New British TV Show
Reviews
October 3, 2012
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Alan Partridge: Welcome To The
Places Of My Life (10/12)
Steve
Coogan has revived his most popular creation, unctuous chat show host
and radio personality Alan Partridge. First up he did a web series
called "Mid-Morning Matters" with Alan doing his radio show for North
Norfolk Digital, an internet station; and there is talk of an Alan
Partridge movie being made soon. In between Coogan starred in
this
parody of fawning biographical movies for Sky Atlantic which was
credited as being written, directed and produced by Alan. Like all of
Coogan's creations, despite the conceit that Alan had complete creative
control of the documentary, we see him revealed as the little,
frustrated man he is.
Bad Sugar
(10/12)
Sam Bain
and Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show) wrote this one-off parody of family
dramas for Channel 4 with Peter Serafinowicz, Julia Davis, Olivia
Coleman and Sharon Horgan. There's plenty of back stabbing, plot
twists, and great comedic performances, including fake "Previous" and
"Next week on" scenes. Unlike the misfire that A Touch Of
Cloth was
(both went out during the same week), THIS is how you do satire.
Bedlam
(10/12)
The spooky Sky horror series set in a former mental hospital turned
into residential flats (which of course never goes wrong) returns for a
second season with a new "ghost whisperer," Ellie (Lacey Turner)
arriving at the estate and getting involved with all the paranormal
activity. While Warren the manager tries to keep any
mysterious goings on from the tenants (aided by his unctuous deputy Dan
who has a secret past of his own), Ellie is recruited by her flatmate
to help uncover the reason why the undead keep returning to kill people
and what her connection to Bedlam's past is.
Bert and Dickie
(10/12)
BBC
biographical movie about 1948 Olympians Bert Bushell (Matt Smith) and
Richard Burnell (Sam Hoare) who competed for Great Britain in the
double sculls rowing event. Obviously this inspirational true-life
story was meant to encourage Britons in the run-up to the 2012 London
games, which in 1948 were held in slightly more humble circumstances in
post-war austerity Britain. Bert and Dickie famously were
paired up
only weeks before the Olympics and were from very different backgrounds
(Bert had to get permission from his unsympathetic employers to even
compete), yet in that great British tradition (like mounting an
Olympics on virtually no money for a cash-strapped post-war government)
they worked together to achieve the impossible.
The Best of Men
(10/12)
Another
Olympic-inspired true-life drama for the BBC, about the German doctor,
Ludwig Guttmann (Eddie Marsan), who is put in charge of soldiers with
spinal fractures in a military hospital after WWII, and eventually
created the Paralympics featuring disabled people from all across
Britain. Needless to say, it was an uphill battle, first
being
accepted as a German by the soldiers (he was Jewish escapee from the
Nazis), and then the medical establishment who saw the patients as
"broken" and kept them sedated and waited for them to die.
Comedian
Rob Brydon turns in a solid performance as a gruff Welsh corporal who
initially resists Guttmann's efforts but eventually rediscovers his
place in the world even if he is in a wheelchair.
Blackout
(10/12)
Three part
BBC mini-series starring Christopher Eccelston as Daniel Demoys, a
corrupt alcoholic town chancellor in Manchester who may have killed
someone during a drunken blackout after visiting his
mistress. Nearly
disgraced, he accidentally becomes a hero when he jumps in front of an
assassin's bullet, and admitting his alcoholism to the world,
challenges the people to elect him mayor. And they
do! With a nurse
as his sobriety partner, he tries to reform the city but the powers
that be aren't pleased. A subplot concerns his mistress's
husband
(Andrew Scott, Sherlock's Moriarty) as an unpopular police detective
trying to find out who is his wife's lover while having to deal with
corruption in his own department.
