Isherwood in this BBC2 biopic based on his book. One
hopes
young children weren't watching this very adult drama that featured
Smith smoking, drinking and having lots and lots of gay sex.
Isherwood
left England after dropping out of medical school with one published
novel under his belt to check out the promising gay scene of 1930s
Berlin. To earn money, Isherwood teaches English
one-to-one. The "His
Kind" of the title has multiple meanings. Obviously it refers to
the
gay subculture that Isherwood traveled in. But his kind also
included
the British expatriots who inhabited Berlin for various reasons even as
Nazism was on the rise. This includes Imogen Poots as Jean Ross,
the
inspiration for the character of Sally Bowles who appeared in
Isherwood's Berlin Stories and later the musical Cabaret. But
there's
a third category of "his kind" that permeates the production and that
is class. Like any good Englishman of the era, Isherwood was very
class
conscious and even though most of his boyfriends were working class
Germans, his friends were all similarly upper-middle class like
him. He could never forget it and perhaps the novel, written
decades after
Isherwood had been living in the United States after the war, gives him
the perspective to see how it affected him. Nevertheless,
"Christopher
and His Kind" is a look at a unique time and place where on the one
hand there was a thriving if somewhat sordid gay lifestyle, and on the
other how a country drives off the cliff as the Nazis came to power.
Come Fly With Me (3/11)
I
didn't laugh once during the first episode of this 10-years-too-late
parody of docusoaps by David Walliams and Matt Lucas (Little Britain). They play the
bulk of the characters at various airlines that are the subject of the
documentary. Maybe I'm just getting too old to appreciate their humor,
but it was successful enough on BBC1 and got recommissioned for a
second series.
Come Rain Come Shine (3/11)
David
Jason stars in this ITV1 TV movie as Don Mitchell a retired hackney
cabdriver living in estate housing with his wife Dora (Alison Steadman). He has two
grown children, a daughter bringing up two boys on her own, and a son,
David, who is a successful real estate developer with a mansion, flash
car and trophy wife. But all good things must come to an end and the
real estate crash hits David who loses his job and house and has to
move the family in with Don and Dora. Don's problem, and all the women
in his life know this, is he thinks David walks on water and defends
him to the bitter end. He even takes out a mortgage on their flat to
lend David the money to buy into a new lucrative real estate venture.
When that blows up in their face, Don goes back to driving his cab.
David disappoints everyone when he leaves his wife for another woman
which ultimately sends Don to the hospital in a coma after suffering a
heart attack. It's always interesting to think about the messages in a
movie like this, particularly in aspirationally challenged Britain.
You are supposed to know your place and not take on airs, and there's a
certain amount of schadenfreude in seeing others cut down to size who
forget this. In the Thatcher era, David would have been the hero, but
the drama here in Come Rain Come Shine
is really about Don's inability to judge his son and what it does to
him. As an aside, some of the scenes were shot literally up the road
from where I used to live in Homerton in the East End of London 17
years ago. It's definitely not the best part of London but it's not
the worst either, and it was a good setting for a salt-of-the-earth
character profile like Come Rain Come Shine.
Comic Relief 2011 (3/11)
Highlights this year included Outnumbered with tennis star Andy Murray tormented by the kids; a special two-part Doctor Who short by Steven Moffat; MasterChef with Miranda Hart, Ruby Wax & Claudia Winkleman "cooking" at Number 10 Downing Street for David Cameron; Autumnwatch done Harry Hill style; an elaborate filmed parody of Downtown Abbey
(directed by Adrian Edmondson) featuring Harry Enfield, Jennifer
Saunders, Michael Gambon, Joanna Lumley, Simon Callow, Victoria Wood,
and Dale Winton; Susan Boyle sings a duet with Peter Kay; after a live
reunion of Take That, a tribute band, Fake That, is formed with James
Corden, John Bishop, David Walliams, Catherine Tate, Alan Carr; the
cast of Miranda
(in character) do Pineapple Dance Studio; James Corden's character of
Smithy convenes a round table at the BBC to help save Comic Relief in a
scene with more A-list celebrities than you can imagine; the cast of The Inbetweeners
track down the rudest place names in England for a challenge; Kate Moss
meets Misery Bear; and Jonathan Ross, Jimmy Carr and Claudia Winkleman
watch in horror as Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant and Karl Pilkington
spend 10 minutes slagging off the whole idea of charity drives.
Comic's Choice (3/11)
In the run-up to Channel 4 hosting the British Comedy Awards in 2011 they ran a week of Comic's Choice
featuring Bill Bailey interviewing famous comedians (Alan Davies, Sean
Lock, Lee Mack, Jo Brand and Jessica Hynes) each night and having them
nominate and choose winners for their own personal all-time British
comedy awards. Of course this means plenty of clips but in what
is becoming a disturbing trend, shows that were originally made in the
4:3 standard definition aspect ratio have been cropped for 21st Century
widescreen TVs. Not only does this mean a substantial portion of
the image is missing, but the additional increase in the image size for
high definition makes the old clips seem grainy and fuzzy. I see
this done more and more on clip shows, a practice I wish were halted.
Dirk Gently (3/11)
The popular series of novels by Douglas Adams was adapted as a TV pilot by Howard Overman, the creator and writer of Misfits.
