Marcella

Marcella (with a hard 'ch' rather than a soft 's' sound), is a murder squad detective who has taken a long career break to raise her children, but now finds herself abandoned by her husband and compelled back to work on her old unsolved case of - what else - a serial killer.  Anna Friel has a serious line in angsty, gutsy ladies and she gives it her all here.  Every modern detective needs a quirk, it seems, and Marcella's is that she loses her temper and blacks out.  Not a great trait for a cop, we think, but then the team behind this were responsible for 'The Bridge.  The autism spectrum was used to great effect in the character of Saga, and in today's supposedly touchy-feely police force, that's an equally unlikely asset for a detective. 

It's nasty and not particularly new, but may shape up, and if Ms Friel's particular brand of angsty, gutsy character makes you reach for the remote, there is a more than decent supporting cast to distract you.

Odyssey

Ms. Friel again, playing here a modern plucky gal rather than a 1940s lipsticked one in 'The Saboteurs'.  This time she's American, and the security of western democracy is in her hands.  Or something.  A bit like 'Homeland', in other words.  However, a rather tired-sounding premise and a few early cliches (a young activist in New York is the son of a powerful businessman; a moral mover-and-shaker - who happens to be a dead ringer for a young Matthew McConnaughey btw - has a wife who delicately reminds him what a good job and lovely house he has) flourishes into a watchable, decent drama.  OK, Odelle Ballard (Anna Friel) manages to escape death almost as often as James Bond, if with rather more reliance on outside aid, but her journey along the Mali/Algerian border, interlaced with the attempts of her fellow Americans to find her, had us gripped for the extra-long 90-minute episode.

If she manages not to have an affair with any of the men who are looking for her, it'll be more believable than 'Homeland' for that alone.

The Saboteurs

This is a six-part co-production of Norwegian, Danes and Brits, about the race to develop nuclear weapons in WWII.  The Germans have Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry in the early 1930s; the Danes have Niels Bohr; the Norwegians have a plucky Professor and the Brits have Anna Friel as one of those clipped gals who knew what was wanted to win a war, by golly.  What the Norwegians also had, and everyone wanted, was heavy water, which you need for a nuclear bomb, so the Nazis invaded Norway.

Does it bear any resemblance to history?  Who knows, beyond the intellectual heft of Heisenberg et al and the invasion.  It's gripping, though.  Think 'Foyle's War' with subtitles and more at stake than a missing ration book or some dodgy tractors.  Only a few of the major players knew the stakes were high, and even they weren't sure what they were creating.  Scary.

Public Enemies - spoilers

Paula Radnor probably doesn’t win ‘Probation Officer of the Year’.  Having let one of her clients go AWOL, then given him a second chance and thereby allowed him to murder someone, she’s now given a second chance to newly-released, volatile Eddie, convicted of murdering his girlfriend ten years previously.  Quite why she was reinstated at all isn’t clear, unless “you can’t be with them 24/7” is any sort of an accepted justification.  Anna Friel does harried and emotional quite well (‘Without You’) but Daniel Mays steals the acting honours as Eddie, believably portraying the transition from euphoria at being freed to vulnerability and hurt as he comes to terms with the damage a lost decade has done to him and to those around him.  You could argue that Mr Mays is typecast – he must have played every nuance of Cockney/Essex/Thames Estuary Geezer by now – but he’s also very good at it.

The plot twist at the end of episode one takes us in a new and not entirely welcome direction: Eddie claims he’s innocent.  Does Paula believe him?  Do we?  There have been a couple of hints that it could be one of his former friends (would a GP have on his list the father of the victim as well as the murderer, who happens to be an old friend?).  It will keep us watching, but we would have done that anyway, and we would have rooted for Eddie in trying to make a go of his life in the shadow of the crime he committed and the punishment he received.  Too soon to say, but here’s hoping Tony Marchant hasn’t opted out of a tough choice in order to avoid controversy.

***

We are sad to say that Episode Two has strayed far into TWNH territory.  It was fine not to focus on the murder if the drama was about what happens to an ex-prisoner.  Having turned it into a did-he-or-didn’t-he story, the holes become too big to ignore.  Marchant keeps the audience guessing about who the murderer is, pointing first at one friend and then another, but it’s unclear why the police investigation at the time didn’t uncover the girl’s promiscuity, or any DNA evidence pointing to anyone else.  All we’ve been told is that she was strangled, which is usually a pretty hands-on process?

