Life in Squares

We are probably not the best judges of this 3-part offering from BBC2, since Dan is reluctant to watch anything that neither makes him laugh nor worry in any way and Ali tends to feel suicidal even thinking about Virginia Woolf.  But we tried.

'Life in Squares' is a biopic about the bohemian lives of the so-called Bloomsbury Set, a  group of early 20th Century artists and writers whose illustrious members included the above-mentioned author of 'Orlando' et al (here played by Lydia Leonard), her sister Vanessa Bell (Phoebe Fox) and husband Clive (Sam Hoare), Lytton Strachey (Ed Birch), John Maynard Keynes (Edmund Kinglsey) and EM Forster.  No doubt they were a lively lot, but this managed to be mannered and turgid despite the numerous sex scenes with various combinations of lovers.  Part of the problem, we suppose, is that it represents a fast set from a much slower age.  What would have shocked and/or excited their contemporaries in pre-WWI England is mundane a century later, and other than a rather staid aunt (Eleanor Bron) there is no real context to show what the friends were rebelling against.  Corsets and marriage were the rather heavy-handed symbols of conformity that the Stephen sisters rejected, at least in part, and the script was hampered by references to everyone by name and their relationship to everyone else, so that we wouldn't confuse two men with, for example, similar moustaches.

By the end of the hour we left the Bells exploring an open marriage and the promiscuous Duncan Grant (James Norton) switching his affections from Strachey to Keynes, strangely interspersed with a scene of the older set (still painting and chatting in a garden) in the 1930s.  It painted a picture of gilded and indulgent types who daubed everything in sight in lurid colours, yet still managed to be miserable.  We think assertions that this will cause a flood of tourists in Bloomsbury a la Poldark in Cornwall are premature.

Wolf Hall

The superlatives came thick and fast even before broadcast.  Is this the most eagerly anticipated BBC drama in years?  All the augurs were good: two Booker-winning novels, a long hit run of a two-night play at the Globe and in the West End, and not forgetting much-loved predecessors covering similar territory ('The Six Wives of Henry VIII' etc.).  Hype, however, is a double-edged sword, and the transformation of over a thousand pages of close, nuanced text into a compelling televisual feast was always going to be a challenge.

On the evidence of the first episode, fans of 'The Tudors' will be sorely disappointed.  Other than the necessary bursts of tedious exposition ("The Emperor's men have taken the Pope!  That's Queen Katherine's nephew and he'll never let the Pope grant a divorce!") this panders hardly at all to an audience in search of Henry-lite storytelling.  The costumes do not flatter, the dialogue retains the sour wit of the original prose and Cromwell himself, though reconfigured from villainy, is too elusive to be a hero.

Broadly speaking, this follows the chronology of the novels, a teasing, pleasing structure that takes small hops forward and back like a courtly dance.  We accompany Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), son of a blacksmith, with a murky, violent past on his journey through the often sad, always brutal rise and fall of Anne Boleyn (Claire Foy).  Rylance, for anyone who has yet to be convinced, is wonderful, his expression and demeanour conveying in stillness or mobility the man Cromwell, aware he is engaged in dangerous manoeuverings and beset by men who kill easily, take confession and eat with a hearty appetite afterwards.

It is, to be slightly pedantic, a bit clean.  Floors are swept, draperies untouched by dust or grease, even in Cromwell's middling home.  It's forgiveable though, when the sound is audible, the music unobtrusive and the filming in appropriate light such as fire and candlelight gives beautiful shade and depth to the scenes.  This isn't history, it is Mantel's re-imagination of a man's life in Tudor England.  We know relatively little about the figure with the steely gaze in Holbein's portrait, but this telling surely does him proud.

The Escape Artist

Remember that ITV drama by Anthony Horowitz about a brilliant barrister whose world gets turned upside-down?  No, neither do we, really, except a vague memory of it being ludicrously far-fetched.  Here's the BBC version, with Man of the Hour David Tennant as Will Burton, the barrister who has everything (lovely wife, cute kid, conscience, gorgeous home in the city, gorgeous home in the country, undisputed top spot at the Bar etc. etc.) but whose life unravels after he successfully defends a client accused of an horrific and violent murder... and refuses to shake his hand.