Stephen Mangan plays the "holistic detective" who sees the
interconnectedness of all things. Or maybe he's just a conman who
wants people to support his activities. The novel "Dirk Gently's
Holistic Detective Agency" is rather infamous in Doctor Who
fan circles because Adams, who wrote and script edited for the series
in the late 1970s before "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" took
off, recycled two of his Doctor Who
plots for it. It's Adams' flair for comedy that make his work so
memorable regardless of the plots, which are convoluted to say the
least. But Overman created his own story for this BBC4 pilot which has
resulted in a pushback by fans of the novels. He also altered the back
story of what presumably would be two supporting characters if this
went to series, Richard McDuff (Darren Boyd), and his girlfriend Susan
(Helen Baxendale). I like the way Gently and McDuff always try to go
through doors at exactly the same time. The only elements from the
first book used in the pilot are the search for a missing cat and the
use of time travel. Howard Overman is clearly a talented writer. You
only have to watch any episode of Misfits
to appreciate his use of dialog and engaging plots. Had he done a
verbatim adaption of the first novel, it would have been three hours
long to start with, and after they did the sequel "The Long Dark Tea
Time of the Soul" they'd have run out original Adams material as he
inconveniently died before finishing the third novel. It wouldn't be
much of a TV series. Stephen Mangan is an interesting choice as the
protagonist. There's always something annoying about his characters
whether it's Adrian Mole or Dr. Guy Secretan in Green Wing.
He seems to delight in playing people who at first glance are
off-putting in their ways but ultimately charm you over. I had one
gripe though and that is an iPhone would never hold its charge for 16
years. Heck, you're lucky they last 16 hours. Sorry, Howard.
Dom Jolly and the Black Island (3/11)
The comedian (Trigger Happy TV)
presented this Channel 4 documentary about the popular comic character
"Tintin." So well researched were Herge's artwork that Jolly is able to
find the actual locations the drawing were based on as he shares his
love for the long-running adventure series.
Eric and Ernie (3/11)
Victoria
Wood devised this BBC TV movie biopic that told the early years of one
of Britain's most beloved comedy double acts, Morecambe and Wise. She
also plays Sadie, the mother of young Eric Bartholomew, a relentless
stage mother who makes her feckless son take dancing lessons and go on
theater auditions doing a schoolboy routine. Meanwhile, we meet Ernie
Wise who's already a huge hit doing vaudeville with dad played by Reese
Shearsmith. But when the West End beckons, they only want Ernie and
dad realizes his son is more talented than he is and will be more
successful. Eric and Ernie cross paths, with Ernie the star and Eric
the newcomer being chaperoned by Sadie. It's the war years and
circumstances put the boys together where their initial distrust of
each other melts into a realization they have the same comic
sensibilities and a double act is born. Eric changes his last name to
Morecambe and after the war they tour the country with great success.
Sadie becomes an unofficial mother of Ernie but we also get to see
Eric's dad George react to his success. George is played by Jim Moir,
who is better known as Vic Reeves of Reeves and Mortimer fame, a
modern-day double act that has been compared to Morecambe and Wise.
The boys have success on radio and then decide to take their act to
television in 1954 with the BBC. Alas, putting themselves in the hands
of BBC writers and producers because "they must know what they are
doing" spells disaster for Eric and Ernie and their show Running Wild
which bombs horribly. Will this be the end of the double act? Should
Sadie intervene or does Eric need to finally stand up and make the
first move for reconciliation? Two sets of actors play Morecambe and
Wise, first as boys, and later young men. Harry McEntire looks
amazingly how Ernie Wise would have as a kid, and Bryan Dick is equally
good as the older Ernie. The success of this TV Movie caught BBC2 by
surprise with over 6 million people tuning in on Saturday night to
watch it, a 14 year high for drama on that channel. Clearly the public
is still very interested in Morecambe and Wise whose much-anticipated
Christmas specials in the 1970s were considered required viewing in
Britain.
Fast and Loose (3/11)
Hugh Dennis (Outnumbered) hosts this BBC-2 improvisational comedy show that will remind you--a lot--of Mock The Week but without the topical comedy, and the rest like Whose Line Is it Anyway? But it had some original improv scenes as well including How Not To Live Your Life's
David Armand miming the lyrics to popular songs which the panelists had
to guess just from his movements, and a set which was turned on its
side and then shot from above giving the performers a surreal
anti-gravity effect. No doubt heavily edited but what works works.
Friday Night Dinner (3/11)
You would think a comedy with Tasmin Greig, Simon Bird and Mark Heap
would be pretty funny but so far I've been disappointed by Friday Night Dinner on Channel 4. It strikes me as a middle-class version of The Royle Family, which some people might view as a compliment but as you'll recall, I was no fan of The Royle Family. Friday Night Dinner
is the weekly sitdown of the Goodman clan: mum, dad, and their two
sons. Dad is a hard-of-hearing simpleton who is fond of going
shirtless around the house. The two twenty-something boys like to
prank each other by pouring salt in their water glasses. Mark Heap
shows up at their door constantly as a too-friendly neighbor with a dog
who clearly wants to be invited to eat with them but the Goodmans are
having none of it. A similar series in 2010, Simon Amstell's Grandma's House, was better done with more defined comedy characters who were a lot funnier.
