‘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 Anything set in the present would feel out of date by Tuesday afternoon at the latest.

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‘Good Omens’ – Amazon

It’s no secret that it’s hard work to adapt a beloved book for the screen. Hard. Frickin. Work. And quite often a totally thankless task. Everyone has a uniquely personal idea about what a character looks like and sounds like – that’s the beauty and the curse of reading. You’re never, ever going to please everyone as a quick search on Twitter about any film/ TV show/ book/ art exhibition/ literally insert anything here. You’ve just got to be content with your version of the story and give it your all. As Ms T Swift put it so eloquently, haters are invariably going to hate.

Things that certainly will help please the masses are oodles of lovely money to make your production look lush and expensive (thanks Amazon), legendary casting, and having one of the original writer on your team. So the omens for Good Omens are… good. Neil Gaiman and the much missed Terry Pratchett wanted to adapt their much loved novel for the big screen for many years. Neil wasn’t willing to go ahead after Terry died but in classic authorial style received a letter with Terry’s blessing post mortem. with the project. And with him at the helm it’s got to be a tempting prospect for any actor. The cast list is enviable – Nick Offerman, Jack Whitehall, Miranda Richardson, Jon Hamm, all the League of Gentlemen, Frances McDormand and Benedict Cumberbatch to name but a few.

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'The Handmaid's Tale'

If you’ve not yet heard anything about the The Handmaid’s Tale, let me give you a hand getting out from under that rock where you’ve been hiding. This is an MGM production being show on Hulu in America. They seem to be a good 7 episodes ahead of us. Sadly, even in 2017, sometimes America is ahead of us in tv land. It’s great to have synchronised start dates, but it’s still not the norm. Avoiding spoilers for this much talked-about show is going to be a killer.
A few weeks after starting in the USA this 10 part drama series has been picked up by Channel 4 in the UK, which, as the young, intelligent, and left-leaning political channel is a really good fit for their brand and a bit of a coup. The series is based on a novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and despite its startlingly relevant content was actually written in 1985. So this dystopian future Atwood envisaged is 30 years closer than we’d have hoped for, and none of her themes are any less relevant or possibilities presented any less realistic. In interviews Atwood says that none of these war crimes in the fictional Republic of Gilead are entirely made up – all have happened somewhere on the globe. This really is extremely dark stuff. Do we as the audience have the stamina to get through it?

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The handmaids distinctive uniforms at a ceremony

 
The series opening is distressing, as our heroine Offred is violently parted from her husband and daughter, but it’s not a tense escape. We know she’ll get caught. The rippling tension comes from her social position at her new posting with the Commander (Joseph Feinnes) and his wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).
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