The Bletchley Circle
(10/12)
ITV
mystery drama about four women who served as code-breakers during WWII
(at Bletchley) but now it's 1953 and their hush-hush life thwarting the
Nazis is behind them. But a serial killer is stalking women
around
London and only Susan (Anna Maxwell Martin) sees the patterns and
realizes that she can find the killer. But she needs her old comrades
and recruits them back together including Millie (Rachael Stirling),
Jean (Julie Graham) and Lucy (Sophie Rundle). Their husbands
don't
approve of their activities and it's still a secret for them to tell
anyone about what they did during the war. Nevertheless, this
make-shift Scooby Gang begin to find clues and compile evidence
although the killer remains one step ahead of them. A nice
variation
on the police procedural, with women in the forefront and set in a era
that isn't often depicted.
Citizen Kahn
(10/12)
Adril
Ray wrote and stars in this humorous BBC comedy about an aspiring
Pakistani family living in Birmingham. Ray plays the title
character,
a typical sitcom dad whose cheapness and get-ahead-quick attitude
constantly bite him in the ass. He is married and has two
daughters,
the first isn't very clever but is engaged to a young man who is even
dimmer, the second appears to be a devout Muslim but it's just an act
she does in front of her dad; in reality she's a typical British
teenager who is always texting on her phone. A lot of the
action takes
place at Kahn's mosque which, much to his horror, has hired Dave, a
red-haired Englishman convert (Kris Marshall, My Family) as the
manager. As Homer Simpson has proven over 20 years, you can
never get
too tired of watching stupid fathers screwing up on TV, and Citizen Kahn,
though no "Simpsons," is funny by its ability to make Kahn the butt of
the joke every single time.
Dead Boss
(10/12)
Sharon
Horgan co-wrote and stars in this series as Helen, a woman wrongly
accused of murdering her boss and sent to a women's prison run by a
wacky warden (Jennifer Saunders) in this BBC-3 comedy. The
premise
only sustains itself as long as the entire series is populated by dumb,
selfish characters. Don't attempt to apply logic or real-world
situations to anything that happens on screen. Told in a
serialized
format, in addition to prison life we see the machinations at Helen's
old company as her co-workers scramble for power, her easily
intimidated lawyer, and her sister who isn't especially bothered to
work on freeing Helen. A number of big name guest stars turn up
including Caroline Quentin and Miranda Richardson.
Gates (10/12)
Sky1 comedy
about the lives of various parents who wait outside the school gates
each day for the kids to be let out. Tom Ellis (Miranda)
and Joanna
Page (Gavin & Stacey) are the main focus as otherwise normal
parents who go slightly mad trying to keep up with the other crazy
parents.
Hollow Crown
(10/12)
The
best Shakespeare you'll ever see. OK, the best set of
productions
following the Henry cycle (Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part
2, and Henry V) the BBC has ever mounted featuring a stellar cast and
cinema-quality production values. Richard II kicks things off
with Ben
Whishaw (The Hour) as King Richard who eventually loses his throne to
Bolingbroke (Rory Kinnear) in a cast that includes Patrick Stewart,
David Morrissey, David Suchet and Lindsay Duncan. Henry IV stars Tom
Hiddleston (Loki from "The Avengers") as Prince Hal who cavorts night
and day with Falstaff (Simon Russell Beale), and a cast that includes
Alun Armstrong, Julie Walters, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Irons and
Maxine Peake (in a tiny part, in any other other series she'd be the
lead!). When Hal takes over as Henry V we see his famous triumph over
the French at the Battle of Agincourt. These aren't actors shouting at
each other on a stage, when scenes take place in a castle, they're in a
castle, when they're on a beach, it's a beach, and when a battle takes
places, we see hundreds of costumed extras on location and plenty of
blood and gore. A co-production with WNET Thirteen, I would
expect
this will turn up on PBS eventually and I cannot urge you enough to
catch these first-class productions in every way, you won't regret it.
Hunderby
(10/12)
Julia Davis
wrote and stars in this parody of gothic romances on Sky
Atlantic.