Garrow's Law (3/11)
Alun
Armstrong and Andrew Buchan star in this BBC period courtroom drama set
in squalid 18th Century London using real cases that were tried at the
Old Bailey. Trials were the best and cheapest entertainment in town and
the stands were filled with members of the public booing and cheering
like they were at a Christmas panto (and thanks to QI
for pointing out that judges in English courts have never used gavels in
courtrooms, it's purely a fiction created by writers who've watched too
many American legal shows). Buchan is a good leading man as he fights
for truth, justice and the, er, British way, in a system that wasn't
always fair and balanced.
Hattie (3/11)
Lovely Ruth Jones from Gavin & Stacy
starred in this BBC4 biopic about the private life of comedienne Hattie
Jacques. Hattie was best known in Britain for appearing in many of the
"Carry On" films, usually as the Matron, and in the long running comedy
program Sykes along with Ernie
Sykes. She was married to actor John Le Mesurier, best known for being
in Dad's Army. He's played by Robert Bathurst, seen these days in Downton Abbey. It's the early 1960s and Hattie spends her days
working on "Carry On Cabbie" and then coming home to her often
unemployed husband and two sons and cooks them dinner. They have a
border who lives in the attic and babysits the boys. She then meets
John Schofield, a young used car salesman played by clean-shaven Aidan
Turner (Being Human).
Schofield sweeps Hattie off her feet and they begin having an affair.
Soon, Schofield is the new border living in the attic right underneath
Le Mesurier's nose. Hattie and Schofield continue their affair even
after they're discovered one night by Le Mesurier. But Hattie still
loves her husband and can't bear to have to choose one man over the
other. So an arrangement is made. Le Mesurier discretely moves into
the attic while Schofield gets the bedroom with Hattie. All this is to
prevent scandal which would ruin Hattie's career. Schofield gets it
right when he says he doesn't understand posh folks. Hattie eventually
arranged for her husband to date and marry her best friend and he even
agrees to fall on his sword and let himself be accused of adultery so
Hattie can get a divorce without it seeming her fault. These
extraordinary events were chronicled in Hattie's authorized biography
which the public didn't discover until years later. This TV Movie
dramatized this unusual situation in a straight-forward manner, with
excellent performances from each of the actors.
It's Paul Burling (3/11)
Burling is an impressionist who was first discovered on Britain's Got Talent
and although he didn't win, ITV rewarded him with his own TV special to
showcase his talents. Armed with particularly good Harry Hill and
Simon Cowell impersonations, the sketches took good-natured aims at
television and managed to do material not previously mined to death by
either Kevin Bishop or Jon Culshaw in similar programs.
Just William (3/11)
Yes, it's for kids but this new BBC adaptation of Just William
has a delightful charm and a great cast. Daniel Roche is a superb
child actor and really knows how to play mischievous school boys, as
seen in Outnumbered and Little Crackers.
Rebecca Front plays his mum, while Warren Clarke and Caroline Quentin
are a nouveau riche couple with a spoiled daughter named Violet
Elizabeth. William is forced by his mum to have a playdate with
Violet--ick, girls--and she knows that by threatening to cry she has
him wrapped around her little finger. But Violet is a good sport too,
and on a day out with William and his gang proves able to rough and
tumble and get dirty with the best of them, and not rat them out either
when they get caught. Simon Nye wrote the scripts based on the books
by Richmal Crompton which spanned decades but Nye settled for a nice
1950s period piece. The BBC cleverly scheduled Just William
for an entire week in the early afternoon during the Christmas school break when
it's target audience would be hungry for an entertaining romp. Who
knows, they might even check out the books.
Kidnap and Ransom (3/11)
Trevor Eve stars in this ITV mini-series as a professional hostage
negotiator who is called in when insured bigwigs are abducted in
foreign countries for ransom. He is all about getting the deal
and the successful return of his clients but it doesn't always go
well. A pharmaceutical executive is kidnapped by two amateurs in
South Africa but like an episode of "24," we discover onion-layers of
conspiracy just when we think the adventure is over.
Land Girls (3/11)
This
afternoon series on BBC1 centered around city girls who worked on rural
farms during WWII. I
watched the 2nd season opener and while I was very intrigued by the
setting, the actual execution was spoiled by several elements. The
first is the evil postmistress. Was I supposed to take her seriously as
a character? When she snuck in to poison the pig I thought I was
watching a children's program or maybe a Christmas pantomime (the music
seemed to suggest it). And Raquel Cassidy's character of Diana
Granville was none too subtle. Plus the rather dodgy American accents
everywhere. The entire series was more melodrama than drama and not to
my tastes. I have no problem with rural period dramas like Lark Rise To Candleford but Land Girls missed the mark for me.
Little Crackers (3/11)
Sky1
series of 12 minute shorts all written by popular comedians showed that
the short film genre is not dead. Mostly based on events that happened
to them as children, using revolving around Christmas, we got to see
pint sized versions of Chris O'Dowd, Victoria Wood, Catherine Tate and
Stephen Fry, among others dealing with what seemed at the time an
unfair world when they didn't have any power. It was particularly
amusing to see the actors appearing as some authority figure, and not
often in a flattering way such as Stephen Fry's cruel headmaster and
Kathy Burke as a grimfaced nun. The child performers themselves were
excellent, one has to imagine how many auditions they would have gone
through to find a young Catherine Tate or a Clash-obsessed teenaged
Kathy Burke. Stephen Fry lucked out with Daniel Roche of Outnumbered
being cast as Young Master Fry at a particularly unpleasant boarding
school. I was also impressed by how much story it's possible to
compress into a 12 minute running time. Whole movies have been made
with less plot than some of these gems.
