The Casual Vacancy

Rather too much ham?

Having not read any of the Harry Potter books, nor watched the films, we can't say we came to this with eager anticipation.  Rowling seems to have set her sights firmly on the crime genre now with her second outing as Robert Galbraith on the shelves, but between magic and murder came 'The Casual Vacancy', an adult lit fic novel that garnered fairly mixed reviews.

Pagford is a fictional Gloucestershire village... and a metaphor for the seething, grasping, petty bourgeoisie of modern middle-England, according to Rowling.  The first hour (of three) introduced us to the spread of characters from the rich Sweetloves ("My wife does fun runs... well she knows people who do") to young hotpants-wearing Krystal Weedon (Abigail Lawrie) whose big mouth and drug-addicted mother bring her nothing but trouble.  The catalyst for the action is the death of Parish Councillor Barry Fairbrother (Rory Kinnear) who opposed the development of a town spa as "social engineering".  His titular vacancy is now being fought over by the pro and anti-spa lobbies, in a way that will have the Daily Mail frothing about BBC Leftie Dramas and turning over to watch the Good Old Days of the Raj on Channel 4, or possibly the entrepreneurial (if American) spirit of Mr. Selfridge on ITV.

Did we like it?  It had its moments, inevitably with this calibre of cast, but overall its tone was uneven and its characters so stark as to be almost cliche.  No doubt TV producers thought the book was an obvious choice for an adaptation, but the novel is a long one, with plenty of room for nuance, and 180 minutes of television is not going to bring out the best in the material.  We felt bludgeoned by the juxtaposition of soft sandstone exteriors and modern social housing, and an incessant soundtrack.  Extremes exist, of-course, in real villages and towns, so it's quite a feat that this feels so unnatural.  Maybe it's the - it has to be said - Harry Potteresque nature of everyone so far.  The Mollisons (Michael Gambon and Julia McKenzie) are shallow, devious snobs while Fairbrother, whose online identity someone is appropriating (or are they?) to comment on the ongoing Pagford squabbles, was just trying to do the right thing for the locals, and his abused nephews.   We have the comically absurd plotting of the Councillors one minute and a toddler being neglected in a drug den the next.  The problem of being not-quite drama and not-quite comedy is that the social commentary comes across as rather blatant, and black and white worlds tend to make drab grey dramas.

The Escape Artist

Remember that ITV drama by Anthony Horowitz about a brilliant barrister whose world gets turned upside-down?  No, neither do we, really, except a vague memory of it being ludicrously far-fetched.  Here's the BBC version, with Man of the Hour David Tennant as Will Burton, the barrister who has everything (lovely wife, cute kid, conscience, gorgeous home in the city, gorgeous home in the country, undisputed top spot at the Bar etc. etc.) but whose life unravels after he successfully defends a client accused of an horrific and violent murder... and refuses to shake his hand.

There's a never-ending list of cliches: Toby Kebbell's psycho Liam Foyle has turned his house into an aviary and has a nice line in mercurial charm and snarling temper; he turns up at the window on a dark night while Mrs. Burton (Ashley Jensen) is wallowing in a candlelit bath; the judge is almost tangibly anti-Will, but is forced to shelve the case thanks to his prejudice; fellow barrister Maggie Gardner (Sophie Okonedo) is so ambitious it blinds her to the dangers of Mr. Foyle.

It's entertaining enough in a schlocky kind of a way, but undeserving of the talents of its cast.  We're expected to believe that nice barristers visit primary schools to talk about their work and that they are shocked to the core by child crime, violent internet porn and necrophilia.  If lawyers thought the world was a gentle place, they'd be in another job, and if clients took revenge like this one, it'd be a far less popular profession.  Hmm, maybe this drama will have a positive impact after all.

Complicit

David Oyelowo has rejoined the UK Security Services, but much has changed in his absence.  Gone are the gloss, the chumminess and the dashing capers of his 'Spooks' colleagues.  Instead  he's Edward Ekubo, a lone patriot in a distinctly unglamorous office, hampered by bureaucracy, mistrusted by his superiors and less likely to wield a gun than a computer mouse in his endeavours to save the nation.

The 100-minute drama is essentially the tale of his attempts to snare a suspected terrorist, Waleed Ahmed (Arsher Ali), leading him to Cairo and some very murky moral waters indeed.

Like other current C4 dramas 'Utopia' and 'Black Mirror', this depicts a shadowy state, whose motives and methods are at least questionable (the Rimington/Manningham-Buller/'M' clone played menacingly by Monica Dolan says that they would have willingly covered up for Edward's complicity in torture if he hadn't been discovered by a blogger).  Moral dilemmas abound, performances are mesmerising - the confrontation between Waleed and Edward is as tense as the climax of a play - and the British Embassy's Tony Coveney (Stephen Campbell Moore) is the embodiment of a conscientious, constrained and ultimately compromised servant of the state.

Could this be Channel 4's renaissance for intelligent adult drama?  This was subtle and complex, with a convincing script by Guy Hibbert.  The only minor irritation was director Niall McCormick's arty inclusion of constant close-ups of Edward looking worried.  Oyelowo's acting and Hibbert's script have the done the work already, so we don't need to see every furrow on his brow.  This was only a minor quibble, though.