Helene (Alexandra Roach) washes up on the beach after a shipwreck and
promptly marries the local parson much to the consternation of his
housemaid Dorothy (Davis). Helene has a secret past but
Dorothy
behaves much as Davis did in her earlier series Nighty Night as a
woman with no shame who will literally do anything to get what she
wants. Whether you want to see this done in the backdrop of a costume
drama is up to you.
Leaving
(10/12)
Helen
McCrory stars in this three-part ITV drama as Julie, an expert wedding
planner at a posh country hotel. She believes so much in marriage that
she mouths the words at every ceremony as she watches another young
couple do their vows. Into her world comes Michael (Sean
Gallagher)
who watches his brother marry his ex-girlfriend at one of Julie's
ceremonies. She's nice to him and he eventually gets a job in
the
catering department to be near her, even though she is 20 years older
and married with children of her own. But she likes the attention
Michael gives her and eventually gives in to her desires.
Scripted by
Tony Marchant, each of the characters are fleshed out including Julie's
hot-headed husband, her kids, and Michael's disapproving
parents. It's
a good meaty party for McCrory who aside from playing baddies on Doctor Who or in the Harry Potter films, was seen recently as Karen
Gillan's nemesis in We'll Take Manhattan.
Line of Duty
(10/12)
Jed
Mercurio wrote and produced this deeply cynical BBC mini-series about
corruption in the Metropolitan Police. DS Steve Arnott is
reassigned
to internal affairs after a botched raid and his new supervisor (Adrian
Dunbar) is keen to bust Tony Gates (Lennie James) a highly decorated
detective chief inspector who runs his own unit. Gates' real
"crime,"
at least in the beginning, is the way he cherry picks cases which have
the most potential of being solved quickly and then loading a lot of
charges on it to pad his arrest record. But he's also having an affair
with a femme fatal (Gina McKee) who turns out to be laundering money
for Russian mobsters which he eventually gets implicated in.
Arnott
tries to sort the good guys from the bad guys, and we see how paperwork
and procedure hamstring the average cops on the beat who get
oh-so-close to breaking the case wide open but never take the final
step that will connect all the dots. And in the end, all this
running
around, deep undercover work and betrayal leads to nothing as we
discover the crime bosses have already gamed the system to their
advantage to remain above the fray and out of jail permanently.
Moone Boy (10/12)
Chris
O'Dowd (The IT Crowd) co-wrote and stars this Sky1 funny, clever
autobiographical series (though not as himself) about growing up in
1980s Ireland as a misfit boy named Martin Moone (David Rawle) with an
imaginary adult friend named Sean Murphy (O'Dowd). Martin
gets into
all sorts of mishaps, and we also get to see the misadventures of his
hapless dad, two older sisters and mum. The second episode focuses on
the first election of Mary Robinson as President of Ireland and his
mum's attempt to raise funds from a local sleezebag (Steve Coogan, who
else?). Standing in front of his doors but dreading knocking,
his mum
tells her friend, "Our granddaughters will thank us," to which her
friend replies, "I had a hysterectomy in 1984."
A Mother's Son
(10/12)
Hermione
Norris (Spooks) plays Rosie whose new marriage to Ben (Martin Clunes)
gets shaky when she suspects her son from her first husband (Paul
McGann) might have committed a ghastly murder of a young
girl. She
obviously wants to believe her son's protestations of innocence but the
evidence continues to mount up in this two-part ITV drama thriller.
Mrs. Biggs
(10/12)
Sheridan
Smith (Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps) gets to take center
stage in this ITV mini-series about the famous Great Train Robbery of
1963. Smith plays Charmian, a proper English girl with a
stern father,
who meets and eventually marries Ronald Biggs (Daniel Mays), a petty
criminal. Her father disowns her but she and Ronald are truly
in love,
even when he gets sent to prison. He promises to go straight after he
gets out and manages to provide for her and start a family. But he gets
involved with a gang, and unbeknownst to Charmian, helps pull off the
train robbery and get away with nearly 18 million pounds.
