The A Word

Joe is five, and spends most of his time belting out his dad's favourite music while listening to the songs on his headphones.  He doesn't get invited to his classmates' parties.  His mum and dad reluctantly consult doctors as to whether their son is somewhere on the spectrum of the 'A' word.

We seem to recall a similarly-themed one-off drama on ITV a few years ago with Keeley Hawes and Ben Miles as worried parents of a young boy.  As there, the wider family get involved (the boy's brewer uncle and his adulterous doctor wife, the un-pc granddad played by a surely-too-young Christopher Eccleston) and there's clearly a rocky road ahead.  It's watchable, has great performances and beautiful Cumbrian scenery, but at the moment it feels a little by-numbers and predictable.  It's true we've been spoiled with the likes of the second series of 'Happy Valley' - better than the first - and the upcoming third series of 'Line of Duty', but we're not yet sure what this will have to offer to offer above and beyond another exploration of autism.

The Gamechangers

We must first of all come clean and say that if the target audience for this drama about the Grand Theft Auto controversy are those who have a close relationship with GTA and games generally, then we are not it.  Dan is part-qualified and Ali only vicariously by male friends and relatives.  This, therefore, is a review from a layman's perspective.

It's great that BBC2 are investing in one-off 90-minute dramas, and investing heavily enough to get Daniel Radcliffe and Bill Paxton on board.  It also has a British perspective, as Rockstar, the brainy outfit behind GTA's success, are - or were in 2002 - a group of Englishmen in NYC.  This is basically the tale of a battle of wills between the young game designers, with huge commercial success on their side, and the moral crusader who ended up with very little on his.  Does a game that brings a fantasy of sex and violence in gangland USA influence players to the extent that they think little of extending that casual brutality to their offline lives?  It isn't a question that has been thoroughly answered, so it largely depends on where your sympathies lie.  The fact that most people who play don't gun down their neighbours does not, for many, relieve the responsibility of the game for the few who do.

This followed a pretty predictable route and covered all the usual angles - the thrill of invention and innovation; the fallout, violent and otherwise, on those who immerse themselves in an online world, and the pressure on the home life of the man who very publicly campaigned against the game's licence.  The characters involved were portrayed fairly (as opposed to accurately, on which we can't comment), with as much screen time given to Paxton's unyielding anger and frankly bonkers fellow churchgoers as to the petty squabbles and patronising absurdity of the design team when exploring the mean streets 'for authenticity'.  Luckily - of-course - the threat dissipated when the local lads turned out to be avid fans of GTA, seeing the depiction of their world, with added gloss and gore, not as exploitation but as simple fame.

Despite the modern morality tale and the sympathetically human characters, however, this is rather uninteresting if you're not into games, and on that level it failed to transcend its major drawback in a way that superb dramas - 'Marvellous' with football and 'Longitude' with science spring to mind - need to speak to a mass audience.

The Outcast

Just in case you were tempted towards nostalgia for the era of Miss Marple - even, bless, a juicy murder or three - along comes a handsomely mounted, superbly acted drama that'll have you happy that the past is a foreign country, where things were done very differently.

Based on the novel by Sadie Jones, this is the tale of Lewis Aldridge (George MacKay), who becomes the eponymous outcast after witnessing his beloved mother's accidental drowning as a boy.  We haven't read the novel and thought the scant publicity looked rather liked (whisper it) chick lit, but this was 90 minutes of sensitive storytelling, beginning when Lewis's father Gilbert (Greg Wise) returned from the war a damaged, distant near-stranger.  Unable to share his grief at Elizabeth's (Hattie Morahan) tragic death, he sends his son off to boarding school and remarries.  Young Alice (Jessica Brown-Findlay) tries to become a mother, to her stepson and in her own right, but she fails at both, and by the time Lewis reaches his teens he is in very deep trouble indeed.

Yes, these were the days of sunny bike rides in green pastures, solid furniture, swishy table skirts and smoke-filled jazz clubs in sexy soho, but the same era brought disgusted incomprehension towards self-harm, guilt, loneliness and grief.  There's still a chance that this will turn out to be a very 21st Century take on the 1950s (we've left Lewis sentenced after burning down the local church) but so far this has been a welcome addition to the current rich pickings on British TV, alongside 'Humans', 'Odyssey' and 'The Saboteurs'.

The White Queen

Another Philippa Gregorisation of history, this time the Wars of the Roses.  Lots of pretty costumes, clunky armour, pretty actors and clunky dialogue, not necessarily in that order.  On a scale of the actual past to 'The Tudors', this ranks roughly halfway, so the liberties are a bit more subtle than a late-life Henry VIII played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers clad in something more Calvin Klein than codpiece.

The first hour was a rollicking romance with boy-band-alike Edward IV falling in lust with Lizzie Woodville to the point of proposing to her rather than the politically astute match of a French princess.  That's about it for plot.  There's a lot of the requisite exposition to characters who already know what's going on of the "You do remember he killed your husband, don't you?" variety and some Merlinesque witchery which has Lizzie with second sight, but otherwise it's Sunday night fun with plenty of filth except where it should be, i.e. on the people, whose costumes have clearly enjoyed a non-biological 30 degree wash and a ceramic-plate iron.

