'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.
Capital is BBC 1's 3-part dramatisation of John Lanchester's credit-crunch novel, set in an affluent Clapham (South London) street. The crux of the book, and the serialisation, is that many different aspects of life can exist in a single street, from wealthy bankers to cornershop owners, from Eastern European builders to African traffic wardens - though the latter works in the street rather than lives there.
A problem with all books like this is that they are prone to using well-worn stereotypes - see also Amanda Craig's Hearts & Minds, and Sebastian Faulks' A Week in December - and this is even more likely to happen on the screen because you don't have the depth of a book, or the luxury of descriptive narrative. On screen, the story unfolds with residents receiving postcards, sometimes photographs of themselves going about their business, with the ominous statement, "We want what you have". What they all have, of-course, from the banker to elderly Petunia (Gemma Jones) who moved in as a bride forty years ago, is prime London real estate where prices are rising virtually by the day. The likes of Petunia, who moved into an unimposing terrace, would no longer be able to afford to move here.
Capital has been updated from 2008 to 2015, because essentially nothing has changed in banking and property prices, which removes the need to try to do 2008 details, but instead concentrate on the story. The other major change is the omission of the African footballer character and his dad - apparently some of the dad's lines have been given to other characters.
We enjoyed it more than we thought we would. Performances are generally very good, although we disagreed about the casting of Toby Jones as the banker. For Dan he was well cast against type (very different from Lance in The Detectorists, for example) and believable as a brainy but essentially lucky and over-privileged banker. It's nowhere near as good as 'Marvellous', Jones's last work with Peter Bowker, but it's good. The banker going broke story has been done lots of times before - for example Sherman McCoy explaining why he's going broke on £2m a year in the 1980s in 'Bonfire of the Vanities', but we liked Jones performance.
We need a great 'house prices' drama, and we need a great 'London as a melting pot' drama, and this was neither, but it's well written and well directed, so we'll stick with it to the end.
If Susan Traherne, the disillusioned heroine of David Hare's 'Plenty' had only spent her war at Bletchley rather than with the SOE, she may have ended up well-adjusted enough to join her namesake (Anna Maxwell Martin) and chums in becoming a cross between Miss Marple and the Famous Five.
This was Ms Maxwell Martin's second TV outing of the week. On Tuesday she was a compromised prison officer in a not entirely believable story from the 'Accused' series. 'The Bletchley Circle' stretched credulity far more. It's 1952 and four plucky lasses who had helped crack codes, and therefore enemy heads, in WWII, are living unsatisfying lives on post-war rations. So they do what any self-respecting ex-Bletchleyites would do and turn private detective. Two of them have useless husbands, while two have jobs, and one has a couple of children, but these are no obstacles for the crime-busting brain-boxes.
Presumably this is ITV's attempt to catch the 'Call the Midwife' audience, with a circle of women in a man's world and a healthy dose of nostalgia. The cosiness is jarred by childbirth, sex and poverty in 'Midwife', and by a serial killer here. Yes, it's another misogynist who also happens to be a necrophiliac. Sounds more CSI than anything by Christie or Blyton. The clothes and hair have a similarly modern slant, with a patina of vintage chic, or drear, depending on the character. This makes for an uncomfortable combination and inevitably the distinctly modern psychological profile approach feels wrong.
And what the hell was the scene with them using lipstick to draw a route on a map? Dan suggests that maybe they didn't have pencils or pens in those days. Ali thinks maybe it's making a point that these right-thinking-but-so-feminine gals would gladly sacrifice an expensive luxury like lipstick to save the world. Or save some women anyway. There's an unfortunate resonance with a recent EC advert to draw young girls into science, which featured sexily-clad lab assistants getting all experimental with the lipstick. It was withdrawn within a day after a high number of complaints.
It's no disrespect to Anna MM, Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling or Sophie Rundle to say that it would take better actors to convince us. We doubt those actors exist. Too gory for Scooby-Doo, too cosily absurd for serious drama (more Rosemary and Thyme than... well, Midsomer Murders). Quel dommage.
