The Driver

What we expected from the first hour of this three-parter was a set-up episode, perhaps with a hook-in 'chaos' opener to set the scene before flashing back to the main story some hours/days/months/years before.  We got what we expected, and, it must be said, quite a bit more besides

 It wasn't a wordy script, so maybe it was just the top calibre acting from Morrissey and Hart, in particular, that made us care about the taxi driver struggling to make a living and dealing with gobby kids, a staid marriage, and stultifying middle age; we even cared about his longtime, ex-con mate.  There wasn't anything particularly unexpected here, but we felt the allure of easy money in the face of dealing with his vile passengers (and their bodily excretions) and his growing horror at being confronted with what he'd previously refused to countenance: complicity in some very dark goings on.

There were moments of subtle humour in there too, which is rare (think 'Breaking Bad') and even more incredibly there were no glaringly obvious TWNH scenes where we just wanted to scoff knowingly and say that no-one in their right mind would do X or Y.

Bring on episodes two and three: the best thing so far this autumn.

The 7.39

Written by 'One Day's David Nicholls, this is unsurprisingly a story of romance blossoming, in this case between two commuters.  (Those with a daily commute who spend it giving thanks that they're not spliced or sharing a shower with any of the great unwashed elbowers sitting anywhere near them may find this a bit hard to swallow.)

Sally (Sheridan Smith) and Carl (David Morrissey) have comfortable lives but are mildly dissatisfied, a fact that they face when they start a friendship on the 7.39 and find themselves attracted to each other.  Sally is engaged to sweet-but-gormless Ryan (Sean Maguire) while Carl is happily married to Maggie (Olivia Colman) with two teenaged children.  Sally works in admin at a leisure centre while Carl has a middle-management marketing job with a boss who puts David Brent in the shade.  It isn't hard to identify with both their frustrations and their guilt at their frustrations.  What grates is the unlikely emptiness of the trains, streets, gym etc. and the frustratringly out-of-whack geography and yes, even trains, for anyone who knows London and commuting.  Would Sally's job pay enough to justify an hour-long commute each way?  Then there's an agonisingly cliched moment where they lurch into each other on a train and another where they skirt around sharing a hotel room during a train strike.

The episode ends when they are about to sleep together "just once to clear the air".  Oh please.  This can only end in tears, but it's hard to care whether they're the Brief Encounter tears of denial, or the tears of ruining their other relationships.

True Love

'Mad Men' is the honourable exception to our Sky avoidance.  Or more accurately, it's the only thing non-terrestrial and non-freeview that we bother to tune in for or tape.  Hence the recent silence, since it's the only channel featuring anything that hasn't been shown 58 times already.  With the summer lull upon us, the schedules are full of cheap stuff, like dud Jubilee coverage and Olympics promos.  We were hoping for a pleasant diversion in bite-sized chunks, set in the faded, tawdry splendour of Margate.  The trailer promised much, not least a starry cast, and on this at least it's delivered.

Admittedly, we are only one down with four still to go, but on the strength of the first story, featuring David Tennant, Joanne Froggatt and Vicky McClure, it's going to be a struggle.  Hurrah for scriptwriters.  Hurrah for Mike Leigh for coaxing decent dialogue via workshopping and improvisation.  Either would have been welcome here, but instead we got actors with rabbit-in-headlights expressions, obviously uncomfortable at being given banal storylines and having to come up with lines on the spot.  Needless to say, they conveyed love by saying "I love you" and "I love you too", and on unexpectedly bumping into an old acquaintance they say, "Well this is..." and "Yeah, yeah, it's...yeah."  It was like watching well-known actors appearing in something like TOWIE.  What's worse, the advance publicity suggests that the next four episodes will be essentially the same story (person either bereft or in relationship fancies alternative) with slightly tweaked scenarios.  Sad to say, but there were also some likely TWNH moments: would Serena really fly over from Canada to look up old flame Nick, rather than attempting, initially, to find and friend him on Facebook?  Would Nick be so hung up on her that he jumps straight into an affair that he hides from his wife but no-one else?  Would said wife be so quick to forgive him?

