The Great – Channel 4

The Great had me under its spell immediately, the cheeky footnote to the title promising an “occasionally true story”. It’s a playful comedic satire of power, gender roles and royalty set in 18th century Russia, from Tony Mcnamara the co-writer of Oscar-winning The Favourite and reminded me in equal parts of The Personal History of David Copperfield and Channel 4’s rip-roaring The Windsors. Which is certainly no bad thing.

Nicholas Hoult embodies the young Emperor Peter III, who has found the right kind of woman to marry. She’s from a French aristocratic pedigree but her family is out of favour, languishing in financial dire straits. Elle Fanning is Catherine, who looks beautiful, which is really all an Empress needs to be, but she’s intelligent and cultured too, keen to be a good wife and to share in the ruling of Russia.

Catherine has barely set foot in the palace before she meets Adam Godley reveling in his role as the revolting ArchBishop. In a shocking scene, he accompanies her into her bedroom and licks his fingers as he talks about checking her “interior wall”. With the comforts of a  gilded palace life comes a number of dreadful indginities, as Catherine is about to find out. Oh and by the way, the wedding is at 7pm sharp.

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‘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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'The Bridge' – Series 4, Episode 3

This is a full review of The Bridge: Series 4, Episode 3. Catch up with episode 1  and episode 2. Don’t read on unless you’re completely up-to-date on the BBC2 schedule!
Episode 3 was a classic where not very much happens. Characters willfully impede the investigation and every plot point feels like a dead end, until a frantic final three minutes which leaves you shaking your head and softly repeating the word “What?” to yourself over and over.
Our heros
“I’m not well” says Saga in typical matter-of-fact style. If only it was always so easy to acknowledge your own mental health problems and ask for help. She then lists a devastating catalogue of personal disasters. “We’ve got a bit to work with” says the unflappable therapist, surely in the running for Understatement of the Year 2018.  We hope with help Saga will turn the corner and apply her logical, analytical brain to her own situation, but Mummy is messing with her delicate mental state from beyond the grave – having her lawyer send childhood mementos to Saga’s workplace. Don’t open the box Saga! It’ll be about as much fun as Brad Pitt’s surprise gift in Seven.
The Danish sister from episode two,  christened by the internet Öliver and Dødger, were such a perfect fit for a hole we’re desperate to be filled. Like a Choir of (Young) Believers the internet sang out in one voice “They could be Henrik’s daughters!” And he gets them home a lot faster than I’d have ever imagined, but now in context of their old bedroom he would recognise them, right? He seems to be the only person not swept up in the idea that they’re his long lost children. But one night at Henrik’s Hotel turns into two as these resourceful Tracy Beakers refuse to be sent off to any dumping ground.
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'The City and the City'

“Nowhere else works like the cities”. This is the first line of BBC1’s new drama based on the 2009 ‘weird fiction’ novel by British author China Miéville, an exotically named man actually born in Norwich. His book has been adapted for TV by screen writer Tony Grisoni.
The cities in the title are Besźel, which looks like the Eastern Bloc of 30 plus years ago mixed with cafes and people from 1970s Istanbul and Ul Qoma which is glimpsed only briefly in the first episode. These streets look brighter, cleaner, and more advanced. The colour pallets are quite different in each city; dingy yellows for Besźel and clean blues for Ul Qoma. Like the inhabitants, the viewer always knows where they’re looking.
The two cities actually occupy much of the same geographical space, but the inhabitants wilfully ‘unsee’ the areas they’re not allowed to view. Early on Commissar Gadlem (Ron Cook) gets out his overhead projector, and lays two acetate maps on top of each other. That’s a good way to get your head around it.
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'Ordeal by Innocence' – BBC1

Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries are an international literary language; translated, loved and understood the world over. You know there’s going to be a big stately home, a cast of shifty upper-class characters, a few red herrings and a satisfyingly complicated conclusion. It’ll all hinge on the silver sugar tongs, a classified advert in the Times or the colour of the front door which you knew from the start but discounted as an inconsequential detail. It’s clever, gratifying and reassuring all in one shot. For a real-life example, please see me and Mr H on holiday in Turkey in 2014. We were, I’m ashamed to admit, battered out of our skulls on local raki and dealing with a day-long hangover in a hotel room easily as hot as the surface of the sun. What could be more soothing to the addled brain than finding Poirot dubbed into Turkish with English subtitles? In no small part thanks to Hercule we consoled the little grey cells that hadn’t been murdered by alcohol.
Ordeal by Innocence, the Easter Sunday BBC1 drama, is not your Turkish holiday Agatha Christie adaptation. There’s nothing soothing about this production. From the off it’s clear we’re in a nightmarish gothic horror. Producer and writer Sarah Phelps brings us a sharper, nastier, distilled version of And Then There Were None, her tremendous Christie adaptation from 2016. “Nine elaborate murders based on an extremely dodgy nursery rhyme that drive a young woman to suicide in a mansion on a deserted island is not really terrifying enough. Let’s kick it up a notch guys!”
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'Kiri' – Channel 4

It’s always exciting to see Sarah Lancashire back on TV. I’ve been a big fan for a little while, since Happy Valley really, and drama lovers will agree that she’s a big draw for a new series. Writer Jack Thorne has another ripped-from-the-headlines story for us and hopes are high as he wrote National Treasure broadcast in 2016 which won the best mini-series BAFTA. That was about historic cases of sexual abuse, drawing on various high-profile scandals involving celebrities. This is about vulnerable children under the care of social services and calls to mind some recent real-life cases.
Sarah Lancashire plays Miriam Grayson, a Bristolian social worker who decides to offer unsupervised visits between 9-year-old Kiri and her grandparents. Kiri is a young black girl about to be adopted by a middle-class white family and social services agree she ought to know “where she came from”, and have a chance to develop links with appropriate members of her birth family. While Kiri is on her visit, she goes missing, apparently abducted by her ex-con birth father Nathaniel. This is all made clear in the first 30 minutes, so knowing the laws of TV drama, this means literally anything could have happened to her.
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