So this is Britain's answer to 'Mad Men'? In that case we really are a fifth-rate, insignificant island off the corner of Europe. Dan and I are not among those who think that MM is the best thing ever to have hit the screens, but it's pretty darned good, mostly, and in comparison to this it's searingly brilliant. Lest anyone be confused here, this has only a kitsch title sequence and coiffed hair in common with Draper and co. In every other sense, this is more akin to that pinnacle of UK prime-time, 'The Royal': smarmy surgeons, doe-eyed nurses, neurotic wives and a Best of the 60s soundtrack. The saucy doctor's sideline in illegal abortions feels borrowed from 'Call the Midwife', and the presence of Davenport, Little, Parish and Glen merely reminds you how good they can be elsewhere.
It doesn't score highly on the factual front either. Nurses in the 1960s weren't allowed out of hospital grounds in uniform, but 'Breathless' has them kitted out at home and in public. Is this a budget restriction or lazy research? It may seem a small point, but it's easy enough to ask any veteran nurse and we need look no further for one of the causes of those 'inexplicable' infections on the wards.
If Britain had an answer to the Madison Avenue antics of Sterling Cooper (Draper Pryce...) it was shaping up to be 'The Hour'. If this goes on beyond one series, we'll be Breathless... with indignation.
The first of three feature-length episodes, based on a series of novels about ex-Gard, now private detective, Jack Taylor (Iain Glen). Think 'Single-Handed' with a sozzled, grizzled version of Jack (they're both called Jack!) and you're close. Both are set in and around Galway and Connemara and involve a lone man seeking the truth and justice for the missing and murdered in an area haunted by a long and violent past. The present's not that great either, post-economic crisis.
That's it, really. It's nothing you haven't seen before, and aside from some quips the script is unremarkable either way. Casting, however, is crucial. Iain Glen is so watchable as Jack, a character who seems simultaneously at ease with yet wholly estranged from himself, that your ears will willingly block out the moments when his Irish accent goes south, or rather south-east.
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.