'Complicit' was better than its rivals across the channels, yet it was trounced in the ratings by both 'Ripper Street' and especially by 'Mr Selfridge', arguably in reverse proportion to their merits.  Apropos of moral dilemmas, our faith in majority rule has to falter at this point.... 

Appropriate Adult - conclusion

The second and concluding part of ‘Appropriate Adult’ was (once again) unable to maintain the standard of the opener and in this case it seems to highlight the difficulty of dramatizing factual events and the inevitable blurring of boundaries.  Here would seem to be one retelling that needs to be accurate, not only out of respect to those whose lives have been blighted, but also because invention could add nothing to an already ghoulish chain of events.  Yet we hear that some details were wrong and suspect there are other errors.  Janet Leach’s children were not living with her through the investigation and trial, according to her eldest son, and would she have been allowed so much unsupervised access to Fred West?

What these misgivings give rise to is a general feeling of discomfort.  It was far more obviously Leach’s subjective view of events this time around, and weaker as a result.  She is shown as a naive and needy woman, it’s true, but one who commits perjury by denying that she has sold her story.  That same story is the one adapted here for television, so from the viewers’ perspective she is, by default, a classic unreliable narrator.

We wouldn’t dismiss the idea of creating a drama to explore the criminal, immoral and unacceptable acts of which we are capable, nor would we expect it to provide answers, but if its purpose is to promote questioning and widen understanding around this behaviour and our reactions to it, then this ultimately didn’t achieve its aims.  The impact on the victims’ families and friends, and on the Wests’ own relatives, went unexplored, and we discovered nothing of the background or motivations of either Fred or Rose.  To learn that anyone, i.e. someone who isn’t a sexually deviant serial killer, can form a toxic attachment to someone who is everything they morally reject, is no surprise. 

Appropriate Adult

On hearing that Dominic West was to play serial killer Fred West in an ITV drama, our first reaction was to ask why.  In terms of honing your craft etc. as an actor, serial killers must be good roles to get, with no dearth of talent lining up to play the likes of Crippen and Shipman.  However, with this subject matter there’s obviously a fine line between an informing and provocative drama and one that skews the truth and encourages mere morbid curiosity.  As with all matters of taste and decency, it’s hard to judge where that line should be drawn.  The names of Fred and Rose(mary) West conjure in most of us an almost primeval fear, as much, we would suggest, to do with lurid tabloid headlines and the consistent use of the same, instantly recognisable images, as with their crimes.

With regard to the crimes themselves, the details have been mostly withheld, through respect for the victims’ families and a fear of copycat behaviour that goes at least as far back as ‘On Iniquity’, published in 1967 in response to the trials of Brady and Hindley.  Very few of us are incapable of imagining horrors as terrible as those that happened at Cromwell Street, and as a result the Wests appear as modern bogeymen.  What is harder to imagine is the response of the victims’ families to a dramatisation of what is probably the worst thing ever to happen to them.  How could anyone else presume to suggest that it is good to remember, rather than to forget, or that a dramatic re-enactment will provide any sort of catharsis?  How could it avoid being deeply upsetting?

According to ITV, an early decision was taken not to portray the crimes, but to centre on the investigation, and in particular the appropriate adult of the title, who provides the everyman response to the discoveries.  This largely voids the voyeur argument and doesn’t detract from the shocking nature of these events.  Some viewers may object to the portrayal of Fred as a man with a roguish charm, every inch (or playing?) the yokel as he flirts with and manipulates Janet Leach, evades questions, or describes matter-of-factly how he dismembered his daughter.  Apparently it’s an accurate portrayal.  We're on slightly shakier ground with Ms Leach, who despite her fear and revulsion won't give up the case, and subsequently sold her story to a tabloid for a six-figure sum.

There was also humour in last night’s first half, the sort of gallows humour to be found in crime dramas and also, one suspects, in police stations and prisons all over the country.  “We’re here to search for the remains of your first wife, Fred,” says DC Savage (Sylvestra Le Touzel, compelling as always) as West waxes lyrical on the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside where he has buried her.  Dominic West and Monica Dolan as Fred and Rose are entirely believable, while Emily Watson, rather less mousy and more glamorous than she is playing, nonetheless conveys the bewilderment of someone fresh from training, immersed in a complicated family of her own, and out of her depth with what she must now face.

There will probably never be consensus on fictional depictions of real crimes, with real victims.  We would tend, generally, to prefer documentaries about something so recent and so sensitive.  'Five Daughters', shown early last year, won general acclaim by focusing entirely on the lives of the victims and the subsequent effects on their families, something that doesn't feature at all in 'Appropriate Adult'.  However, what this drama has done is to humanise demons: people who have families, children, homes and jobs, and live superficially innocuous lives are capable of the most extreme, violent, disgusting acts.  Seeing the Wests as something removed, something ‘other’, misplaces a fear which, disturbingly, should be much closer to home.