TV This Week
My previews from Saturday's Times (part 2).
I’ve been watching TV for The Times again this week and while some recommendations have already gone out, most things are available on catch-up, so please enjoy my return to the type of writing that was my entry into journalism - the capsule TV review. I love doing them.
It includes a second consecutive recommendation for The Power of Parker, that most unlikely of things, a BBC One sitcom that manages broad appeal with proper jokes and engrossing plots. If Rosie Cavaliero says yes to it, you know it’s probably going to be good. That’s my rule of thumb.
Also, I particularly enjoyed writing up The Reunion, one of the most demented things to have made it to TV since Greg Wallace tried to pull off Brass Eye on that thing about human meat products.
Except I don’t think the makers of The Reunion intended it to be funny. It stars Ioan Gruffudd as a miserable-faced author who…no I can’t. Just read the preview below. Absolute scenes on the French Riviera.
Saturday 5 August 2023
Elizabeth II: Making a Monarch, Channel 4, 6.15pm
Much has been said already about the royal progress of this country’s longest-serving monarch. But has it been said by Angela Rippon? Something about the continuity of her beautifully-spoken narration makes this an incredibly soothing watch as well as an interesting one. Her pronunciation of the word “illustrate” is something you’ll replay and possibly make your new ringtone. But how best to present a series of still photographs depicting the early life of a posh child? It all begins with the first paparazzi picture in 1926, shot through the window of 17 Bruton Street where the baby who was never meant to be Queen was spied through the net curtains in the arms of her grandmother. She was the first British crowned head to be born in a townhouse. “They were ordinary people,” says historian Professor Kate Williams as we watch footage of Elizabeth playing in a two-thirds sized playhouse with working kitchen gifted to her by the children of Wales. “Very rich ordinary people,” adds Professor Williams. Various royal-regarders and experts don white gloves to thumb through Getty Images’ archive, remarking on the small details of her life. Giles Brandreth describes the teenage Elizabeth as being “surrounded by men in uniform” which eventually led to her meeting Prince Phillip. Photographer Arthur Edwards talks about being star-struck in the presence of this “tiny lady” and how well he remembers her Commonwealth speech from South Africa as a 21-year-old princess. What this production manages to do with a limited set of black and white photos is quite something. Next week, Elizabeth transitions to the kind of coin/stamp fame no one dreams of.
The Queens That Changed the World, Channel 4, 7.15pm
First in a new series exploring history’s most powerful women, beginning with Elizabeth I. After the deaths of siblings Edward and Mary, Elizabeth inherited a divided England. Her approach to heretics was far more reasonable than her dad’s: she let Catholics worship discreetly rather than setting fire to them. Having calmed the waters at home, she sent her navy to explore new lands until she needed them back to see off the Spanish interlopers. Her list of steadfast leadership achievements is of course always eclipsed by the fact “she never married”. But what can you do?
Tony Bennett night, BBC2, from 9pm
A night in tribute to the great singer who died in July. We begin with concert footage from his 2011 London Palladium show in celebration of his 85th birthday. Next, a 1996 episode of Arena in which the great man takes us on a tour of New York, bumping into David Hockney and Elvis Costello along the way. A brace of shows feature his selections from his own song book and the jazz greats including Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. And if you can stay up past midnight, it’s all topped off with an intimate 2008 performance from LSO St Luke’s in London.
Clean Sweep, BBC4, 9pm/9.50pm
Housewife Shelly (the brilliant Charlene McKenna from Ripper Street and Bloodlands) is spinning a lot of plates as this Northern Irish thriller continues. While her husband’s off chasing promotion to Detective Inspector, she’s cooking meals, herding kids and managing the advancing puberty of two of them. All while remembering the beers for Kevin’s barbecue and covering up the murder she committed at a local hotel. With her husband assigned the very same murder to solve, it’s not easy juggling your secret criminal past with your respectable present. True crime story or metaphor for adult womanhood? It works as both.
Monday 7th August 2023
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, Sky Atlantic/Now, 9pm
Last series, we left the team celebrating their 1980 NBA title win and we’re straight back to Los Angeles in 1980 as they bask in their success and the managers get around the table to talk strategy. But this is LA so the tables are by pools surrounded by half-naked women. Magic Johnson’s (Quincy Isaiah) lawyers extricate him from a tricky paternity situation in order to save his big money endorsements while ESPN vies for NBA coverage rights, the dollar signs popping in the corneas of the major players as they sink their steak and martinis. If you don’t know basketball, it might as well be Line of Duty for all the use of jargon and fast-talking bravado. But Winning Time is also a thing of televisual beauty, transporting you back to the aesthetic overload of the 1980s, assaulting your eyes with a thick orange and brown soup that saturates every shot. The embodiment of eighties excess, Lakers owner Jerry Buss (John C Reilly) decides to “sew up our starters” and pay big bucks to the best players to stop them from straying. The many-stranded narrative keeps at its forefront the tension between commerce and talent, sport becoming entertainment and athleticism a valuable asset. The white men meet to plot strategy, moving the young, black players around the board like commodities. When head coach Paul Westhead (Jason Segel) references Othello, it’s on the nose but not exactly inaccurate. Quincy Isaiah’s Magic Johnson steals the whole episode with one sentence, nicely underlying the star power of the man he's playing.
