Banished

Considering how few dramas are set in penal colonies, compared to, say, cop and doc shows, this felt unsettlingly familiar.  Convict James Freeman (Russell Tovey) sticks up for Anne Meredith (Orla Brady) when a nasty blacksmith steals her food.  Being a classic bully, the blacksmith promptly returns the woman's food and takes Freeman's, delivering a brutal assault as he does so, and sneering that Freeman will never eat again.  No-one helps out the hungry man, not even his friend Tommy Barrett (Julian Rhind-Tutt), who has trouble of his own in the form of Elizabeth Quinn (MyAnna Buring).  She has been caught paying him a nocturnal visit and when she refuses to name her lover, is given 25 lashes.  The lovers wish to marry but have living spouses back in England, and when Barrett refuses to live without her it looks like tragedy will ensue.

Timberlake Wertenbaker got there first, and crafted a curious, lyrical and often brutal tale of unfortunates shipped off to a barren land as punishment.  This is very much McGovern's take on proceedings, and while he's an old hand at old lags, he's had most success with contemporary tales, and his decorously begrimed actors betray their well-fed 21st Century origins with almost every line.  As you'd expect, the main characters are noble, have honour, feel love, and fight a gutsy battle with tyranny and their straightened circumstances.  Barrett even claims he is innocent.  Meanwhile the soldiers and the clergy protect the blacksmith because they need his tools; the soldiers use the women prisoners for sex with impunity, and state that a dead convict is just one less mouth to feed, that scum and whores shouldn't breed etc.

It's entertaining enough, but has found a strange berth at BBC2.  The first of seven episodes had a histrionic climax and a sudden happy ending, leading us to think that the remaining six will tackle a familiar issue each week: rebellion, disease, pregnancy, unlikely friendships, the ever-present threat of death.  No doubt McGovern has done his research, and there are contemporary accounts to supplement any histories with authentic voices, but to his viewers the past is less a foreign country than an all-too-familiar landscape.

Dylan Thomas: a poet in New York

Tom Hollander is a genius.  He bears no more than a passing resemblance to poet Dylan Thomas, and to most viewers is more familiar in a dog collar as 'Rev', but within fifteen minutes is utterly convincing and, more, sympathetic as the gifted, spoiled, self-pitying alcoholic.  This takes his Big Apple trip in 1953 which proves to be his last, and interweaves just enough of his prime moments in life to give a real sense of the intense feelings that drove him to sublime heights of verse and terrible lows at the bottom of several bottles.  When it comes to drink and women, he just can't seem to help himself, and his fame and charm give him abundant access to both, much to the anger of his wife in Laugharne, Caitlin, and his mistress in New York.  This recreates early '50s NY on probably a fraction of 'Mad Men's budget and while some of the accents stray eastwards of the Atlantic and even of Wales, this remains a beguiling 80 minutes, and a fitting tribute to a flawed, fabulously gifted man who died at only 39.

Page Eight

A spy story!  The murky world of government!  The machinations of the shady and the powerful!  Yes, here we go again, and clearly Mr Hare's actor friends bombarded his phone line(s) to be in it. Can we believe that the British PM would collude with American agents of torture?  Sadly yes, we can, and we're unable to throw a TWNH at it.


You can count cliches: jazz-loving hero is unlikely magnet for women, has estranged daughter and ruthless (female) colleague; deceased honourable man who knew too much etc.  You can recall countless other dramas with similar themes ('Defence of the Realm' was made around a quarter of a century ago and remains depressingly pertinent).  What made this so watchable was David Hare's dialogue: sharp, lyrical, revealing the difficult mix of cynicism and hope that dogs Worricker, and presumably Hare.  It's the cry of someone who wants a better world, where honour and loyalty have meaning, although as Rollo, an undercover agent, points out, nothing has changed: the world is still run by the same people, and they are Worricker's own class.  Unlike his fellows, he will not adapt, chameleon-like, with the times.


"It's the 21st Century....  Why do people keep saying that, as though it justifies everything?"  I paraphrase, but it's a timely reminder that it isn't only spies who don't know whom to trust.