She's
furious when she finds out, and the police eventually track him down
and convict him. But the story doesn't end there.
Charmian helps
break him out of prison and they change their identities and move
abroad with their two children. Biggs is a notorious
character in
British culture, notably for always being one step ahead of the law,
but it is the clever conceit of this series to focus on his wife and
how it all affected her and what she did to keep her family
together.
Smith, a well-respected musical and stage actress, is very good and
believable as the title character here, playing her over a period of
many years.
Parade's End
(10/12)
This
HBO/BBC mini-series was adapted by Tom Stoppard based on the books by
Ford Madox Ford and stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) as
Christopher Tietjens, a gentleman in pre-WWI British society.
Despite
that pedigree, the whole series left me cold. I couldn't
relate or
care about any of the characters even though it takes place at the same
time period as Downton Abbey including the trenches of WWI.
We're to
believe that Tietjens is so unappealing to women that he ends up
marrying Sylvia (Rebecca Hall) a woman he meets on a train who runs off
with another man, has a son with him, and then he takes her back
despite the scandal. Everyone around him including his wife,
brother,
and most of the friends and colleagues believe the worst lies and
gossip spread about him (mostly from Sylvia's jilted lover) even though
they know Tietjens is the most straight-laced Englishman who ever
lived. Even a chaste relationship with a fresh-scrubbed suffragette
named Valentine (Adelaide Clemens) can't make him interesting (he's far
too proper to ever have an affair with her even though everyone else
already thinks he has). And serving in the war doesn't do
much either,
as he manages to alienate nearly everyone in the British army and get
sent to the front. I'm not sure this is going to appeal to the average
HBO subscriber either, despite the presence of Stephen Graham
("Boardwalk Empire's" Al Capone) as Tietjens' best friend Macmaster who
courts the wife of a mad reverend (Rufus Sewell).
Parents
(10/12)
Silly
domestic sitcom about Jenny (Sally Phillips) who after losing her
high-paying London job for fighting with a co-worker, has to move her
family back to Kettering to live with her parents (Tom Conti and Susie
Blake). Jenny is just too much a dope and a no-talent to get work doing
anything else and the audience must suffer along with her attempts to
move on with her life.
The Revolution Will Be Televised
(10/12)
BBC-3
subversive comedy series by Heydon Prowse and Jolyon Rubinstein that
attempts to deliver political messages among the sketches and pranks
they perform. I'm not sure how many people's opinions would really be
changed by watching such antics, or whether they are just playing to an
audience who already believes what they do.
The Scapegoat
(10/12)
Matthew
Rhys plays two very different men who nevertheless look identical in
this ITV thriller TV Movie set around the time of the
coronation.
John, a school teacher who decides to travel the world, discovers his
counterpart one night in a pub, Johnny. They get drunk
together and
when John wakes up, his clothes and Johnny are gone and everyone thinks
he is Johnny. Taken to a fine manor house he suddenly finds
himself
with an instant family, although things aren't what they seem. Johnny
was a bit of a scoundrel, so John's new attitude and behavior begin to
bewilder his new family. John tries to help his
brother (Daniel Mays)
to save the family business and the many jobs it supports while fending
off the affections of his sister-in-law (Sheridan Smith). But
just as
seems that everything is going well, Johnny returns and means to resume
his life. There is an interesting subtext about the coronation, that
most of the action takes place while England technically did not have a
monarch and was waiting for this untried princess to become Queen and
take over ruling the realm.
The Secret History Of Our
Streets (10/12)
Fascinating
BBC-2 documentary series that showcases how specific streets in London
have evolved from Victorian Times (abetted by pioneering maps by
Charles Booth who documented the streets by income level) to the modern
day. Each episode focuses on a different street and it's
quite a
journey to see how one street can completely change over the span of a
century or more. Interviews with residents as well as
archival footage
and photographs help illustrate places that no longer exist.
