The Mrs Bradley Mysteries (BBC1, Sunday) offers disturbing proof that not even a platinum-plated cast is safe from rigor-mortis plotting and dialogue which resembles the minutes from a taxidermists' conference. The idea is that the emancipated and forward-looking Mrs Adela Bradley (played with a permanently raised eyebrow by Diana Rigg) applies new-fangled theories of psychology to 1920s detection. Unfortunately, the programme's fixation with authentic costumes, period cars and country houses conjures the illusion that the production has been lashed together from a warehouse full of spare props from Poirot and Miss Marple.
Certainly Dame Diana is eye-catching in a dizzying parade of bonnets, boots, brooches and leopardskin wraps, but how one could wish she wouldn't keep turning to the camera with a confiding aside or a knowing wink. It was annoying enough when Ian Richardson used to do it in his Francis Urquhart role. Here, it gave the impression that Rigg was acting inside her own self-contained bubble, and wanted the viewer to understand that she found the woefully static "action" around her something of a bore.
Not that you could blame her. Once you'd peeled away the trappings of lesbianism, kleptomania and theories of hypnosis, you were left with a routine rural whodunnit featuring only two mundane murders. So much energy was lavished on explaining the subplot featuring Mrs Simms and her love child, and on preparing viewers for the shock of finding a Sapphic love affair at the centre of the story, that characterisation and plot were aban doned altogether. It became increasingly hard to comprehend why Mrs Bradley looked so astonishingly pleased with herself.
It was a relief to turn instead to the rugged documentarism of Tracing The French Connection (BBC2, Saturday), in which Mark Kermode looked at the making of William Friedkin's 1971 movie and examined how the film was built on the real-life escapades of New York detectives Eddie "Popeye" Egan and Sonny "Cloudy" Grosso. This was a mine of information for movie buffs, illuminating one of the key movies from the so-called "New Hollywood" movement of the 70s while offering fascinating glimpses into the way the creation of a successful movie is invariably shrouded in ambiguity and thinly veiled jealousies.
For instance, both Friedkin and Gene Hackman told the story of how they met for lunch before Hackman was cast in the role which would win him a Best Actor Oscar. Hackman remembered the meeting as being hugely enjoyable, with Friedkin regaling him with jokes and anecdotes. Friedkin, on the other hand, claimed the lunch was so boring that he almost dozed off. It was scarcely surprising to learn that their relationship during shooting turned out to be one of bitter antagonism. Again, some members of the production crew recalled how Ernest Tidyman's script lay at the heart of the picture's success, while Friedkin claimed there was barely a word of Tidyman's work in the finished film.
You couldn't help admiring Friedkin's achievement, nonetheless. The relentlessly squalid and downbeat look of The French Connection set a benchmark in nouveau- vérité, while the celebrated car chase underneath the elevated railway still looks authentically hair-raising because it was. Friedkin shot it live with no tricks, no set- ups and no permission, and all the skids and collisions were real.
The first episode of Channel 4's new sitcom The Wilsons (Sunday) was quietly promising, warping the conventional family-in-a-house setup with just enough surreal detours and hints of latent psychosis to lure you back next week. The Wilsons are a bunch of south London shirkers and layabouts, led from the front by drunken dad Ray (David Bradley). Every morning, his manipulative daughter Poppy wakes him up by bringing him a tray with a packet of cigarettes on it. A little of the Wilsons' sustained whingeing and stupidity would go a long way, were it not for the presence of Colin the maladjusted social worker (Julian Rhind-Tutt, the only good thing about Hippies), and episodes like the attempt to rob a chemist with a terrifying poisonous spider, only to find that the chemist is a Polish zoologist with a professional fascination for spiders.