Lunch Monkeys (3/11)
There's
a definitely stratification when it comes to which channel a BBC comedy
lands on. BBC1 shows are expected to be star driven and appeal to wide
audiences. BBC2 are more quirky and allowed to tackle topics that
aren't mainstream. And then there's BBC3 which have developed Gavin & Stacey and The Mighty Boosh, but also as a place for really oddball shows. I have to wonder if The Office were first to have appeared in 2011 whether it would have had to start out on BBC3. In any case, Lunch Monkeys
is a typical BBC3 kind of show that is set in a workplace but doesn't
really have jokes per se. It's is more of an observational comedy that
focuses on the characters. We get to know the administrators, clerks,
and folks working in the mail room at a law office rather than the
lawyers running the show. Your enjoyment of the show depends directly
on whether you can relate to any of these characters and want to see
where their story goes. Yes, there is comedy but it's usually obvious
things like the guy so desperate for a coworker who loathes him to
become his flatmate that he ends up subsidizes her rent. Or a
nefarious lawyer taking advantage of an idiot clerk. My favorite
character is probably Tania the office manager played by Jessica Hall.
She desperately wants to impress her boss played by Nigel Havers, but
she gets no respect from her co-workers and her lovelife is a mess.
With the caveat that Lunch Monkeys is a BBC3 comedy, and is not designed to be a mainstream hit, it's a harmless enough workplace show.
Mad Dogs (3/11)
Sky1
made a major leap into original drama when it commissioned this four-part drama
about four Englishmen whose trip to visit a mate in Spain goes terribly
awry. But even the combined star power of John Simm, Philip Glenister,
Marc Warren, Max Beesley and Ben Chaplin aren't enough to sustain
interest over the entire four parts. The project was initiated by the
actors who wanted to work together and had an idea, commissioned a
writer and then shopped it around to all the broadcasters. Although
nicely shot (it's nearly impossible to make Spain look anything but
gorgeous) much of the drama is done in a manner that would seem stilted
even on stage, with the characters often stuck in a room or sitting around a
table discussing their respective back stories. Perhaps the
old-fashioned way of creating serials is best, with a writer having an
idea, selling it to a broadcaster, and then casting around for suitable
actors to fit the drama rather than the other way around.
Marchlands (3/11)
The
five part ITV1 mini-series is set in the same house in three different
decades. The first is 1968 where a young couple living with his
parents cope with the recent death of their daughter, the second is in
1987 where Alex Kingston and Dean Andrews are a married couple whose
daughter has an imaginary friend, and the third is in 2010 where a man
returns to the village along with his pregnant wife. Linking these are the
imagery all associated with the dead girl who may be haunting the
place. Interestingly, Marchlands
is based on an American series called "The Oaks" that Fox commissioned
but never broadcast. The writer, Stephen Greenhorn, a Doctor Who
veteran, has done a good job of taking David Schulner's original
concept and making it thoroughly English and not just filed the serial
numbers off and had the characters all drinking tea. The format lends
itself to what is hopefully a satisfying mini-series experience but I
can't see how this was expected to run and run if it ever got to
American television. There are a number of reasons to watch Marchlands:
you like a good spooky ghost story, the appeal of the stars, or maybe
you're just an anachronism spotter who enjoys catching flubs on period
dramas. Whatever works for you.
Monroe (3/11)
There's
good news and bad news about this new medical drama starring James
Nesbitt as a brilliant neurosurgeon. The good news is that it's no
knockoff of "House." "House" is, at its core, a mystery show: Sherlock
Holmes as a doctor. There is a medical mystery each week that Gregory
House has to solve and the audience learns about some bit of arcane
medicine. There are no mysteries on Monroe.
A patient comes in, they do an MRI, Gabriel Monroe (Nesbitt) knows what
to do and then on to the surgery. Monroe also has a much better
bedside manner with his patients than House does. He's like a
role-model for the NHS for how a doctor should interact with their
patients. The bad news when it comes to Monroe
however is it is cut from the same drama cloth as too many programs:
the super-competent professional whose personal life is a shambles.
Poor Monroe has his wife leave him after 22 years of marriage
(apparently she'd been thinking about it for six years ever since he
had an affair). And we know that his rivalry with an uptight colleague
played by Sarah Parish will culminate in their hooking up within a few
episodes. Do they think we've never seen television before? So I
accuse Monroe of being guilty
of being too similar to other, better shows, it's an okay medical drama
but I could name another half a dozen that were just as good.