The Village

Peter Moffat gave us 'Criminal Justice' (good) and 'Silk' (formulaic soap set in well-trodden ground of legal chambers) so our approach to this was neutral.  Episode one of six - or possibly forty-two, if successful - introduces Bert now, as a very old man, reminiscing about his life in a Derbyshire village.  In 1914 he's a boy of twelve with a violent alcoholic father (John Simm) and a downtrodden mother (Maxine Peake), an older brother about to go to war and his first crush on a suffragist rector's daughter who's just arrived in the village.

'Downton Abbey' it's not, to dispel any notions of 'BBC's answer to...', but it's also not shaping up to be a British version of the German classic, 'Heimat'.  Life in the village is grim for young Bert.  When not getting bullied at home he's getting literally rapped over the knuckles at school, for being left-handed.  His older brother Joe fares little better in his job at the Big House, where he has every class-difference stereotype hurled at his amiable head.  Moffat seems to suffer from the same inability to write convincing upper-class characters as afflicts Mike Leigh.  There is a dinner-table discussion of women's rights that is reminiscent of Poliakoff at his recent worst.  Martha, the new arrival in the village, seems to be everything to everyone, and Bert spies on her in a village bath house which provides a handy gossiping ground for the women.  (Were they only allowed an hour in it per week?  Otherwise, their convergence must be due to female intuition.)

The village goes to war at the end of the episode, so let's hope it continues to not be the BBC's answer to 'Downton Abbey' in war cliches, at least....

Our Girl

Imagine 'Private Benjamin' crossed with 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and you're close.  It's hard to see this as a drama rather than a piece of jingoism for the British Army.  We aren't 'Enders fans but we saw Lacey Turner in 'True Love' and she was good, as she is here, and just as well because this would have been unwatchable otherwise.  She's Molly Dawes, from Stratford (not the one Upon Avon, as she points out), a mouthy member of a clan reminiscent of the Gallaghers on 'Shameless's Chatsworth Estate.  After a particularly unrewarding night out she jettisons her rowdy clan and her smooth-talking conman boyfriend and joins the army.  She finds it hard, especially as she's swiftly identified as the troublesome recruit.  Slowly she adjusts, resolves to make it and... you see where this is going.  No real surprises.  Everyone in the army is essentially comradely and a believer in tough love.  Everyone outside it is a waster or a loser.  Whether or not she gets blown to bits in her subsequent tour out in Afghanistan, it's all been worth it because she's made something of herself.  Cue credits.

Ms Turner, we repeat, is very good - if unstretched -  as are the rest of the cast, but as a recruiting ad for the army it backfires somewhat.  If you're sporty and you like being shouted at all day, plus you like a feeling of belonging (to a family, say, or a cult, either will do...) oh and being shot at, join up now.  Be warned, though, you'll be in company who don't understand terms like 'sorting the wheat from the chaff' and have no idea that there were such things as rats and gas in the WWI trenches.  If that were the real state of the army we'd have been invaded far more recently than 1066.

Hunted

The new 'Spooks'?  Well superficially it's similar, with espionage, pretty leads, and pretty spectacular fight and action sequences.  It also has similarities with 'Homeland' and 'Ashes to Ashes'.  Yes folks, our heroine has issues, and a troubled past.  She also survives two potentially fatal gunshot wounds in the first fifteen minutes.

Programmes like this are grist to our mill, fodder to our cannon and sitting ducks to our fairground rifle range.  It's surprising that commissioning editors thought this was anything but one whopping TWNH.  I admit that the average trainload on the 11.43 from Scunthorpe probably love this (and for Scunthorpe, read Anytown, UK).  It's the eternally popular po-faced, we've-only-three-minutes-to-save-the-world combination of violence, sex and unbelievable setups that forms a staple of prime-time TV these days.

Sam (Melissa George) is our first TWNH.  In her twenties, smart, adored by men, able to kick ass in a way that would trounce James Bond and fearless enough to swat a gun out of a man's hand without a second thought.  She's the smartest operative in a global, upmarket private security firm; the sort that has boardrooms with touchscreen desks and no windows.  Likely?

Most of the first episode is about her, pouting like she'd sucked her dummy well into adolescence and had only recently thrown it away.  She wants to find out who wanted to kill her and made her lose her baby.  It could be her boyfriend, who works alongside her, or did until she went AWOL for a year.  Likely?

She's back now and despite her boss looking daggers and spitting trite dialogue at her, she walks straight back into an op.  Likely?

Her second honey trap of the episode is the op that will presumably form the main plot of the series.  She's given a backstory of bereaved American mother - despite being Australian and playing Sam as English - and thrown literally into the role of saviour of her target's son.  Her target happens to be, in turn, the son of a rich gangster and they're all living in paranoid purdah in Regent's Park.  Yet, with this one staged rescue act, Sam, aka 'Miss Kent', gets an invitation to live in the hideous house with the Turner crime mob.  Likely?

