The Eichmann Show

A 90-minute BBC2 drama to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, this concerns the televising of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, author of the 'final solution' which murdered up to 6 million, mostly Jewish, citizens considered undesirable by the Nazi state.  Eichmann had escaped at the end of the war and was only captured by Mossad and Shin Bet agents in Argentina in 1960, where he'd been living under the name of Ricardo Klement.  From there he was taken to Israel for trial in Jerusalem.

The decision to televise the trial, as this amply illustrates, wasn't taken lightly.  It was new technology and couldn't even be transmitted live, but was flown overseas in boxed reels for transmission in America and Europe.  The trial judges feared the cameras would be intrusive and distracting and weren't keen, forcing the technical team to build extra walls and ingenious hiding places for the cumbersome equipment.  Death threats were received by producer Milton Fruchtman (Martin Freeman) and his family, while for Leo Hurwitz (Anthony LaPaglia) this was yet another bump in a career path that had already seen him blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee under Senator McCarthy.

For something with so much drama, however, this was rather flat viewing.  It seems to ask all the right questions: was there disproportionate significance in the trial of one man for genocide?  Was Israel the right nation to try him?  Would televising the trial lead to distortions in the chase for ratings (given that Yuri Gagarin was wandering in space and the Bay of Pigs was the scene of an invasion)?  Yet perhaps the distortions are here, in the numerous false alarms that scare Fruchtman and the tense and horrified faces of those watching and listening to the witnesses.  This is not to deny the significance of the trial, or its communication to a worldwide audience, but in the wake of the camps' liberation and the testimonies in the Nuremberg courts, this would have been adding detail to known history, some sixteen and more years after the events in question.  Now, when trials are frequently broadcast live or nearly so, it is a big leap of the imagination to comprehend what this meant to the average viewer.

It is also difficult, now as then, to consider the difficulties of televising the trial as anything other than a 'first world problem' alongside Eichmann's crimes and what they stood for.  Sidelights can be interesting, but treacherous for drama, as in the recent 'Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies' which focused on the unpleasant experiences of a man accused of a horrible crime.  What was difficult for him was far worse not only for the victim, Joanna Yeates but, one imagines, for her family and friends too.  'The Eichmann Show' is well structured, with the production team questioning what the trial means for them and being reassured by the reaction of survivors who finally feel believed and understood, but the most powerful scenes, unsurprisingly, remain the archive footage from the camps.  For us, while well meant, this didn't quite bridge the gap between a worthy documentary and thrilling drama.

That Day We Sang

It sometimes seems that all films are made for teenagers - certainly the big box office ones are - but there's a growing counter-trend of producing stories for older audiences, as seen by releases such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and also TV shows like Last Tango in Halifax, and now That Day We Sang.

Scheduled over Christmas, it was one of those dramas where people occasionally break into song and dance routines.  We're not going to be uncharitable enough to say that that would never happen, and we enjoyed this rather tall tale of love among the 40 & 50-somethings.  Set in both the 1930s and the 1960s, it followed the life of gifted singer Jimmy (later Tubby) Baker, as he sang in Manchester's Youth Choir, and their greatest achievement, 'That Day We Sang' at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.

Clearly realism wasn't at the top of Victoria Wood's priorities when she wrote it, but she got good performances and real chemistry out of the two leads Michael Ball as Tubby and Imelda Staunton as Enid (great to see a love story where the woman is older than the man too!).  Harvey Chaisty, who played the young Jimmy was also very good, even if he doesn't bear much resemblance to Michael Ball (which might explain why Enid doesn't recognize him for almost the entire film...).

It seems to have been very well received on IMDB (8.3 rating at time of writing) and by the senior members of the family.  It's probably easy for determined cynics to mock, but a successful production for post-Christmas Day viewing.

Cilla

Surprise, Surprise!  Sheridan Smith continues her single-handed take-over of feisty working-class females in TV biopics.  Here she is as Priscilla White, better known to the public as Cilla Black, in this three-parter on ITV.  Classy cast all round with Ed Stoppard as manager Brian Epstein - who also managed that little-known moptop foursome The Beatles - and Aneurin Barnard as the love of her life Bobby Willis.  (Quite why they cast a raven-haired actor to play blonde Bobby is beyond us.  Maybe Mr. Barnard has a thing for strange hairstyles after his Richard III portrayal.  'Tis a relief that Edward Scissorhands is already made.)

Anyway, Jeff Pope's screenplay is solid enough and while the scally-speak is sometimes hard to fathom (is this because we're not au fait with Scouse or because the actors are heading hither and yon from Liverpool?  We can't comment.) it has all the scenes you'd expect.  Sheridan Smith acts her socks off again, and with that and some belting rock'n'roll numbers, it's a lorra lorra fun (sorry Cill).

Tommy Cooper: Not Like That, Like This

We approached Tommy Cooper with a feeling of dread.  It seems to be both a star vehicle for, and a pet project of, David Threlfall (in a false nose), and at two hours on a Bank Holiday Monday a bit of a vanity project.

As it turns out it was far better than it had a right to be.  Tommy Cooper's story isn't that well known - arguably he isn't that well known himself these days - and the story we were given of a love triangle over 15 years, tolerated by both the mistress, Cooper's wife, and the mistress's husband was very good.    In this respect it was a bit like the BBC's Hattie from 2008, where Hattie herself was in the love triangle, and her husband John Le Mesurier had to put up with it. 