Sinbad (10/12)
From the
producers of Primeval, this Sky1 action series begins in medieval
Basra with young Sinbad (Elliot Knight) and his brother as street
scammers who run afoul of Lord Akbari (Naveen Andrews, "Lost") when
Sinbad accidentally kills his son in a fight. Akbari kills
Sinbad's
brother in revenge and Sinbad is cursed by his grandmother (he can't
spend more than 24 hours on land or he'll be strangled by a magic
amulet) and forced to flee on a ship. After a storm at sea,
he and the
survivors become a ethnically mixed crew on board and have adventures
with plenty of magic and monsters thrown in. Akbari joins
forces with
a sorceress (Orla Brady) to bring Sinbad back to him so he can seek his
revenge. It's refreshing to see a series without a typical
Western
actor in the lead parts, in fact one has to assume that most of the
characters are Muslims, something you don't see everyday on
TV. Aimed
at the family audience, it delivers the action with slick production
values while delivering enough drama to keep the adults interested as
well.
Toast of London
(10/12)
Channel
4 pilot co-written by Arthur Matthews (Father Ted) about Steven Toast
(Matt Berry, The IT Crowd), a pretentious actor who must deal with
his incompetent agent and rivals in his social life. One of
the
running gags is the show Steven is currently appearing in is so
scandalous that the name is bleeped every time someone says it (the
title of the episode is "The Unspeakable Play") and this extends to a
gag at the end when he is forced to race through protesters to get to
the stage only to be pixilated as soon as he begins
performing. Enough
gags and familiar faces (including Robert Bathurst and Tracy-Ann
Oberman) are thrown at the screen that I'd like to see this return as a
regular series.
A Touch of Cloth
(10/12)
Charlie
Brooker (Dead Set) wrote this parody of ITV crime dramas that manages
to cast legitimately serious actors (John Hannah, Suranne Jones, Julian
Rhind-Tutt, Raquel Cassidy) in a goofy spoof. And while those
ITV
shows are surely deserving of such treatment (but don't call me
Shirley) , this kind of anything-for-a-joke treatment was done first,
and better, in the "Naked Gun" series (and "Police Squad," its
source).
True Love
(10/12)
A series of five quasi-related 30 minute stories of relationships all
set in the same seaside town in this BBC anthology series. In the first
David Tennant plays a happily married man whose old flame comes back to
town. In the second, Ashley Walters has an affair with a con woman that
nearly destroys his marriage. The third story has Billie
Piper as a school teacher who has a lesbian relationship with one of
her students (ironically the story with most happy ending). The fourth
is about the friendship a married woman (Jane Horrocks) has with an
immigrant (Alexander Siddig) much to the chagrin of her husband
(Charlie Creed Miles). The final story has David Morrissey as a single
father who meets a Chinese woman online who comes to visit just as one
of his daughter's friends develops an unhealthy crush on him.
Walking & Talking
(10/12)
Based on the Little Crackers short a few years ago, this
autobiographical comedy series on Sky is written by and based on the
real life exploits of Kathy Burke when she was a music fanatic teenager
growing up in Islington (she describes herself as, "a punk, new wave,
suedehead, skinhead sort of thing.") The title comes from the
fact a lot of the action takes place as Kath and her best mate walk
home from school discussing their lives. It also cuts to the
seemingly unconnected lives of two nuns (Kathy Burke and Sean
Gallagher) on fag breaks at their parochial school. The look
of the series is great, it appears to have been shot in 1979 with faded
colors like a film print from that era.
Whatever Happened To Harry Hill?
(10/12)
A great spoof documentary (written by the actor and presenter) about
his great 1990s Channel 4 Harry Hill Show that purports to reveal the
scandals and secrets behind that classic series. Of course it's just an
excuse to reunite the cast and show a lot of great clips, Hill
evidently not wanting to toot his own horn without simultaneously
sending it up.
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Written and maintained by Ryan K. Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).
October 3, 2012