Good on the actors for being game, and all that, and good old Margate for being a better backdrop than most would credit, but slight stories and even slighter lines make an extremely underwhelming watch.

The Field of Blood *spoilers*

Monday's conclusion, unsurprisingly, didn't quite live up to last week's opener.  Like comic book heroines before her, Paddy only had one hour to save the world... well, solve the crime.  She did so admirably, but we're not sure the end justified the means.  Most of the hour was spent with her running around annoying her seniors (cliche #1), being told she was unattractive (TWNH), being told she was beautiful by colleague who wanted to sleep with her (cliche #2), putting herself in dangerous situations without telling anyone (cliche #3) and having her out-of-line a*se saved by colleague who was terminally ill (cliche #4).

With all of the above happening, it wasn't easy to work out what had happened and why.  Paddy's young cousin Calum had apparently killed little Brian because he was forced to by a disturbed lad (Danny?) who had previously killed his own half-brother... I think.  The scene in the prison, where Calum tells Paddy and his father what happened, hits all the right notes but nonetheless leaves us wondering if a child would commit such an abhorrent act - there is no suggestion that he was willing to comply - on the threatening say-so of a teenager, and then fail to crumple under pressure from his family, police, social workers etc. to tell all.  Paddy accuses the 'real' killer of trying to make Calum just like him, which seems a slim motive, unless we're once again at tellyland's catch-all motive of 'they did it because they're mad'.

And whoever killed Paddy's colleague Heather Allen (Danny or his devoted grocer dad Naismith), couldn't have thought she was Paddy, despite her using Heather's name, because they'd both met Paddy and she looked nothing like her.  It may have been dark and she may not have had her splendid 80s bouffant blonde hair on show, but... wouldn't you check you had the right victim before you bagged and bludgeoned them?  We kept being told that Heather was gorgeous and slim, while the shorter Paddy was the 'fat tart', so seemingly men don't look at the mantelpiece when they're smothering the fire, either....


As far as Paddy is concerned, a little less would be a lot more.  The story focused on her to the detriment of the central, horrific act of child murder.  We haven't read the book, so we can't say if this takes its lead from the original, but issues like marriage versus career and the demands of Catholicism on its followers are touched on but not fully explored, so why not background them and get on with the story?  We also take back the wish for more of the supporting cast.  David Morrissey got to give Paddy her dream job (cliche #5) and Peter Capaldi recited poetry in a drunken drawl that was barely understandable and very maudlin.


Would we watch more?  In an optimistic mood, maybe.

The Field of Blood

Based on a novel by Denise Mina, a belated showing of this Scottish production, and in the late slot post-ten o’clock news.  The nine o’clock crowd would presumably be outraged at the depiction of early-80s Glasgow in all its sexist, racist and generally un-pc glory.  Sort of ‘Life on Mars’ north of the border, with added bite.  Direct references to her weight and her sex life glance off young Paddy Meehan like everyday banter rather than have her calling for a tribunal.  Not, we must make clear, that Jayd Johnson, playing Paddy, is in the least overweight.  No, she is fat only in the televisual sense, i.e. not at all and you pick up that she’s meant to be only by characters making constant reference to it.  Ms Johnson is likeable and ably supported by the likes of Peter Capaldi, David Morrissey, Bronagh Gallagher (loved her at the RC last week) and Jonas Armstrong.

The plot so far is simple: Paddy’s young cousin is suspected of killing a toddler, in a case redolent of James Bulger.  Paddy recognises the suspect and confides in a journalist colleague, who then writes up the story, thereby rendering Paddy persona non grata among her own family.  Here is the only TWNH, since they don’t ask Paddy to explain, nor give her a chance to.  To clear her name, as well as her cousin’s, and also to establish herself as a journalist rather than ‘copy boy’, she sets out to find the real killer, using the name of her perfidious colleague.  

So far, so good.  Interesting soundtrack avoiding the obvious 80s tracks, and a real feel of a dingy, post-industrial but pre-make-over Glasgow.  We're hoping for a decent conclusion next week, with a bit more of the supporting cast, please!