Churchill's Secret

'Elderly man isn't all that well' isn't really a revelation, but when the man in question is Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Michael Gambon), symbol of British Bull-doggedness in WWII, the news is not to be bandied about.  Loyal members of his cabinet want the PM's stroke kept under wraps, lest there's an unseemly scramble for power in the absence of both Churchill and likely successor Anthony Eden (Alex Jennings), who was having gall bladder surgery abroad.  Mrs. Churchill, the redoubtable-in-her-own-right Clementine (Lindsay Duncan), wants Winston away from the temptations of Westminster and brings him back home to the Kent countryside home of Chartwell.  To nurse him, they contract Nurse Millie Appleyard (Romola Garai) but their peace is short-lived when the in-fighting Tories - plus ca change! - and the equally quarrelsome younger Churchills flock to Winston's bedside.

One of those 'rather nice' dramas that will go down well in America, this is a bit of a curio.  The storyline runs in a similar way to 'The Madness of George III': statesman brought low, struggles of his family and the succession, slow recovery, lessons learned etc.  It's beautifully filmed, some of it at Chartwell itself, now a National Trust gem, and is directed solidly by Charles Sturridge.  Overall though, it's rather a byway in the great man's life, and not that one that really altered the course of his remaining decade or so.  The addition of a fictional character to nurse him, who of-course happens to be from a Labour family, seems an unnecessary addition to proceedings, and merely a cypher in whom Clemmie can confide about the grief of losing her young daughter Marigold some thirty years earlier.  Things only really spring to life when the children arrive and, facing their father's death, are candid about the drawbacks of growing up with parents who were almost always otherwise engaged.

The Last Kingdom

'Sharpe' author Bernard Cornwell penned a Saxon saga which is now billed as the BBC's answer to 'Game of Thrones'.  We're not GoT fans, but it's a misleading comparison.  This is the historical rather than the fantasy genre, though we're making no claims as to historical accuracy (remember those electric guitars accompanying Sean Bean to Waterloo?).

Anyway, the Danes, in their incarnation as Vikings in the 9th Century, invade a Saxon coastal fort in Northumbria and take young Uhtred captive, having slaughtered his father and brother.  Uhtred is brought up a Dane, but never forgets who he is, and won't relinquish his birthright to his scheming uncle Aelfric (Joseph Millson).

That's kind of it, minus a great deal of sword-waving, blood-letting and a rather disturbing scene of childhood sexual assault.  It's the usual tale of warrior honour - Christian and Pagan - with a dash of romance beloved of Cornwell readers and we've no doubt viewers will love it too.  Alexander Dreymon has the kind of pretty-boy looks that won Orlando Bloom a following, i.e. he doesn't look much like a Saxon or a Dane, but a few million will doubtless follow his trek to the titular last English kingdom of Wessex over the next seven episodes.

The Enfield Haunting

Readers of Guy Lyon Playfair's book, 'This House is Haunted', may be surprised at the number of liberties taken with the text in this dramatisation.  Not content with unexplained activity that may be a poltergeist, this has young Janet Hodgson (Eleanor Worthington Cox, with just the right mix of wide-eyed innocence and sassy retorts) literally haunted by a nasty-looking old ghost (Struan Rodger!) who, when he deigns to speak via a medium (Amanda Lawrence) reveals himself as a paedophile.  No wonder the name of the 'entity' or 'voice' was changed from former resident Bill Wilkins to a fictitious 'Joe Watson'.  We get the presumed message about paedophiles being the new demons/bogeymen, but it feels here like a ham-fisted and unnecessary add-on.  Wouldn't it be terrifying enough to have endless knocking, ambulant furniture and an aggressive force in your house?

Suspected hauntings in reality don't lend themselves to drama - the supernatural by definition is nothing if not unpredictable and inconsistent - so it's an odd choice to dramatise for TV in an era when the audience is thoroughly jaded with cheap thrills and has no patience with a slow build of tension.  Timothy Spall plays Maurice Grosse, an SPR investigator still grieving the loss of his daughter, also called Janet, the previous year.  In 1977, Grosse was called by the SPR and assigned to the case of the single-parent Hodgson family, suffering knocks, moving objects and other strange phenomena in their modest home in Enfield.  The activities seemed to centre on Janet, the younger daughter, who was soon to reach both secondary school and the menarch, and while Grosse, Guy Playfair (Matthew Macfadyen), journalists, neighbours, police, a medium and other SPR members witnessed or experienced things, they also realised that the children were, at least some of the time, guilty of mischief.

The tone of the drama follows that of the book, in portraying this as one of the most inexplicable series of events ever recorded, and well recorded it was, despite the mysterious power drains and corruption of media that, we hear, are frequent occurrences in similar investigations.  It isn't relevant to draw conclusions from a drama, of-course, but we can't help but think that this isn't going to convince sceptics that something repeatedly went bump in the night in Enfield.  By using the same cinematic tricks used in countless horror films, it appears more like a tall story than the perplexing and troubling case that it was.  

Spooks *spoilers*

We try, but we haven’t the time or the stamina to watch everything, nor to stick to things that no longer surprise and/or please.  Ali was the last to leave, in this case, but she didn’t even see out Adam’s tenure, so this was a trip down memory lane purely for the love of the blog.

‘Spooks’ began in the wake of 9/11 as an exciting, plot-driven series for a whole new, paranoid world.  MI5 had never looked so good nor had it had so many eager recruits.  The writing was strong, the humour was weak, and the latter was what wore us out.  Just how many hours of po-faced tension can one stand?  Browsing the internet for a crash course in what we’d missed, we’ve sort of plugged the gaps: Ros, Jo, Lucas and the ever-rising star Ruth.  Harry still frowning on proceedings.  All set for the last ever series.


Deja vu is a double-edged sword.  Harry!  Ruth!  Offices with acres of glass and screens!  We could go on.  In fact, we can't resist it: Russians!  CIA chiefs!  Fat-cat diplomats!  Lines like, "Now is the time to make our move"!  Explosions!  And all in the first twenty minutes.  It's like eating a tub of what used to be your favourite ice-cream and remembering that you stopped eating it because the last time it made you sick.


Which isn't to deny that what 'Spooks' does, it does well.  It's well-paced, slick and involving.  The rest of the cast could be anyone.  Simon Russell Beale (forever Powell's Widmerpool), Lara Pulver, Max Brown et al have taken up the mantles of Robert Glenister, Tim McInnerny, Keeley Hawes, Hermione Norris, Matthew Macfadyen, David Oyelowo, Rupert Penry Jones and Richard Armitage.  The list reads like several seasons of impressive rep casts at Stratford, playing the same parts.  After nine previous series, there would have to be bona fide vampires and aliens to surprise the audience, so finality is probably a good move.  (As an irregular viewer, Ali was still able to predict Erin's motherhood and Harry's fatherhood.)


Meanwhile... Harry goes into a library - not just any old library, an old-fashioned romantic one (the London Library?).  He's followed by at least two people and he knows it.  He pulls a folded note from the spine of a book.  The ragged handwriting reads, "We have to meet.  Tourmaline is in danger.  Sharecropper."  It's the sort of spy caper to have you wriggling on your cushions and chewing the wasabi popcorn.  And never mind those elegant little Bond shooters, these guns are huge.   What's not to love?