As with Hattie, and all of the other films of this type (The Curse of Steptoe, Eric & Ernie) one major pitfall is how bad the performances of the supporting cast as other dead celebrities are, and how crass it is when they're introduced, given that the actors are rarely spitting images of who they're playing.  Tommy Cooper managed to avoid this by and large, with good performances by Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe, and Paul Ritter as Eric Sykes, and even Jordan Metcalfe as Les Dennis, but there were a couple of dodgy bits when they were introduced: 

Cooper walks into a bar: "Hello Eric, Hello Eric!"
Barman: "Alright Tommy.  What are you having, Mr Morecambe?  Mr Sykes?"

Overall though, the script by Simon Nye was very good, matched by the performances of Threlfall, Amanda Redman as his wife, Helen McCrory as the mistress, and Gregor Fisher as his agent.  So good in fact that it made you understand why they would put up with a miserly alcoholic who was always late.

The problem with dramas like this is that you always wonder if they'd have been better off filling the schedules with a documentary instead - I doubt a drama about Mel Smith could be as good as the tribute to him shown over Christmas for example - but in this case the acting and the writing dragged it through. 

We'll Take Manhattan

David who?  Jean who?  For anyone who draws a blank whenever the Sixties are mentioned, Swinging or otherwise, this features a few introductory lines.  Apparently, the NYC shoot of the Shrimp by Bailey in 1962 began youth culture and broke down class barriers.  Err... really?  What about young Harry Webb crooning about being a Young One in 1959?  As far as we know, he wasn't titled at the time.

Well, we can forgive them overstating the case, since without some trumpeting you might wonder what material there was to fill a 90-minute drama.  You might wonder that anyway.  A piece featuring icons is always hamstrung by the obvious, namely the familiar features being unfamiliarly rendered by actors who are often known for other roles.  Thus Amy Pond - oops! - Karen Gillan, imitates the luminous Jean Shrimpton by staring a lot and wearing her headscarves well.  Nice legs, as they say, shame about the face, which though pretty, is not similar to Ms Shrimpton's.  Aneurin Barnard as Bailey sports a full-on, cheeky-chappy oik persona.  Maybe the real Bailey was/is such a character (he and Jean Shrimpton are said to have been consulted), but he comes across here as a young Arthur Daley.

The best performance, and probably the most thankless role, has Helen McCrory as Lady Rendlesham.  According to this, she's so conservative and stuck in the past, it's a wonder she's managed to keep Vogue going at all.  We get no sense of why, in a rapidly-changing world, something like fashion, which would typically drive such change, would be so against trying something new.

Biopics can work, a recent example being the Morecambe and Wise one, 'Eric and Ernie', but it had a good script by Victoria Wood and fine performances, particularly from a little-known Daniel Rigby.  BBC4 has hit on a formula for dramatizing 20th Century people and events, but with something so visual as its subject, Barnard's Mockney, Gillan's bland, rather vacant good looks and a clumsily on-the-nose script distract fatally from the sheer ebullience and style of the original Bailey and Shrimpton collaboration.  For once, all the interesting stuff was going on in front of the camera (the romance being of most interest to the couple themselves) and so the best way of appreciating the shots and their impact is just to look.

Jean Shrimpton in New York, 1962, by David Bailey

*Happy to donate for this shot.  Dolls' Hospital, Shelter or Save the Children.

Inspector George Gently

AKA Gently Round the Bend.  Never was viewer in search of guilty pleasure so confused.  Martin Shaw?  Check.  Lee Ingleby?  Check.  Geordie accents?  Check.  Beehives, mini-skirts and kohl-rimmed eyes?  Check check check!  Just as we thought it was safe, up pops craggy-faced Sean Gilder to the unmistakeable strains of quavery-voiced angst used similarly in 'The Shadow Line'.  Then, as if one puzzle isn't enough, there's a 60s anthem, followed by another, and then another at regular intervals, providing aural backdrop to the neat 60s cars.  Ah, so this is 'Heartbeat'!  Or...

By the end of the 90-minute episode, we'd worked it out: 'Gently' has turned into a prime example of television's plat du jour.  Here's our version of the recipe:

• Cops!  Between two and four, usually two; one older, one younger (other examples:- Lewis; Scott & Bailey)
• Kitsch historical setting.  N.B. anachronisms no object.  'Gently' served up a Geordie housewife at an evening yoga class in 1966.  Hmm.  (Heartbeat, The Royal, Born and Bred, The Hour, Downton Abbey etc. etc.)
• Kitsch geographical setting.  (Heartbeat, Ballykissangel, Doc Martin...)
• 'Quavering-voiced angst' soundtrack (The Shadow Line, Wallander)
• Cliche!  A plot involving deviant sexuality of some kind (too many examples to mention)
• TWNHs!  They knew the facial cuts were fresh despite the face having been eaten away?  The teenager was such a natural in the TV audience that she was made host of the show?  The friend named the wrong colour of dress worn by the above teenager, thereby proving she hadn't turned up "til much later"... but when she had turned up, presumably she'd have been wearing something??

Stir thoroughly for up to 90 minutes, but don't worry too much if the mixture doesn't achieve a decent consistency.  For extra flavour add seasoned actors, et voila!  A dish that can be served up time and again.