A Cotswold Farm Shop, Channel 4, 8pm
This new doc series goes behind the scenes at Gloucester Services on the M5. A sustainable delight nestled under turfy hillocks by the side of the road, it’s equal only to its sister services, Tebay on the M6, for the quality of the locally grown produce. Languorous drone shots of the countryside punctuate pleasant interviews with suppliers and sated customers. You can practically hear the camera crew sighing and wiping crumbs from their jumpers. Enthusiastic buyer Jane is the star; a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Barney the Dinosaur, her mind is blown by everything, constantly.
Wolf, BBC1, 9pm
Third part of the queasy thriller based on Mo Hader’s Jack Caffrey novels. Tortured hero DI Caffrey (Ukweli Roach) never got over his brother’s abduction and murder. Meanwhile, wealthy couple Mathilda (Juliet Stephenson) and Oliver (Owen Teale) have been taken hostage in an horrific side plot not unlike Michael Hanneke’s Funny Games. If Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) and The Master from Dr Who (Sacha Dhawan) turn up at your door in neatly-pressed suits saying they’re the police, do not let them in. Continues tomorrow night and concludes next Monday and Tuesday. There will be blood.
The Child Snatcher: Manhunt, Channel 5, 9pm
A two-part documentary charting one of the UK’s largest murder investigations. When young girls started to go missing in early 80s Northern Ireland, no one connected them to the same perpetrator. The individual investigations relied on antiquated methods with computer tech and pin-point forensics still years away from introduction. But the combined work of several police forces began to close the net on a killer who is heard here in recorded interviews. As popular culture begins to tell these true crime stories with more sensitivity, let’s hope it becomes less and less acceptable to centre a violent killer in this way.
Remarkable Places to Eat, More4, 9pm
Fred Sirieix hosts this food travelogue in which a different weekly guest introduces him to their favourite gastronomic region. Tonight, Dermot O’Leary demonstrates his extensive knowledge of Puglia and its local produce. Most of all, he digs the “cucina povera” or “kitchen of the poor” food, simple ingredients, minimal intervention. They begin in Gallipoli to sample the raw sea food platter. “I love to stick my tongue in things but I’m a bit afraid of the pricks,” grins Fred as he hovers a sea urchin near his chops. Dermot’s more matey approach happily waters down the Frenchman’s attempts to flirt with everything.
Friday 11the August 2023
The Reunion, ITV1, 9pm/10pm
First streamed on ITVX in January, this 6-part adaptation of Guillaime Musso’s The Girl and the Night, shows in two-hour chunks on ITV. It’s a strategy that worked for outstanding detective drama, Karen Pirie, but here it becomes cruel and unusual torture. It’s built on a wobbly conceit: that someone involved in “something terrible” 25 years ago would return to the scene of the crime. Successful author Thomas (a permanently grim-faced Ioann Gruffudd) makes the trip to Antibes for a school reunion, tortured by memories of his lost love, Vinca, who disappeared 25 years before. On the Riviera, he meets a young woman who is the spitting image of her and then things go really bananas. Marston Bloom’s adaptation spells everything out in case your attention wanders. “Vinca’s seeing someone else. It’s the creepy philosophy teacher,” snarls young Thomas. Back in the present day, Vinca’s doppelganger tells our bewildered anti-hero, “She was snuffed out by the patriarchy, but her spirit will never die.” It could go down as a cult classic, albeit accidentally. The mysterious Vinca is more conduit than character, so French and wildly unpredictable with her vivid hair and sexual openness, it was only a matter of time before some mishap befell her. Still, as long as the brooding hero has someone to obsess over. Most distracting of all is the casting. Gruffud plays the child of Rupert Graves and Dirvla Kirwin, two actors very much contemporary to him. Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “playing age”. The whole thing’s on glue, but you might enjoy it.
Yuja Wang Plays Rachmaninov at the Proms, BBC4, 7pm
The celebrated pianist Yuja Wang returns to the Royal Albert Hall to get her digits around Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, conducted by Klaus Mäkelä. The two dazzled the prom crowd last year, achieving power couple status with the synergy of their electric pairing , so it’s shaping up to be another barn-stormer. Breathless from this musical coitus, the audience will be treated to baritone Thomas Hampson backed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, in a stirring rendition of William Walton’s epic cantata, Belshazzar’s Feast. If you listen carefully afterwards, you’ll hear the sound of a thousand cigarettes being lit.
Fast Track to Glory - Our Lives, BBC1, 7.30pm
“The reality is that not everybody thinks that a woman’s place is in motorsport,” says 29-year-old Formula 3 hopeful, Isla Mackenzie. By day she holds Lewis Hamilton’s life in her hands as a parts tester for Mercedes’ Formula 1 team, and in every other spare minute she is training for her dream of becoming a professional driver. The “no worries if not” attitude bread into much of the female population takes a back seat when she is behind the wheel and she enjoys the idea that she can be “quite ruthless” when she’s bombing around a track at 130mph. Devotion like this should yield great rewards.
The Power of Parker, BBC1, 9.30pm
Sian Gibson and Paul Coleman’s enjoyable 90s comedy ramps up the drama as Martin (Conleth Hill) finds himself drowning in debt and unaware that the warring women in his life are calling a truce. Diane (Rosie Cavaliero) and Kath (Gibson) follow Martin to a basement club and end up chewing their own faces off to happy house. It’s the small moments that give this such pleasing texture, like the car chase that can’t get going because of the seatbelt lock. The craft in the writing combined with some shameless musical nostalgia – Inspiral Carpets and Teardrop Explodes tonight – make this a real Gen X treat.