Murder on the Orient Express (3/11)
Confession
time: I've never watch David Suchet at Hercule Poirot before, and my
only exposure to "Murder on the Orient Express" was the "Mad" magazine
parody of the old Peter Ustinov version. But a friend of mine in
Britain e-mailed me and said I really had to check it out this new
version, so I did. It was quite excellent, starting with Suchet's
amazing portrayal of Poirot as a tightly wound Catholic whose sense of
justice overrides all other considerations. But on the night train
from Istanbul, a murder of an obnoxious American (played by Toby Jones,
the Dream Lord from Doctor Who's
"Amy's Choice) must be solved by Poirot before the snowbound train can
be dug out. Train spotters should love this, the train is very nearly
a star of the production and it's presence in the giant snowbank
creates stark images. Plus it's fun to relive what it must have been
like to be riding First Class in the 1930s, this is how the rich and
famous got from place to place. The cast of suspects includes Barbara
Hershey, David Morrissey and Hugh Bonneville, some attempting American
accents with mixed results. Suchet is the real deal though and even if
you know the solution to the mystery, he's fascinating to watch.
The One Ronnie (3/11)
80 year old Ronnie Corbett still has it, assuming you used to find his double act with Ronnie Barker or solo shows like Sorry
entertaining. There is something deliberately old-fashioned about this
variety-comedy special, aimed at nostalgic oldsters but with sketches
featuring Catherine Tate, Miranda Hart, David Walliams and Matt Lucas
to bring in younger viewers. A lot of my Facebook friends linked to a
sketch from the show where Corbett goes into a fruit shop run by Harry
Enfield to complain about his Blackberry. It employs the sort of
clever wordplay that the famous sketches by David Renwick used to write
for The Two Ronnies back in the day.
Outcasts (3/11)
The
BBC's newest science fiction drama took place on the colony planet
Carpathia, so named for the ship that rescued the passengers on the
Titanic. Refugees from earth have been living there for 10 years in a
small outpost when the series began, with a damaged transport ship
coming into orbit with possibly the last colonists to get off Earth. Outcasts
made a bold choice in how to introduce viewers to this world, and
fortunately the twice-a-week scheduling initially by the BBC helped in this.
Rather than an information dump or a lot of exposition, we were dropped
into a typical day on Carpathia with characters who have had 10 years
dealing with each other. The focus was on the characters rather than
getting plot going, at least at first. It's a smart move when clearly
there was going to be a lot of backstories and plot elements to reveal
and discovering who were the good guys and who are the bad guys.
Normally I loath it when a series deliberately withholds important
information from the audience but it worked for Outcasts
because it gave viewers a chance to get to know everyone before things
kicked into high gear. My favorite characters to start were Fleur
Morgan and Cass Cromwell, two members of the security team that are
Forthaven's version of police. Amy Manson plays Fleur, she looks a bit
like a young Andie McDowell. (You've seen her in Torchwood playing Alice Guppy, Desperate Romantics as Lizzie, and Daisy in Being Human.)
Daniel Mays is Cass, who is introduced with a cloned pig on a leash
that he's confiscated. Mays was the charming but sinister Jim Keats on
the last season of Ashes To Ashes. He's put to good effect in Outcasts
teamed up with Fleur to chase after a rebel played by "Galactica's"
Jamie Bamber in the first episode. The location shooting in South Africa was suitably
otherworldly. Outcasts was no "Battlestar Galactica" by any means and the BBC moved it to a latenight slot when audience figures eroded.
The Promise (3/11)
This
Channel 4 mini-series was everything I like about well-made British
drama. It had interesting characters, you were invested in their story
and what happened to them, every scene made you want to know what
happened next, there was mystery, politics, and history all showcased
in a first-class production shot on location. Erin Matthews (Claire
Foy) is a British teenager who decides to spend her gap year in Israel
to support her Jewish friend Eliza during Eliza's national service.
Erin's grandfather is near death and she ends up with his diary that he
kept while serving in the British army in Palestine after the war.
While Erin explores the foreign culture of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict as it exists today, we're shown a parallel story of Sgt. Len
Matthews, her grandfather, trying to maintain peace in 1940s Palestine
while Jewish militants were fighting to form Israel. It's a great
dramatic device to let the audience into this world from the point of
view of the British, both then and now. Erin goes on her own voyage of
discovery as she continues to read the diary and tries to find some of
the people her grandfather knew and interacted with six decades
earlier. This ambitious drama by writer-director Peter Kosminksy was an
international co-production with a lot of money on screen recreating
Palestine of the 1940s as well as modern scenes in the occupied
territories. As an outsider who just wants to know what is happening,
Erin is able to go places and ask questions that natives never would.
It was interesting to see the British perspective on the history of the
middle-east, seeing as they were on the front lines during the messy
formation of Israel--a lot of Sgt. Matthews comrades are killed along
the way--as well as today. While some people might be put off by the
subject matter in The Promise, to me it's a first-rate drama that although fiction takes place in an all-too real and troubled land.
Rock `N Roll Hotel (3/11)
Timothy
Spall narrates this BBC docusoap focusing on Mark Fuller trying to open
a trendy London hotel in the midst of the financial downturn.
Ruth Jones' Christmas Cracker (3/11)
Though the guests were nice, including Miranda Hart and Ricky Gervais
(little known fact: Ruth Jones unsuccessfully auditioned for the part
of Dawn in The Office
that eventually went to Lucy Davis). But there is already a chat show
glut and even for someone as appealing as Jones is, it's a completely
unnecessary series.
