Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) buys a synth in a sale and calls her Anita (Gemma Chan). Synths are synthetic humans, aka androids, who serve their employers in whatever way they wish. Sounds great? It goes without saying that things aren't quite what they seem. A quick flashback to only a few weeks earlier reveals that 'Anita' was one of a handful of renegade synths who were led by human Leo (Colin Morgan) to freedom, before being recaptured. These particular products were given 'singularity', i.e. consciousness. Oops. Joe's wife Laura (Katherine Parkinson, who won our sympathy in 'The Honourable Woman') is suspicious of the sleekly perfect new presence in their lives, whose responses are just a little too pat for her liking. Meanwhile Dr. Millican (William Hurt) turns down super-synth Vera (Rebecca Front) in order to hang onto to a malfunctioning model he's possibly become fond of... or who just knows too much, while a policeman (Neil Maskell) is hunting that same older model for causing a disturbance, and a synthetic prostitute is developing very negative feelings indeed.
So far (one of eight) it's familiar SF ground, well covered by classics like 'Blade Runner' and 'Terminator'... and not-quite-such-classics as 'I, Robot'. Advance blurb described this as a cross between 'Black Mirror' and a treatise on the nature of consciousness, and that describes it pretty well. It's good enough to cover the human interest angles well, though, and the story is building nicely. If the inherent silliness of pretending that the currently impossible is reality deters you, then this probably isn't going to be your bag, but so far this is high-end SF nonsense.
Sunday nights on UK TV this summer are clearly all about jam: ITV serves it up cosily with the trials of the village WI amidst spitfires and sandbags; C4 brings a humanoid who can't stop telling you that your favourite flavour is apricot....
There must be some correlation between a society's sophistication and its obsession with deviance and were we to look, probably a few hundred PhD theses filed away on the subject. In the wake of the recent 'Mrs. Biggs' comes 'The Great Train Robbery' about the antics of Buster, Biggs and the rest of the criminal gang in 1963. (Not to be confused with the 19th Century attempt on a train that was turned into a novel and then a rather camp film by Michael Crichton in the 1970s, nor the 1903 Western.) Not that it isn't an interesting tale, but the endless fascination induces the same queasiness as those other much-dramatised mid-20th Century cases, the Kray twins and Lord Lucan. Somehow the violence becomes a by-product.
Does this new production avoid that trap? Not entirely. For every shot of sweaty men in dingy rooms in vests, there's a scene of the all-male gang in balaclavas and bowler hats; while they may have spent much time in greasy spoons, what's depicted is a nightclub scene with the gang as erstwhile Goodfellas, and while we're on comparisons, the stylised title sequence bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the late, lamented 'The Hour,
The based-on-truth story is almost undeserving of the script and cast, with Luke Evans as gang leader Reynolds and Neil Maskell as Buster Edwards fleshing out the moral ambiguity and Jack Roth unnerving as Charlie Wilson.
"Mickey Mouse!" spits Buster at a bewildered ex-train driver who asks his name, "and the pleasure's all yours." This 90 minutes (of 180) was the criminals' tale, astonishingly aptly broadcast on the day when the real Ronnie Biggs breathed his last. It was entertainingly tense, despite the outcome being known, presumably, by the majority of the audience. There was no attempt to give the Reynolds gang hearts of gold or good intentions, but the line about not taking guns rings hollow in the wake of the train driver's fate. These were men who took pride in their criminal 'careers', prepared to use violence to get rich without honest work and, far from meticulously planning to the last detail, they left too much to chance to get away with it. In the days of DNA and other advanced forensic evidence, they'd have been lucky to get to Reigate, let alone Rio.
Maybe that's a more palatable explanation for Britain's fascination with them: from the Gunpowder Plot to the Dunkerque evacuation, it's not exactly victories we seem to love to celebrate, but near-misses.
This review is later than planned because 'Run' is stripped across four consecutive nights on Channel 4 at 10pm, which is after all what recording devices are for, no? I suppose watching it live is wonderful for anyone whose memory is more like a goldfish than an elephant, but for many of us it's just impossible. So there, TV schedulers.
Anyway, to the drama itself. Olivia Colman is the estranged partner of an abusive man and the mother of two troubled and troublesome teenaged sons. She lives on an estate with walkways and underpasses and works in a dead-end job. It might be 'Shameless' without the laughs except that the family dynamics and the plot take some very dark turns indeed. Less shameless than unflinching, and a very believable exploration of lives behind cases on the news and in court. It's not an enjoyable watch, or a comfortable one, with our put-upon mum smoking like the proverbial chimney and drinking tins of cheap lager every five minutes, but the writing is raw, and Colman's performance is one of her finest. You want good things to happen, even while you know they are unlikely. Roll on eps. 2-4. Parliament should be made to watch before ever again uttering words about Broken Britain and cuts as though they knew what that means for millions.
Update, having watched the remaining episodes. They didn't disappoint, so a big hello to the two writers, from whom we hope to have more. And we liked Lennie James before but now we love him. We defy anyone who has a heart not to have it wrung out by his rehab dad, even if they hate drugs and love their cars - can't say more without spoilers. Fabulous.
