‘Roadkill’ – BBC1

Rodkill is the new drama from playwright and screenwriter David Hare and it sets out its stall immediately as terribly sophisticated Sunday night telly for grown-ups. The Saul Bass inspired Mad Men style title sequence sets the mood and even causal TV viewers know what that signals. Rich, successful, important but dreadfully flawed smart professionals struggle in the survival of the fittest contest that is life. I can only imagine they’ll be a lot of bonking.

The lovely Hugh Laurie is Peter Laurence, a self-styled maverick politician, happy to be seen as a man-of-the-people kinda guy with an ‘umble Croydon background. The boy done good, and now he’s an MP in a Conservative government, who thinks quoting Shakespeare makes for a snappy soundbite. He’s riding high as we first meeting him, having won a libel case against a newspaper. He stood accused of profiting financially from his government position and lying about it but, lucky boy, he’s been found innocent. Not because of a robust defence, but because the journalist with the scoop changed her story on the stand. This seems very important, if somewhat unbelievable.

Hoping to be congratulated and promoted Peter swings by Number 10 to see Dawn Ellison, the Prime Minister (played by Helen McCrory) – part Margaret Thatcher, part Elizabeth II but with nicer hair. She’s thinking of giving him a top job but she’s no fool – she and her loyal assistant are busy searching his MI5 file to check he’s as squeaky clean as he frequently likes to tell people. Peter’s stint on talk radio tell us this is set in a Post Brexit future, which seems rather cowardly to avoid the biggest political issue of our times, but also understandable. Anything set in the present would feel out of date by Tuesday afternoon at the latest.

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Dead Pixel Test Live! – The Bridge to Hinterland

Another tv treat from the Birmingham Literature Festival  this year was Hans Rosenfeldt and Ed Thomas in conversation. The men may not have household names, but you’ll certainly know their work. Hans is the leader writer and creator of international mega-hit The Bridge and Ed writes the sparse and beautiful Hinterland set in Wales. Both shows are available for a cosy night in on Netflix. The guys were on the programme as a duo because they both write about murders and cops in a distinctly unusual bilingual fashion. The interviewer from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain skillfully weaved their experiences together, but for ease of reading I’ve pulled them apart again, with a bit of chat about similarities and differences to act as *ahem* a bridge between the two…
The Bridge – Hans Rosenfeldt
Hans is a big lumberjack type who looks super comfortable in front of the audience. I’m sure he’s well versed in talking about Saga, Martin and The Bridge. He starts by telling us a little about the writing process – 70% of the episodes he writes alone in Swedish. The scripts are translated after the third draft by a ‘proper’ translator and then one writer makes it sound “less translated” and turns it into ‘improper’ spoken Danish. He says despite Swedish and Danish sounding pretty close to our English ears “we made up the fact that we understand each other”. He says not understanding would have given them big problems with tense scenes like interrogations. So, despite appearances, it’s all false and Swedes especially have trouble with Danish. He says he’s not massively happy with the subtitles on Netflix as they are not always correct and English-speaking audiences are losing a little in translation.
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'Hooten and The Lady' – On the Box

Sky’s new action adventure series has been hyped to the max as good old-fashioned fun. It’s an eight part series co-created by EastEnders’ Tony Jordan of all people. But we know he’s keen to branch out since Dickensian enraged/ amused fans of Charles Dickens at Christmas. This is no soap opera, but the characters are familiar and you may feel you’ve seen it before.
Meet maverick rogue thief Hooten (just one name, because he’s cool, like Coolio) and clever posh totty Lady Alexandra Hyphenated-Surname. They team up in extremely unlikely circumstances to rescue treasures for the British Museum and earn pots of cash and flirt with each other in exotic locations. Sounds familiar?
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'Top Gear' – On the Box

Peer pressure. It’s peer pressure plain and simple.
The Top Gear reboot was going to be such a big event it was unavoidable. Everyone was going to have a loud and aggressive opinion about it so last night I found myself putting it on at 8pm sharp, telling Mr H not to get too used to it. Neither of us drive, so it’s pretty difficult to be entertained by what is essentially a car review show.
As far as I can tell, Top Gear has always been awful. Either too serious, too factual and too boring in its initial inception and then after the 2002 relaunch too stupid, too loud and too macho. The presenters were men old enough to know better running around growling politically incorrect nonsense and shouting their surnames at each other like retarded public school boys.
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