The Secret Life of Bob Monkhouse (3/11)
The
popular comedian and presenter's life is explored in this BBC-4
documentary that used clips from Monkhouse's extensive archive of
homemade videotapes going back to the 1960s. I thought I was obsessive
about recording British TV but it was almost a mania to Monkhouse (he
had over 50,000 VHS tapes when he died and at one time the
third-largest film collection in the world). He used them for
research, it's as if he wanted to know every joke told on earth in case
he ever needed it, and kept jokebook journals that he also
illustrated. With many early British programs long-thought wiped, once
Monkhouse's archive was properly indexed (after a court case charging
piracy he kept its existence quiet during his later years) several
"lost" shows (including Lenny Henry's first-ever TV appearance) were
found on his tapes.
Silk (3/11)
Maxine Peake (Shameless)
stars in this BBC drama created by Peter Moffat as Martha Costello, a
first-rate barrister at a small chambers run by a ruthless clerk (Neil
Stuke). Rupert Penry-Jones (Spooks)
is Clive, a slick fellow barrister who is competing with Martha to
attain "silk" (that is, a judicial promotion). Clive represents the
rotten side of lawyers who will do anything to win a case or use his
smooth charm to bed a pretty girl he fancies, while Martha is held up
as an example of the noble morality that true justice can achieve. Two
good-looking young interns provide subplots, as well as Martha's
unexpected pregnancy (one guess who the father is), but as TV producers
have known for 60 years, nothing beats the drama that occurs inside a
courtroom and Silk is no exception.
The Sinking of the Laconia (3/11)
This was a two-part BBC mini-series based on the true story about a
merchant marine ship, the Laconia, that was sunk by a German U-Boat in
1942 whose Captain then went back and picked up the survivors.
Acclaimed TV writer Alan Bleasdale wrote the script that follows the
pattern of most disaster movies by introducing all the main characters
in the run up to the sinking. The Laconia sailed from the south of
Egypt with a number of British citizens as well as 2000 Italian POWs
stuck in the hold. We are introduced to the junior Third Officer
Mortimer (Andrew Buchan), and the ship's Captain played by
Brian Cox. Passengers include a couple traveling with their two
children, an older woman (Lindsay Duncan) and her daughter, and Hilda
and her baby. But Hilda ("Run Lola Run's" Franka Potente) is hiding a
secret, we see her burning her German passport before boarding the ship
at the last minute using her British passport. We also meet Captain
Hartenstein and his U-Boat crew, hoping to win a competition with other
boats to sink the most Allied tonnage. After sailing around the south
horn of Africa and up the western coast, the Laconia's low-grade fuel
created black smoke that was easily spotted by Hartenstein's patrolling
U-Boat. He fires two torpedoes into the Laconia which quickly sinks,
killing most of the Italian POWs who weren't allowed to come above
deck. Standard operating procedure for the U-boat would be to
immediately leave the area but Hartenstein sticks around. He realizes
there are women and children in the water and makes the fateful
decision to rescue as many survivors as he can find. The
even-handedness of this story is amazing, the British aren't known for
being terribly sympathetic about portraying Germans during World War
II. But there's a barely a swastika in sight, this is the German Navy
simply doing its duty, Hartenstein was a 20 year veteran of the
service. It's his adherence to the code of the sea that spurs him to
conduct the rescue even as he knows High Command is not going to be
pleased he's giving aid and comfort to the Allied enemy. The rescued
British survivors for their part come across as fairly forgiving of the
Germans, appreciating that the Captain is very much sticking his neck
out for them. Hartenstein knows he needs to get rid of over 200 extra
passengers, so he sends out an open message in English requesting
assistance and promising not to attack any ships that come to rescue
them. But the British authorities don't want to trust such a
message--what if it's a trap?--so instead they tell a secret American
base to go looking in that area for the wreckage of their ship without
mentioning, "Oh by the way, the survivors might be on a German U-Boat."
Gung-ho American flyboys on their first mission find the submarine and
despite a prominent red cross now on the deck and hundreds of civilians
standing around on top, decide to shoot first and ask questions later.
Hartenstein realizes his first duty is to his ship and his crew, so
puts the survivors back in their lifeboats with as much water as he can
spare. A ship from Vichy France is on its way to pick them up but the
U-Boat needs to leave before the Americans come back. This
international co-production was first-rate, with great production
values--did they really use an old U-Boat or is it all special effects?
I couldn't tell. I loved the cast and the writing was miles from a
cliched disaster movie, the characters were all interesting and
well-played by many familiar TV veterans. The following night after The Sinking of the Laconia, BBC2 ran a half hour special that interviewed actual survivors of the incident who described it in their own words.
10 O'Clock Live (3/11)
After
the success of doing a live comedy version of election night coverage
last year, Channel 4 commissioned an entire series of comedians David
Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne and commentator Charlie Brooker to
tackle topical news humor each week. Laverne merely serves as
moderator linking bits together, and Brooker isn't really a performer,
so it falls to Carr and Mitchell to do most of the comedy heavy
lifting. Mitchell struggles a bit to do the live round-table
discussion group with experts, a la Newsnight,
but his monologues to camera ("Listen To Mitchell") are always quite
eloquent and reasoned. Carr does a stand-up for each show summing up
the week's headlines, as well as appearing in deliberately naff
sketches that hinge on the fact it's all going out live! In the
absence of a new series of Bremner, Bird & Fortune, it's good to see someone on British TV making fun of politicians and the week's newsmakers, but 10 O'Clock Live is probably an acquired taste for most viewers.
