Television in 2018

A new year brings the promise of new resolutions, promises and the belief that this year will be the better than the last. This belief extends to the arts from cinema to music, painting to sculpture. But never more so than in television, is the leap made clearer than in television where channels propel new stellar productions to the forefront of the schedules in the hope for recognition and ratings.

From the return of stalwart shows Silent Witness to the BBC One and Vera to ITV, to the return of actors in new shows like Kiri on Channel Four starring Sarah Lancashire in a post-Happy Valley world to the high concept Hard Sun on BBC One.

There are changes a plenty not just in terms of the shows structure but how we watch them.  Last year the water-cooler show was Doctor Foster, the five-part second series was must-see television for one night a week showing the demand for such shows to get people talking about it the next day or immediately on Twitter and social media.

Hard Sun is an interesting case; a thriller with dystopian tendencies predicting the sun to explode in five years causing the end of our planet and how dealing with this world-ending event puts things into perspective. Yet the show premiered on a Saturday night at 9.30pm, with all six episodes of the series available on BBC iPlayer at once in a box set to allow viewers to watch the next episode immediately if they so wished.  The BBC attempted this at the tail end of last year with Gunpowder with relative success. The Corporation looks to be changing its ways with that of the audience needs and wants in the current climate.

McMafia is the stand-out show on offer though from British television. Reminiscent of The Night Manager, featuring a breakthrough role for a young British star to translate to the worldwide audience in a story with global reach wearing its expense on its sleeve. 

McMafia is an eight-part series which had a two-part show over New Year's Day holiday to entice the audience; it now sits at 9pm on Sunday for the water cooler effect.

Whilst it does not have the sheer wow factor of Tom Hiddleston's stab at a James Bond audition coupled with the telling adaptation of John Le Carre's source material, James Norton does embody the role of Alex Godman (has there ever been a more egotistical name) with relative ease sashaying from one suit to a tuxedo and jet to yacht as travel of choice; the supporting cast help with the reality of the world falling around him. The Night Manager had a glamorous cast of characters, whereas the Godman family and their rivals look more experienced at life and feel the pain and ache of having to leave their beloved Russia in exile.

As an audition for Bond, we have not yet seen Norton do necessarily atypical Bond things apart from fend off a choke-hold and wear a suit really well; whereas Daniel Craig has a ice-cold steeliness when he plays Bond, Norton has a somewhat laid back feel when he is smiling that would not translate to the iconic role of 007; but that does do a disservice to what he has done in three episodes of Alex - slowly he is getting warn down by the world he is step by step entering, becoming less and less of an investment banker and more an international money launderer to save his family's name and reputation, the hope being they can return to Russia.

Next of Kin began on ITV on Monday 8th January, a six-part global drama featuring a mixed-race marriage and the abduction of a British-Indian doctor in Pakistan against the backdrop of a terrorist attack in London.  Featuring a cast of talented actors, the series paints a multi-diverse London correctly but looks at well to do people in terms of class structure; both siblings are doctors, the female doctor's husband works with the government.

And that perhaps may be the one criticism of all these shows is that it focuses on middle-class individuals and not the problems that beset the working class population around the country. With all the series mentioned set predominantly in our capital city, London, there is a myopic window of the world being served to a licence-paying audience.

Kiri (Channel 4) is set around Bristol and deals with the sensitive issues of a mixed-race adoption and social services, written by Jack Thorne, it may well harken back to a gritty social realism more in common with Ken Loach and Alan Clarke than anything served up by the BBC in recent years; even Gunpowder is about upset middle class rebels wanting to blow up upper class people because they are against their policies.

It is indicative that the most socially political aware programme is based around characters outside of London; a city that is afraid to acknowledge people near the poverty line, whereas other cities do not have a problem with this awareness.

The Missing: Series 2 review

The Missing was a successful television series written by the Williams brothers, Harry and Jack, which first appeared in 2014 starring James Nesbitt as a desperate father looking for his missing son after he disappears in France on a family holiday.  The series showed two parallel timelines between the incident when the boy disappears to the investigation some time later, led by the inquisitive detective Julien Baptiste (Tcheky Karyo).

The series ended in a somewhat downbeat finale with Nesbitt's character traversing rural Europe still looking for his boy, with many characters broken beyond repair.  Many reviewers thought the series was a stand alone one, with little comeback expected.  Yet the Williams' have returned with a second series, this time however, Baptiste is the focal point of the drama.

Baptiste, is still on the trial of the missing girl Sophie Giroux, and his interest is pricked when a young British girl, Alice Webster, goes missing near to her home at the military camp of Eckhausen, Germany.  When Baptiste begins his investigations in 2014, he is of sound mind and his investigations begins to upset people as more skeletons are let out of the closet.

Again we have a dual narrative as we follow the fall-out of Alice's disappearance in 2014, along with the present day when 'Alice' supposedly returns to her home after escaping captivity.  However, as with most mystery-thrillers nothing is what it seems and the labyrinthe storyline takes the viewer on many twists and turns as Baptiste - who is fighting a brain tumour - becomes a pivotal figure travelling to the Middle East to uncover the truth when a military cover-up may be happening.

In this day and age, the sensitive subject matter of false imprisonment (Josef Fritzel among others) and the unsavoury detail of child sex abuse, the Williams' have taken these topics and used them to great effect to create a story of fear and mystery.

