Novels can work on TV – exceptionally well
The Outcast (BBC1, Sunday) was quite simply an extraordinary thing. Scripted by novelist Sadie Jones, who won the Costa first novel award for the book in 2008, this was the fantastically executed story of an outsider who has done nothing wrong. It’s pleasing to note this project has come full circle: Jones originally wrote it as a screenplay and then turned it into a novel. Now it’s a two-part TV drama. In the first episode, the anti-hero Lewis (Finn Elliot as a child and George MacKay as an adult) is forced to grow up quickly when his mother dies in a terrible accident. Jessica Brown Findlay (last seen as Lady Sybil in Downton Abbey) gave a memorable turn as the detached, desperate stepmother married to Lewis’s father Gilbert, brilliantly played by Greg Wise, who is steadfastly going against type here as a buttoned-up, resolutely uncharismatic military man. Taut, intense drama, beautifully scripted and acted with feature-film standard cinematography, this is a piece in a league of its own. I couldn’t even think what to compare it to. Maybe The English Patient for TV? Just brilliant.
Joanna Lumley’s mother was a guinea pig whisperer
Joanna Lumley’s Trans-Siberian Adventure (ITV1, Sunday). Seriously? Joanna Lumley saying “Terribly beautiful … It’s like a dream…” every two seconds? Bond villain Russian train guards? Vodka with gold flakes in? What’s not to like? After Michael Portillo’s exploits on a Spanish steam train (a TV series not a euphemism), it might have been easy to wonder whether we need more celebrities invading the railroads. But this was a genuine idea and a brilliant one. Lumley last visited the USSR in 1966 on a modelling job. She hated it and vowed never to return. It’s rare to see a place through the eyes of someone who has been there a long time ago and is able to articulate the difference almost 50 years can make. Especially someone who can breathe heavily in a very Fifty Shades of Grey voice: “I’m about to make one of the most exciting journeys you can make on land…” Starting in Hong Kong – last visited when she was four – and travelling 6,000 miles via China, Mongolia and “icy Siberia”. I love the eccentric, old-fashioned feel of this, the autobiographical detail (“Mummy taught the guinea pigs how to whistle…”) and Lumley’s thespy shuddering and rasping.
Sometimes it’s hard for sports anchors to know what 2 do
Poor ridiculously-named down-with-the-kidz Wimbledon 2Day (BBC2, Sunday) has had a lot of bad press since it started two weeks ago. Viewers wanted less #bantz and more tennis highlights. (Imagine! On a tennis highlights programme!) Here on the final day of Wimbledon was Clare Balding’s chance to redeem herself. This was a cautious and pedestrian outing where the BBC seemed to say: “Yes, we are listening to you. We will show you footage of tennis – and also of Hugh Grant, Boris Becker and Bradley Cooper, all looking stressed.” This wasn’t a bad recap, especially for those of us who haven’t seen as much Wimbledon as we meant to. There was a slowness to this show, though, and it seemed awkwardly pitched. It needs to be accessible enough for the fly-by-night fair-weather fans like myself but in-depth enough to please proper die-hard tennis fans. I’m not sure it quite hit the right tone, especially for the experts. But maybe I’m asking for 2much.
Great documentaries don’t age
Now here’s something interesting. Was there a bit of a licence fee message going on here? Spitfire Women (BBC2, Saturday) was a classy documentary, voiced by the excellent Tracy-Ann Oberman, about the Air Transport Auxiliary, a band of 168 female pilots involved in the second world war effort. But here’s the thing: it’s a BBC4 documentary that first aired in 2010. Would it get made now? I’m sure it wasn’t intentional but I got the point even if no one was actually meaning to make it. Without BBC4 this kind of thing would never have been made. The women interviewees were smart and witty and all had delightful, plummy voices. “Without them, the Battle of Britain might never have been won.” This was emotional, clever, original and inspiring programming. And I was glad the retro feminism had not been airbrushed: “We had lots of boyfriends because at that time we were called glamour girls… “If anybody pinched my behind I was always grateful I was attractive enough to call my bottom pinched.”