Toast (3/11)
Food
writer Nigel Slater wrote a best selling autobiography about growing
up, and Lee Hall adapted it for this BBC TV movie. Young Nigel is
stuck in the 1950s with a mum who knows nothing about cooking, she
refuses to buy fresh vegetables and instead boils tin cans whole for
dinner. And when that usually fails, the family ends up eating toast,
hence the title. Nigel, whom we suspect pretty early on is gay, spends
his nights looking at books under the covers. But they aren't porn,
they are cook books and he caresses mouthwatering photos of spaghetti
bolognese which his food-phobic parents will never try. Despite mum's
complete inability to cook, Nigel is devoted to her, and he is crushed
when she dies from a lung disease, leaving him with his middle class
boring father played by Ken Stott. Dad then employs a house-cleaner
named Mrs Potter played by Helena Bonham-Carter. As she did in Enid
earlier this year or in the Harry Potter series, Bonham-Carter has
perfected playing characters that are both charming and malevolent.
Mrs Potter begins cooking for the family but Nigel fights back by
learning to how to cook himself and finds himself in direct competition
with her. We're supposed to despise Nigel's dad and Mrs Potter but it
feels too much like Nigel the writer is merely getting back at people
whom he feels did him wrong when they can't fight back. Did Nigel
expect his dad to remain celibate the rest of his life just because he
was a widower? And he completely fails to realize that it's not just
food that is going to make his dad choose Mrs Potter over him every
time. And make no mistake, Mrs Potter is a great cook, it takes Nigel
months of spying to figure out her secret recipe for lemon meringue pie
and copy it. In her dyed blonde hair, common accent, and a fag between
her lips, you can see why Nigel might have been repelled by Mrs Potter,
but from the point of view of an adult, she doesn't come off
too poorly. But Nigel is the hero of his own story of course and
eventually leaves home without forgiving his dad for eventually
marrying Mrs Potter. Nigel moves to London and if the movie is to be
believed, gets a job in the kitchen of the Savoy Hotel after one quick
back alley interview. For those who love Nigel Slater or his book,
it's probably all validation but coming to this material new, it seemed
a bit like point scoring after the fact.
Top Gear (3/11)
In
this Mid-East Christmas Special, the three "wise men," Jeremy Clarkson,
Richard Hammond and James May are given a mission to drive from the
east to Bethlehem, like the famous kings. Our guys get to use
open-top
convertibles instead of camels but do find themselves starting out in
Northern Iraq wearing flak jackets and helmets. They quickly
decide
staying in Iraq is a Bad Idea, so head for the border of Iran to
circumnavigate their way around Iraq to eventually end up in
Israel.
Remember, the British are not as unwelcome in Iran as Americans.
However, the BBC are. So instead they head for Turkey and realize
that
the Kurdish parts of Iraq are as safe as driving around England and
ditch the flak jackets. Turkey is another story, but the real
problems
come when they go into Syria. If the Israelis know they went
through
Syria, they won't let them in the country. And Top Gear is very
popular even in the mid-east. Sure enough, even in a small Syrian city
they are recognized and it won't be long before the media announce "Top
Gear is filming here." So they decide to forsake the roads and drive
across the barren desert. This proves particularly punishing for their
cars, which have been tricked out to make them more "undercover" and
May in particular who gets injured and is taken away to hospital for a
head injury. It's moments like that you realize these aren't just
three adult boys running around by themselves in the middle of
nowhere. There's the cameramen and a whole support crew conveniently
out of shot most of the time along as well. How much is staged and how
much they make up as they go along is up to the viewer to decide. May
gets patched up and rejoins the team, they head through Jordan and
eventually reach Israel. As they finally approach Bethlehem, even
Clarkson tells viewers, "If you're a car enthusiast you can turn off
now, because we've got to finish this journey off." A cgi-enhanced
green light leads them to a stable where a woman has given birth,
although Top Gear can't resist one final gag.
2010 Unwrapped With Miranda Hart (3/11)
Somewhere,
David Mitchell has to be a bit annoyed with the BBC News department
which sandbagged his attempts to use them to do fake news for his panel
show The Bubble
earlier this year. But the 2010 Unwrapped folks apparently did not
have the same restriction and gleefully mashed up news items that
purported to have the Pope guest starring on Top Gear--they even CGI him sitting across from Jeremy Clarkson in the Top Gear studio, Steve Jobs on Dragon's Den getting turned down for his new invention, The Apprentice
with an idiot Irishman intercut into a real episode as a contestant,
vuvuzelas during the Prime Minister's debate, a Vicar getting the Anne
Robinson treatment on The Weakest Link, Gordon Brown lost in the woods, and an Amateur Dramatic society's version of Big Brother.
Meanwhile, Miranda Hart does links dressed up as a Dickens' character
in a Victorian setting, doing what she does best, namely pratfalls and
asides to the camera. 2010 Unwrapped was a great combination of computer aided video trickery and satire.