Remember, though, that everyone's grey.  Sam and her team are essentially mercenaries, and we're not convinced they're worth caring about.  We're set up with all the usual hooks: will she rescue the boy?  Fall in love with his father?  Discover who set her up?  Retire into the sunset with her boyfriend?  Kill her boyfriend?  Who can she trust?  Are her boss and colleagues on the level?  Unlikely.

Inside Men

Are cash-counting houses supervised by one person?  And do they take on dodgy staff from the casual labour force?  Stranger things have happened.  These aside, the only other TWNHs we noticed so far are more a matter of sloppy characters rather than sloppy writing: Marcus lights two gas rings for warmth in the middle of the night while wearing just a t-shirt and his partner Gina sleeps with full make-up.  They must be heading for a fall.

A promising start, enlivened by that old staple of a heist gone bloody and then wrenched around 'til you want to trust everyone but can't trust anyone.  The best thing about Basgallop's script is the seamless set-ups of unhappy private circumstances and compromised morals that form the background for most crimes.  Upright John sacks an employee for minor theft but suggests a daring robbery and pauses on the brink of shooting security-guard Chris.  In turn, Chris has given a helping hand to Dita, the thieving employee above, but has he only done so because he finds her attractive?  And he, too, is not above thieving from his employer.  Marcus is the amiable loser who thinks nothing of siphoning funds or even selling plans of the warehouse to the highest bidder.  By the end of the first episode, with another three to go, it looks like the robbery has been planned and executed by these three inside men.

At its heart is a serious and depressing proposition.  Are people well-behaved on principle, from a belief that it is morally right, or from half-baked notions, ideas badly taught and a fear of the consequences of doing otherwise?  Luckily for non-philosophers, it's a gripping drama too.

Prisoners' Wives

First Footballers and now 'Prisoners' Wives', not to mention 'Mistresses', are the subject of TV dramas.  Women are the focus, but it seems strange in the 21st Century that we haven't been treated to 'Policewomen's Husbands'.


Gender commentary aside, this started with Steve (Jonas Armstrong) telling his young, pregnant wife Gemma (Emma Rigby) that he was her 'dream ticket'.  Predictably, it was all of thirty seconds before armed officers burst in, arrested Steve and turned Gemma's dream into a nightmare.


We were taken into prison as a visitor, with Gemma, and the sense of degradation and humiliation at having scans and body searches was palpable.  Less successful is the character of Gemma herself, whose naivety and ignorance of her husband's life fits the 1950s more than the 2010s.  It doesn't seem to occur to her, for a good while, to ask who the victim was and why the police had charged Steve with murder.  She also seems to have no family or friends of her own, just a creepy and socially inept boss.


In stark contrast is Polly Walker's Francesca, wife to drug-dealer Paul (Iain Glen, villain par excellence).  She's knowing, proud and handy with a stopcock.  A red-hot wife and a Tiger Mother, she's already gone some way to yanking Gemma into the real world, after the heavily-pregnant young woman has hauled herself through the window of her mother-in-law's caravan and discovered the gun her husband swore he didn't own.  Why do criminals always keep weapons, money or drugs in biscuit tins on top of cupboards?


Worth sticking with to see the relationships develop between the women, and presumably deteriorate with their partners in prison.  Plea to production companies everywhere: strong drama is quite good enough to do without the signposting songs, which can safely be left to the likes of 'Holby City'.  Ta.

Call the Midwife

We've not read Jennifer Worth's memoirs on which the series is based.  No doubt they're an absorbing social document of a specific time and place (late 1950s, London's East End).  As dramatised by the BBC, think 'Casualty' meets 'Casualty 1900', bumps into 'The Royal', takes a detour through 'District Nurse' and ends up being very close neighbours with all manner of heartwarming post-war grubby England tales.

Is that unfair?  Maybe after one episode it's too early to judge, and the performances and production values are all they should be, but... it's all so familiar: the young newcomer, years of tradition, the agonies and ecstasies of childbirth, the nostalgic look back at a bygone age and even the carefully chosen soundtrack.  Granted, it has been made for the 8pm Sunday slot and it doesn't shirk from showing the less salubrious side of life.  So far it's so-so, but for emotional impact and a recreation of the 1950s without the childbirth, see 'Vera Drake'. 

BBC4

Say it ain't so!  BBC4 under threat?  Someone stop this madness.  Do we need to dumb down further?  The intelligent programmes may be enjoyed by a minority, but isn't the answer to widen interest in challenging output?  We're not talking 1970s OU broadcasts of bearded men in polo-necks chalking symbols on a blackboard (no offence, guys).  This is lively, innovative, joyously un-mainstream stuff, from seasons on childhood through history to docu-dramas of popular icons such as Enid Blyton and Hattie Jacques, to name a few recent examples.  Lets not forget importing the cream of international drama: Mad Men, Spiral, Wallander, The Killing.


The launch of the freeview channels, along with the digital radio stations, seemed like a new age in broadcast media, where increased viewer choice would offer entertainment and education without subscription.  The advent of the iPlayer facility opened things out even further.  It's naive to forget that television is a business and ratings matter.  Nonetheless, the BBC has, so far, managed to fulfill its remit to inform, educate and entertain despite government opposition and enforced cuts.


We want to keep BBC4.  Speak out or lose it forever.