It may seem churlish to fault a drama which is (a) original and (b) features fine performances but there were several forced, false moments in last night’s hour: would Paula really back Eddie into a corner by forcing him out of a job?  Don’t they run anger management courses in the early evenings, at lunchtimes or weekends?  (We assume some people with anger issues hold down jobs.  In fact – no offence to colleagues - we know they do.)  Why didn’t she just send him straight back to prison, in that case?  The scene which culminates in him losing control in the hostel was also contrived – she just happened to be there when he listed all the ways in which she made him angry?  And wouldn’t the inevitable outcome of his rage both at the hostel and against Doctor Somers (Joe Armstrong) result in his going back inside?  Paula’s attempts to uncover a sound basis for her instinctive belief in him, by talking to his trial solicitor, Trevor Brotherton (Nicholas Gleaves), and to the murderer she’d previously left free to murder again, were unconvincing.  Nothing in the solicitor’s words or demeanour led us to think that he believed Eddie innocent, and surely she knew better than to believe Eddie just because Philip Pointer (Glen Davies) looked nasty?

Eddie’s relationship with Jayd (Aisling Loftus) was better, and believable, even if the bumper car and seaside scenes were unoriginal.

We are hoping that the final episode won’t reveal some absurd denouement, but the central plot is now very much more about innocence or guilt than it is about what life is or can be like for someone who has served their sentence for a serious crime.  Anna Friel has resumed major aspects of her role in the recent ITV drama ‘Without You’, running around trying to prove someone’s innocence without succumbing to the doubts of everyone around her.  Same tears, same face shapes....  Wouldn’t this have been better as a story of the parallel struggles and diverging lives of two ex-cons assuming, as the producers seem to, that a relatively simple story isn’t enough?

**

The classic cliche wasn't even avoided, a too-close relationship between probation officer and released prisoner.  Not a great advert for the probation service in general.  Get their expert view at http://probationmatters.blogspot.com/2012/01/public-enemies.html  Not only is it highly unlikely that Eddie would have been released to the same area but, we think, it's equally unlikely that his friends, sister and victim's family would have remained there for the last decade, with all their bad memories.

So after all the red herrings, it was the dad.  "Can't help you, son," he says to Eddie, "I have to believe it's you."  Obviously bonkers.  That just leaves Eddie with a serious anger management problem and a shifty bunch of friends.  Oh and his probation officer who's in love with him.  Nobody mention Jayd, whoever she was, or poor Will (Barnaby Kay), but hey, he didn't manage his anger either, did he?

Without You

We admit, it was hard to concentrate while watching this.  Has Ms Friel had plastic surgery?  We know we shouldn't get distracted by such things.  Why should we care?  Well OK, Dan doesn't, really, he's just mildly curious, but Ali....  The thing is, she looks slightly odd.  This is the beautiful actor who broke new ground with a lesbian kiss, and, umm, put her dad under the patio, but hey, he deserved it?  Yes?  No?  See how one distraction leads to another?  Anyway, it's absurd, because either she's just had some other kind of Hollywood makeover that makes her look odd, or she's been so dissatisfied with her looks, in her thirties (or has succumbed to others' criticism) that she's changed them.  So here's the disclaimer, because first consideration was given to an examination of facial features from various angles shown.  This didn't, we must add, stretch to slo-mo, stills or HD, so it stops short of an obsession.  YES IT DOES.  But...


... not much happened, which may seem strange for a drama based on a Nicci French novel.  Ellie Manning (Friel) finds out her husband Greg has died in a car accident with another woman.  For plot, that's pretty much it.  She runs about emoting.  Did he have an affair?  Her friends think so, even his friends think so, but no-one has a clue.  By the end of the first episode, of three, she's got precisely nowhere in finding out.


Friel's performance is anything but plastic, and she's matched by Marc Warren as her expired but conveniently handy husband.  They even manage to make corny lines like "That's the woman I'm going to marry" sound, if not good, then at least slightly less corny.  But that still leaves us in the position of having no TWNH moments because not enough has actually happened.  Watch on?  We'll see.