There's a never-ending list of cliches: Toby Kebbell's psycho Liam Foyle has turned his house into an aviary and has a nice line in mercurial charm and snarling temper; he turns up at the window on a dark night while Mrs. Burton (Ashley Jensen) is wallowing in a candlelit bath; the judge is almost tangibly anti-Will, but is forced to shelve the case thanks to his prejudice; fellow barrister Maggie Gardner (Sophie Okonedo) is so ambitious it blinds her to the dangers of Mr. Foyle.

It's entertaining enough in a schlocky kind of a way, but undeserving of the talents of its cast.  We're expected to believe that nice barristers visit primary schools to talk about their work and that they are shocked to the core by child crime, violent internet porn and necrophilia.  If lawyers thought the world was a gentle place, they'd be in another job, and if clients took revenge like this one, it'd be a far less popular profession.  Hmm, maybe this drama will have a positive impact after all.

Spies of Warsaw

It never ceases to amaze us how much great literature is turned into mediocre television, and vice versa.  Alan Furst's novels are a good read, but some things rarely change: the setting is usually WWII, the hero a jaded but moral Frenchman who is involved in dangerous espionage and abandons his womanising for a true love....  David Tennant doesn't spring to mind, not least because he looks too young to be Jean-Francois Mercier, and because the image of him as a springy Dr Who won't leave us alone.  Nor do Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais spring to mind as the writers to adapt this for the screen, given their biggest successes have been in comedies like Porridge, Lovejoy and Auf Wiedersehen Pet.  The music, too, veers oddly between classic war-spy-story menacing piano to suspiciously 50s sounding freeform jazz.

But somehow it works.  It looks good, it sounds good, it feels scary and sad, as Europe on the brink of an abyss must have done (hmmm, not so far removed from 2013 then).  Familiar faces give reliable performances (Anton Lesser is a shoe-in for a drama imagining Hitler as an elderly man), Janet Montgomery is a sweet-faced heroine and David Tennant is the actor from 'Hamlet' and not the one from 'True Love'.  Worth a watch.  Concluding part on 16th Jan.

The Scapegoat

Last night I dreamed I watched 'The Scapegoat' again... and woke up hoping that, should my double exist, I never meet her.  A little later than planned, we watched this one-off drama, based on a lesser-known work by Daphne du Maurier.  To get around the 1952 story showing its age, this is a sort of Jubilee tribute, set in the Coronation year and drawing parallels between the Queen who was never meant to be, and the usurper John Standing who makes a better fist of his double's life than the real Johnny Spence (both Matthew Rhys).

The Prince and Pauper storyline is a familiar one from fiction (Man in the Iron Mask) and partially in fact (the Titchborne Claimant) and is yet another programme badly trailed.  Instead of a lurid thriller, this was an old-fashioned story and while the premise is implausible, Sturridge and his cast have fashioned a decent drama from du Maurier's book.

The ending hints at its being an oblique metaphor for the abdication crisis having a happy outcome.  Even the pet goldfish is called Mrs Simpson, and dies, to be buried in a matchbox in the garden.  Which is probably a kinder slant than interpreting the moral more directly implied by a close-up of John/Johnny's eyes in the final frame: if you're doing a better job than the real thing, but the real thing wants their role back, it's allowable to dispose of them.  Hmmm.

The Man Who Crossed Hitler

Based on true events from 1931 when a lawyer, Hans Litten, forced Adolf Hitler into a courtroom.  The lawyer was a liberal, left-leaning, even, and Jewish.  The only possible TWNHs could be in the minute details of production, or of character portrayal.  We're not familiar enough with either to recognise any.  The familiarity of the story, though, is all the more shocking and uplifting for being true: man of integrity defies rising tyrant, achieves the only likely victory - a moral one - and pays the likely penalty of losing his life.  An intelligent script, good performances (playing Hitler must be only slightly less trying than really holding his views) and a great argument for supporting single dramas.  We'd studied modern history and not come across Mr Litten, a man with the courage of his convictions in an age of overblown icons and moral abdication.