Twenty Twelve (3/11)
This
mockumentary focuses on the commission responsible for the London
Olympics and we can only hope the real committee isn't as incompetent
as their fictional counterparts here. Hugh Bonneville (taking a break
from Downton Abbey)
plays Ian Fletcher, the bike commuting head of deliverance whose CV
doesn't suggest a history of successes. Surrounding him are a traffic
engineer who only manages to gridlock London's traffic in a field test,
and Jessica Hynes as a public relations guru who keeps on talking and
making promises with much more confidence than knowledge. David
Tennant narrates the proceedings, which are familiar to anyone who's
seen writer-director's John Morton's previous show People Like Us
(which David appeared in way back when). The humor doesn't come from
jokes or particularly wacky situations (if anything it celebrates the
banal) but from the absurd things that come out of so-called expert's
mouths. In Morton's world, everyone has successfully reached the Peter
Principle and risen to their level of incompetence, and we the audience
get to watch them slowly drown and never thinking of reaching for a
life ring.
Upstairs Downstairs (3/11)
There are similarities between this continuation of the famous 1970s ITV series (now on the BBC) and ITV1's popular Downton Abbey that aired a few months earlier. The biggest differences are the sense of scale: Downton Abbey had a much larger cast to start with as well as seven whole episodes to unfold its story. Upstairs Downstairs is much more intimate and will only run three episodes to start with. Sherlock had this same problem; three episodes is too short to launch a series. BBC cutbacks are beginning to show. But Upstairs Downstairs has one thing Downton
didn't and that is the nostalgia factor: not only is the setting at 165
Eaton Place, which is where the original took place, but series
co-creator Jean Marsh is on hand to recreate her role as Rose Buck, now
much older of course. By setting the story in 1936, Rose has been
running an agency for domestic staff and ends the first episode as the
new housekeeper. The way the house is shot when we first see it is
surely meant to evoke memories from viewers of the original series and
hopefully hook them into this new version. This setting, including the
abdication of Edward VIII and the coming war, also figures heavily in
"The Kings Speech" and the recent Any Human Heart. The weakness of the new Upstairs Downstairs
is the dull couple at the center of it, Sir Hallan Holland and his wife
Lady Agnes played by Ed Stoppard and Keeley Hawes. But the staff all
have interesting quirks and Hallan's irrepressible mother, Lady
Holland, played by Eileen Atkins, injects a lot of life into the show.
She moves in on her son to write her memoirs, accompanied by her Indian
manservant (Art Malick) and a pet monkey. Dame Eileen, incidentally
was one of the original co-creators of Upstairs Downstairs.
She was to have appeared in the series but Pauline Collins ended up
doing her part. The new version does at least one callback to Mr
Hudson, the famous butler played by Gordon Jackson who died in 1990.
Again, it's a nod for nostalgia fans. And there's humor in the first
episode, you get to find out how to get rid of an unwanted Nazi who
turns up at a dinner party. Darn those 1930s problems. The coming of
fascism in England eventually becomes a major subplot. Doctor Who
fans will find many familiar names working behind the scenes in this
BBC Wales production including director Euros Lyn. I think the world
is big enough for two dramas set in an aristocratic household. You
aren't likely to mistake one for the other, they are set decades apart,
and both are being co-financed by WGBH's "Masterpiece." I found the
politics and the servant's stories to be the most interesting parts of Upstairs Downstairs so far but there's more to come in the second series due in 2012.
Whistle and I'll Come To You (3/11)
An hour-long adaptation by Neil Cross (Luther)
for the BBC of the M.R. James ghostly story. John Hurt is the only
reason to watch this, he carries the entire production on his back as
an astronomer whose Alzheimer's afflicted wife is in a care home. He
takes a trip to the seaside on the advice of the nurse at the care home
played by Leslie Sharp. Spooky things start occurring at night at the
lonely hotel he is staying at, with someone or someTHING trying to get
into his room. It takes too long to get scary and actors like Sharp
and Sophie Thompson are wasted in tiny roles. Hurt is fantastic as
always, he's the actor who loves to suffer, but I didn't think the
chills developed in Whistle and I'll Come to You overcame the dull parts.
Zen (3/11)
The
detective novels by Michael Dibdin have been adapted by the BBC in this
series starring Rufus Sewell as Aurelio Zen. Apparently he's from
Venice, which is what he says whenever anyone asks about his unusual
last name. As a police detective in Rome who is separated from his
wife and lives with his mother, Zen is thorough but not out of synch
with the slightly dodgy nature of justice in Italy. In the first
story, a mysterious government official wants Zen to get a confessed
murderer off before he embarrasses the powers that be. But Zen's boss
at police headquarters tells him he'd better find the suspect guilty as
charged. Meanwhile, Zen takes an interest in a new secretary at the
station even though she's married and several of his colleagues have
their eyes on her as well. Zen's case takes him to a remote village,
but unknown to him, an old case is coming back to haunt him, with
possibly fatal results. The visual style for Zen
is right out of the 1970s with power zooms and extreme rack focus
shots. But Sewell cuts a good figure, he says he took the part because
he wanted to do something a bit lighter, and there's a harrowing scene
in an underwater cave where Zen nearly drowns. It must have been very
unpleasant to shoot, particularly wearing a full three-piece suit and
soaking wet. The production has the slight twinge of British cultural
superiority hovering over the Italian countryside, with corruption
seemingly inherent everywhere Zen goes. Despite okay ratings, the BBC
declined to commission a second series.
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Written and maintained by Ryan K. Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).
March 27, 2011