True Love

'Mad Men' is the honourable exception to our Sky avoidance.  Or more accurately, it's the only thing non-terrestrial and non-freeview that we bother to tune in for or tape.  Hence the recent silence, since it's the only channel featuring anything that hasn't been shown 58 times already.  With the summer lull upon us, the schedules are full of cheap stuff, like dud Jubilee coverage and Olympics promos.  We were hoping for a pleasant diversion in bite-sized chunks, set in the faded, tawdry splendour of Margate.  The trailer promised much, not least a starry cast, and on this at least it's delivered.

Admittedly, we are only one down with four still to go, but on the strength of the first story, featuring David Tennant, Joanne Froggatt and Vicky McClure, it's going to be a struggle.  Hurrah for scriptwriters.  Hurrah for Mike Leigh for coaxing decent dialogue via workshopping and improvisation.  Either would have been welcome here, but instead we got actors with rabbit-in-headlights expressions, obviously uncomfortable at being given banal storylines and having to come up with lines on the spot.  Needless to say, they conveyed love by saying "I love you" and "I love you too", and on unexpectedly bumping into an old acquaintance they say, "Well this is..." and "Yeah, yeah, it's...yeah."  It was like watching well-known actors appearing in something like TOWIE.  What's worse, the advance publicity suggests that the next four episodes will be essentially the same story (person either bereft or in relationship fancies alternative) with slightly tweaked scenarios.  Sad to say, but there were also some likely TWNH moments: would Serena really fly over from Canada to look up old flame Nick, rather than attempting, initially, to find and friend him on Facebook?  Would Nick be so hung up on her that he jumps straight into an affair that he hides from his wife but no-one else?  Would said wife be so quick to forgive him?

Good on the actors for being game, and all that, and good old Margate for being a better backdrop than most would credit, but slight stories and even slighter lines make an extremely underwhelming watch.

White Heat...

... seemed to finish with a whimper.  Was anyone other than Ali still watching?  Not in the league of 'Our Friends...' and definitely not event television.  Among the many possible reasons, two stand out: the casting of actors who bore very little resemblance to their younger selves and the fact that most of the drama seemed to arise from personal circumstances rather than the a-changin' times.  Ironically, the rather clumsy attempts to ground each episode in current events, music etc. took attention away from the development of the characters and their friendships, making it hard to care about them, or believe in their supposedly deep and lasting ties.

The Bridge

If you were planning a trip to Scandinavia this year, you'd be forgiven for having second thoughts.  The TV and film depictions only lend credence to the current news stories of a cold-blooded killer, featuring death, dismemberment, loners and Machiavellian double-crossing within the establishment.  'The Bridge' doesn't break the mould.  If anything it ups the ante a notch or two with a macabre double murder and some very dubious characters in just the first episode.

So far, it feels more akin to the violent and explicit 'Spiral' than its compatriots, with the necessary addition of dark-washed shots, rain and more rain.  It's gripping, or at least has hooks enough to keep an audience of BBC4 viewers watching episodes three and four next week (not least a cameo from a familiar face from the original 'Killing').

Where we may be in the minority is our unease about the main character of Saga.  She's almost a parody of Sarah Lund, a sort of Jennifer Saunders version.  She's not just terse, but silent or monosyllabic, and is so much at sea with emotions that she comes across as odd to everyone who meets her.  No-one has said the 'a' word, but she clearly lacks social skills and struggles to read faces and body language, taking words at their literal meaning.  Would anyone like this make a good detective?  She may be thorough, detailed and even a lateral thinker, but she'd surely be hopeless at solving a crime of passion?  Just as well that this is shaping up to be a misplaced-social-justice/abused person on ritual crusade kind of case, so she might stand some chance, but this misses the humanising core of 'The Killing', both series of which have so far been about family, duty and relationships.  Still less is it like 'Borgen', one of the most enjoyable and intelligent series of recent years.

We gave up with 'Those Who Kill' because its Danish credentials weren't enough.  And changing tops frequently and in public is no substitute for the amazing self-mending Lund jumper.

The Syndicate, Part Two

This time there was no snoozing.  Kay Mellor hasn't gone far outside her safety net here, with her working class characters struggling through a calamitous situation, here a small supermarket winning big on the lottery.  Stuart (Matthew McNulty) was so nagged by his spendthrift wife and desperate prior to the win that his collusion in the robbery is likely to cost him the money and his family, and has already put Bob (Tim Spall) in hospital.

It's more cosy than gritty, and the comedy-drama genre sits oddly with the life-changing scenario and sometimes abrasive script, but as usual the cast do great stuff with what they're given and last night's had a fun take on 'Pretty Woman' with Denise (Lorraine Bruce) and sassy single mother Leanne (Joanna Page) shopping for clothes on a very big budget.  The scenes between Denise and estranged husband Dave (Wayne Foskett) alone were worth tuning in for.  Or re-tuning.  Or whatever we're all supposed to do with digital switchover this month.

