Stonemouth

We're beginning to think the BBC are saving us the trouble of reading Iain Banks's books.  Admittedly there's been a big gap between 'The Crow Road' in 1996 and this, his penultimate novel before his untimely death in 2013.  However, there are similarities strong enough to stir memories across the intervening years.  A cheeky-chappy average Scots lad, here played by Christian Cooke, returns to the small town where he grew up for the funeral of someone he loved, and suspects foul play.  There's also a love interest, who is ever-so-perfect, and a more suitable and human girl lurking nearby.  It's not bad, but it feels like Banks' point is that men never mature mentally beyond their teens.  The less charitable opinion is that Banks himself didn't move beyond this one narrative, and maybe just wrote well enough to enchant readers regardless.  On television, it's not an advert for 'Visit Scotland', on the plus side, but more of an extended 'Taggart' episode with a voice-over.  Has there ever been a drama that has been improved by a narrative voice?  

Top of the Lake

Jane Campion's six-part series for television makes it UK debut on BBC2.  Set in New Zealand's beautiful South Island, detective Robin (Elizabeth Moss, spreading her wings from 'Mad Men's Peggy and the London stage) returns from Sydney to visit her ailing mother and is drawn into the strange life of young girl Tui (Jacqueline Joe), twelve and pregnant, and by the end of the episode missing.  Fellow American, and Campion veteran Holly Hunter, appears as GJ, a spiritual guru for troubled women who sets up camp in some shipping containers on a site known as Paradise.  Tui's wayward father Matt (Peter Mullan, whom we could watch forever and a day) has staked a claim on the same land, and is so narked with the land agent that he takes cruel revenge.

Gripping so far, with the only odd note the stupidly neurotic women who form Holly Hunter's tribe.  It's been described as similar in tone to 'Twin Peaks' but happily there are no dream sequences, dwarves etc. so far.

The Fear

We liked and liked a lot.  Strange scheduling over four consecutive nights, but at least sensibly post-watershed considering the violence, sex and swearing.

It started with a cliched premise: old gangster losing his grip, Albanians who can trump his violence, sons who are loose canon, a wife he's emotionally estranged from, a guilty secret from the past.  It did what good drama should do, though, and engaged with a good script, fine performances and enough interesting plot developments to keep viewers hooked.

We know Brighton, and the seriously strange twists of fate that have befallen the West Pier, so this had extra appeal.  It also meant, though, that the shootout in the streets was a little TWNH.  No-one would say there's no serious crime in Brighton - Graham Greene and a long line of news reports put paid to that - but a Chicago-style gun-fest?  After all the bodies, all connected with Richie (Peter Mullan) and his family, you'd have thought that the police would be a little more interested in his home, family and business, rather than just turning up and asking the odd question, but these are minor detractions from a stylish gangster thriller that has family sorrow and the consequences of moral poverty at its heart.