While the thread has been stretched over the eight episodes, we could have perhaps done without the sojourn to the Middle East, nevertheless the acting has been top notch. Karyo brings a rare humility to Baptiste, whose desire to find justice is all conquering even to the detriment of his short-term health.  Keeley Hawes, as Alice's mother, Gemma, continues her purple patch of recent roles bringing a steel to a grieving mother and while David Morrissey's Sam can come across a bit chauvinistic and ignorant, he portrays the rigidness expected of a stubborn man.

The entire ensemble helps elevate the series to your run of the mill whodunit show; from Laura Fraser as the cold Eve Stone, who is pregnant when we first meet her, sleeps with Sam and has to protect her weak with dementia father, Adrian (Roger Allam).  Yet the casting is superb across the board, from Julien's wife, Celia (Anastasia Hille) who share those brilliant intimate moments with Karyo pleading for him to return home to Derek Riddell as Press Liasion officer, Adam Gettrick; the performances are impressive throughout, not to mention the sterling work of the young cast especially Abigail Hardingham in various guises of Alice and Sophie.

In a year of great drama on the BBC and the current clamour for true fiction such as 'Making A Murderer' it is great to see an original drama have you gripped from episode one to its conclusion; and even rarer to see a drama's second series be better than the original. The Missing Series 2 is the The Godfather Part 2 of television drams in that sense. That is the highest praise you can give this terrific series.

The Missing (Series 2) will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on 26th December from Aim Publicity.

National Treasure

No, this is not a telling re-examination of the Nicolas Cage/Jerry Bruckheimer film from the early 2000s but a review of the DVD release of the Channel 4 drama National Treasure originally screened in early September starring Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters and Andrea Riseborough.

The drama tells the fictious story of Paul Kingsley (Coltrane) an ageing television comedy legend who has to contend with an accusation of rape from over 20 years previously. Whilst happily married to his wife Mari (Walters), Kingsley has a sexual appetite as depicted by his affairs with prostitutes yet this has never succumbed to under age girls as he is accused of.  Kingsley fears he is being portrayed as Jimmy Saville, the spectre and recent history of Operation Yewtree hovers over this production as a very dark cloud.

This cloud is embellished by the visual hue of the cinematography which is very dark greys and blues with the camera lurking behind corners and doorways not showing us everything fully until a character calls another directly bringing them into eyelines.

The drama is played with amazing panache by its three leads and is generously helped by key supporting player, Tim McInnery (Blackadder) as Finchley's comedy partner. Andrea Riseborough  as the broken and troubled daughter, Dee who we first meet in a halfway house being threatened with losing custody of her children and having driven her car through the accuser's house, Dee's descent into periods of madness will stay with you.

Yet it is the steady sterling presence of Julie Walters who is the star of the show, a performance of such reach and depth she puts everyone else firmly in her shadow. Her presence as a rock to Paul is very much absent by the series end.

The drama is very of the moment and in years to come may rescind into memory but it is great to see a brave production painting its narrative stars as very much that, a star who uses his talent and influence.

The script by Jack Thorne of Made in England fame had an opportunity to make a statement on star power and celebrity influence instead it singles out the women who accuse celebrities as hungry for fame themselves and to quote Mari, end up destroyed in the witness box and hard to believe.

National Treasure is released on Home Entertainment on Monday 31st October.

The Tunnel - DVD review

From the makers of Broadchurch, The Tunnel is a dual nation television production between French television and Sky TV, which was originally aired in this country on Sky Atlantic.  It is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Acorn Media.

The ten part series tells the story of a heinous murder committed in the Eurotunnel where two bodies are left astride the dividing line of the French and British sides.  The top half of the body is a French Member of Parliament and the legs belong to an English prostitute.  The criminal states, that there is no equality in the law when it comes to murder and both people have been lost even though one is not worried about.

The first detective we see is Elise Wassermann (Clemence Posey) closely followed by Karl Roebuck (Stephen Dillane).  They are a partnership due to the nationalities of the murder victims and they are distinct opposites with their juxtaposition apparent from the off; British versus French, male versus female, skeptic versus serious and old versus young.  There first interaction marks out the difficulty of their partnership at first, Elise wants the body as the head is on French territory, Karl happy to not bother with the case says, 'Don't worry Joan, not wanting to start a war over this.' 'My name is not Joan.' The humour of the line is lost in translation, a familiar problem between British people and mainland Europeans.

In the tradition of recent European dramas especially those from Scandanavia (Borgen, The Bridge), this series is similar in terms of slow burn but not afraid to show its hand early in proceedings such as video footage of the bodies being found and then being broadcast online - is the killer making a statement about hidden truths or stating everything should be in the open, where secrets carry so much weight.

The series draws its intensity from the drawn out dramatic sub-plots involving ministers, policeman and sinister subjects.  There is a clear design to hide details from the audience such as when a Frenchman falls in front of an oncoming train, the suspected persuers are out of focus (a technique seen in that other Gallic hit series The Returned) whilst the fear is clearly etched on his weary face.

The series is shot in this cold greyness with hues of blue deriding tension but also indicative of a continent under pressure with its moral objectivity being put into question by a mysterious invisible enemy. Not to be outdone, the two lead detectives also have personal demons in their collective closets dans la maison; Elise is a timid soul devoid of social skills and intimacy issues, whilst Roebuck is suffering from the scars of a vasectomy and the tension between him and his eldest son. Nothing is simple for a television character especially when a member of the police force.

The Tunnel is tremendously gripping and suspenseful and helped by some excellent acting from the leads especially Dillane as the experienced old hand who runs the gamut of emotions.

This stunning 10-part drama stars an impressive support cast including Keeley Hawes (Upstairs Downstairs) and Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones) and comes to Blu-ray and DVD with some fantastic special features on 13 January 2014 from Acorn Media.