If you think the word 'banker' begins with a 'w' and studiously avoid anywhere at the weekend likely to be filled with boozed-up men, this is for you. A bunch of deeply unlikeable characters go on what else but a stag-hunting weekend in the Highlands. The weather is terrible, but turns out to be the least of their troubles when weird things start to happen.
Ian (Jim Howick) is the brother of the bride and odd man out, bullied by the supposed alpha males he may soon see a lot more of. The others' treatment of the mild-mannered man is enough to alienate us, and while reviews have stressed growing sympathy with the staggers, the first episode didn't raise more than a grimace when a man's dismembered legs were found in a clearing. Subtle this isn't, in terms of humour or grotesquerie. There's a link in the imagination between black comedy and sophistication and Reece Shearsmith, here an early casualty, is a master of those with the 'Inside No.9' series written with Steve Pemberton. This doesn't quite hit that high, and in fact often resembles a lame episode of 'Lost' with few redeeming characters. By the end of the hour we couldn't help wishing that whoever is after them would just hurry up and finish them all off for the sake of everyone who knew them.
The past is a foreign country: they made things differently then. The 1971 adaptation by Joseph Losey starred three stalwarts of British cinema in Alan Bates, Edward Fox, and Julie Christie as the luminous Marion. The three instantly-recognisable stars and Losey's distinctive style somewhat swamped the novel's close adherence to Leo, the boy at the centre of the story. Ben Batt, Stephen Campbell-Moore and Joanna Vanderham as farmer Ted Burgess, Viscount Hugh Trimmingham and Marion Maudsley are, while not unknown, easier to accept as people whose lives swim in and out of the focus of a twelve-year-old boy.
This is the third in the short series of 20th Century classics adapted by the BBC and to our minds the most successful so far. It hasn't the controversial baggage of 'Lady Chatterley' nor the stage bound setting of 'An Inspector Calls', just a first line that (unlike the current shenanigans with Hamlet's monologue on the London stage) belongs in the opening scene. Nuanced performances from Lesley Manville as Mrs. Maudsley and Campbell-Moore as the facially scarred Trimmingham keep the novel's fine balance of ambiguity and acuity as young Leo (Jack Hollington) is dropped deep into the maelstrom of adult love, class and propriety, never to be the same again.
Much has been made of the scheduling opposite the opener of the final series of 'Downton Abbey', but they are surely not fighting for the same audience. That's cod roe, and this is caviar.
George Mottisford (Lee Ingleby) is a dispirited veteran of the Great War, living with his parents, wife Lizzie (Liz White) and two daughters in a small terrace and running a grocery shop. He suffers from what would probably now be called PTSD, and survivor guilt at having come through the war that killed his brother Stanley. A chance encounter with his rascal brother-in-law (Ralf Little) leads to him rescuing a parrot and a monkey from the docks and then, in the teeth of opposition from his mother (Anne Reid, splendid as usual), an elderly camel from a circus. Don't try this at home....
This is Hovis-cozy Sunday night drama airing on a Wednesday, for some unfathomable reason. The first episode of six sees George's enthusiasm persuade his wife to agree to stake everything on a bank loan to buy a derelict stately home and turn it into a free-roaming zoo. In time-honoured, TV-drama fashion, George triumphs against the odds and takes the first steps towards making his dream come true, with the slightly baffling support of a posh lady (Sophia Myles) and the interest of the local vicar (Stephen Campbell-Moore). Peter Wight is his amiable dad Albert, rounding out a good cast, and the story is based on the founding of Chester Zoo.
The preview of episode two suggests that George gets off to a shaky start and may have bitten off more than he can chew with the residents of Upton. We know he overcomes it, so no spoilers possible really, and no real tension either. He has an amazingly precocious - for the time - 15-year-old daughter who has already tried to elope with the neighbour's boy, prompting bad CGI of a departing steamer. It's not challenging stuff, then, and its 9pm weekday slot is probably not as good a fit as 8pm Sunday, but we think fans of Anne Reid and cheeky-looking camels will probably find it worthwhile tuning in.
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....
The new 'Spooks'? Well superficially it's similar, with espionage, pretty leads, and pretty spectacular fight and action sequences. It also has similarities with 'Homeland' and 'Ashes to Ashes'. Yes folks, our heroine has issues, and a troubled past. She also survives two potentially fatal gunshot wounds in the first fifteen minutes.
Programmes like this are grist to our mill, fodder to our cannon and sitting ducks to our fairground rifle range. It's surprising that commissioning editors thought this was anything but one whopping TWNH. I admit that the average trainload on the 11.43 from Scunthorpe probably love this (and for Scunthorpe, read Anytown, UK). It's the eternally popular po-faced, we've-only-three-minutes-to-save-the-world combination of violence, sex and unbelievable setups that forms a staple of prime-time TV these days.
Sam (Melissa George) is our first TWNH. In her twenties, smart, adored by men, able to kick ass in a way that would trounce James Bond and fearless enough to swat a gun out of a man's hand without a second thought. She's the smartest operative in a global, upmarket private security firm; the sort that has boardrooms with touchscreen desks and no windows. Likely?
Most of the first episode is about her, pouting like she'd sucked her dummy well into adolescence and had only recently thrown it away. She wants to find out who wanted to kill her and made her lose her baby. It could be her boyfriend, who works alongside her, or did until she went AWOL for a year. Likely?
She's back now and despite her boss looking daggers and spitting trite dialogue at her, she walks straight back into an op. Likely?
Her second honey trap of the episode is the op that will presumably form the main plot of the series. She's given a backstory of bereaved American mother - despite being Australian and playing Sam as English - and thrown literally into the role of saviour of her target's son. Her target happens to be, in turn, the son of a rich gangster and they're all living in paranoid purdah in Regent's Park. Yet, with this one staged rescue act, Sam, aka 'Miss Kent', gets an invitation to live in the hideous house with the Turner crime mob. Likely?
Remember, though, that everyone's grey. Sam and her team are essentially mercenaries, and we're not convinced they're worth caring about. We're set up with all the usual hooks: will she rescue the boy? Fall in love with his father? Discover who set her up? Retire into the sunset with her boyfriend? Kill her boyfriend? Who can she trust? Are her boss and colleagues on the level? Unlikely.