Talking of Mr Foskett, how nice to see him onscreen again - a star ever since playing Elvis Simcock, David Thewlis's sulky brother in 'A Bit of a Do' back in the late 80s, and criminally underused.

A Quiet Word - Upstairs Downstairs, White Heat, Homeland, Mad Men

Not that these dramas have a whole lot in common (though Claire Foy appears in two and would have to join the cast of 'EastEnders' to be beamed onscreen in the UK more frequently than she is currently).


'Upstairs...' finished last weekend, with a Nazi spy who happened to be Lady Agnes's sister, and Lady Agnes's husband's lover - keep up! - tipping herself over the balcony to splat onto the front hall floor as the world descended into the maelstrom of WWII.  A bit like the end of the first series of Downton, but one war later, and very dishonorable stuff afoot.  At least Fellowes has the decency to keep pure villainy largely below stairs, harrumph!  Much to like in the series, not least butler Mr. Pritchard, cook Mrs. Thack, and the believable and hesitant romance between chauffeur Spargo and nursemaid/housemaid Beryl.  And is it us or does Laura Haddock look like a young Lesley-Ann Down?  They missed a trick not casting her as a Bellamy relative.  Things upstairs were a little forced, though.  Neither Hallam nor Agnes, as Master and Mistress of 165 Eaton Place, are sympathetic enough to drag viewers upstairs through the green baize door....


Meanwhile 'White Heat' stretches credulity week by week, in the way that 'Friends' did.  By the 1970s they hadn't moved on?  Not saying they wouldn't still meet, but... no other friends, no partners from outside?  And why would they still entertain the obnoxious, privileged, drug-addicted Jack when they had moved on from his 'social experiment' student house and got jobs and, presumably, lives?  His sole function at mealtimes seemed to be to offend someone.


'Homeland' is following 'White Heat's lead, only having more episodes, it has much, much further to stretch.  Imagine you're an agent who is absolutely obsessed with the idea that a returned prisoner of war marine is now a terrorist.  You think you've finally got him by making him take a polygraph test to prove he gave a razor blade to a fellow terrorist in custody, so that he could kill himself.  What's the last thing you would do?  Get steaming drunk and sleep with him, maybe?  This terrorist who represents everything you fear and loathe?  Of-course, now that you've done this, when he passes the polygraph test, you try to prove that he was cheating by having him asked whether he's been unfaithful to his wife.  He obligingly lies, without a flicker on the graph, but... you can't say how you know he's cheating!  Duh!  Well-made hokum, but hokum for all that.


'Mad Men' is a more subtle drama, and it's back after a long break.  Season 5 is only on Sky (Ali resists, Dan grudgingly adds to the Murdoch empire) and now it's 1967.  All the previous elements are there, yes all, and that means that nothing much has moved on in almost 2 years.  Joan's baby looks younger than most TV newborns, and while Don has married his secretary and turned her into a 'creative', the agency is still staffed by the same chiefs and the same lack of Indians.  Dan knows a thing or two about ad agencies and their history, and this scenario is about as likely as a Labour landslide in Kensington.  Part of 'Mad Men's fascination is in pondering what it is that's so fascinating, when so little happens in each episode.  Is it the sharpness?  The script and the suits are only offset by the hourglass curves of the ladies.  Maybe we'll work it out by the end of this series, but then we've said that the last 4 times.

Titanic (Drownton on Sea)

All credit to Alison Graham of the Radio Times for the moniker above.  The fact that the whole of this drama is slightly longer than the actual sinking, yet crams in the design, building, negotiations, pre-voyage, voyage, iceberg and sinking, and no doubt some of the aftermath, says it all.  Episode one dashed through the mechanics of the wrecking with all attention on Fellowes's favourite preoccupation: class divisions.  Like Downton, this has romance, frills, grand settings and painfully obvious dialogue.  Unlike Downton, we know the ending, but at least this is actually covering the same events in each episode, rather than just feeling like watching the same episode over and over.

The stars were out when the iceberg loomed up ahead, and the stars were out queuing for the lifeboats, having flocked to the wildly successful Downton creator's new show.  There can't be a single UK agent whose coffers are empty of 'Titanic' money with the huge cast, who play their roles with varying success (Celia Imrie, where are you supposed to be from?!)  Undeniably a Titanorak's wet or worst dream, depending on which geek feature appeals, but for the general public, this goes nowhere an old British film, a big-budget but dismally cliched Cameron effort and a real ship with a couple of thousand souls hasn't gone before.  Maybe we should let it rest in its watery grave now?

The Syndicate

I, Ali, will come clean straightaway and say that the first fifteen minutes looked quite good - a bit soapy, with Tim Spall's lugubrious mug saying it all - but watchable.  After that... I fell asleep.  But I will watch the second episode and I hope I took in some of it while snoozing.  I WILL, I WILL.