Cameron and Farage Live: the EU Referendum (ITV) | itv.com
Power Monkeys C4 | 4oD
Reg (BBC1) | iPlayer
Outcast (Fox) | foxtv.co.uk
New Blood (BBC1) | iPlayer
Nigel was doing his best impression, and it’s one he does so cheerfully well, of a gecko in a suit. Every double-stitched fibre of his Turnbull & Asser collar was working overtime to constrain his gills. Dave was doing his best impression, and it’s one he’s had half a century to master, few more years to go methinks, of a passionate human being. Poor Julie Etchingham, dressed unaccountably in a pretty pink sack, was reduced to the role of barking incessant “thank yous” simply to shut people up, like someone with a shoutingly polite case of Tourette’s.
It was long past time, of course, for the EU referendum debate to kick off, and finally it did, with an audience taking their cues from the past months of ill-tempered aggression. They just wouldn’t shut up. Nor should they have, because they had much to contribute: we learned more about, say, the relative levels of unelectedness of EU commissioners, and precisely detailed demands on the NHS, than has been vouchsafed us through long weeks of flim-flam and name-calling. It’s only a shame that mastery of the facts wasn’t matched by any concomitant courtesy. Nigel wasn’t quite wrongfooted, never is, no individual possessed of such self-worth can ever be; but he actually managed to look good by exuding such grace under fire. This is something I don’t at all get, this new spitty bitterness towards someone simply stating an opinion, no matter how kooky it might be, and I keep noticing it as an attitudinal stance against Brexiters. Nigel actually had a good and upbeat line – “a happy Europe, good neighbours in the same street” – but it was drowned by rude mumbles. A week ago my former colleague Faisal Islam, on Sky, interviewed Michael Gove. Dear Faisal should have been far less cheap, and known far better, than to call him an “Oxbridge Trump”, a couple of meaningless dog-whistle words, and pointlessly discharged in the direction of certainly the most charming, and possibly the third cleverest, man I have known.
Not even Michael could usher me towards Brexit: as far as I’m concerned nothing bad ever came out of Europe but polenta and fascism. It took a couple of last week’s election broadcasts to get me wavering. The first featured a baby, and a saccharine commentary apparently voiced by Philomena Cunk. The second led, boldly, with the bearded man-rabbit Alan Sugar, pleading with us, dully, to stay in. Never thought I’d say this, but I might vote out. And doesn’t David Cameron increasingly resemble Terry Scott at his most amiably supine?
There was similar anti-Brexit low-level venom in Power Monkeys, successor to last year’s riotously funny Ballot Monkeys, and also written by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, but this time a little more miss than hit. They absolutely nailed Donald Trump, by focusing not on him but on a moderate aide’s frantic attempts to dial him down (Amelia Bullmore just keeps getting drolly better); and nailed, too, the sinistrata of the Kremlin, its all-too-believable obsessions with the skewed minutiae of the UK media, plus a damned fine gag about Noel Edmonds, surely nature’s successor to David Icke. Where they failed was in the Brexit battle bus, by having a joke Ukip fringe-loon at the centre of things. I know this is chiefly written on the day, to keep it as topical as possible, but sometimes the set-up is more important, and the Brexiters were drawn, weeks ago, with a surprising lack of subtlety. I would worry more if the writers were not capable of both fluidity and nuance: expect the swivel-eyes Ukip cliche to soon Brexit the brus, and Jack Dee’s dark cynicism to lighten our days. Ballot Monkeys got fiercely sharper as the vote approached: expect the same.
Reg, the unvarnished tale of a bereft man who stood for election against Tony Blair in 2005, was a splendid piece which, uniquely, set actor against writer. Jimmy McGovern wears a huge heart on a huge sleeve. He was perfectly, absurdly well, balanced by Tim Roth, who played Reg Keys, father of a soldier who had died in Iraq, with such an achingly monosyllabic lack of passion that the only possible conclusion was a blistering love for his son. The tension between McGovern’s writing – usually a twitch angry, politically – and Roth’s determination to ignore it made this into an immense, powerful, drama. Oddly enough, I was there on that chill night, and can remember Reg’s speech, Blair’s facial stoicism. Sadly, Reg garnered 10% of the votes. Were this Hollywood, he would have won. Thank the stars that this isn’t Hollywood, and we have room in this country for McGovern, Roth, even the gilded magpie Blair.
Ridiculously spooksome was Outcast. We’ve seen it all before, chiefly in Friedkin’s Exorcist, but this offers so much more, and in a long series. Have to admit I worried slightly, when Kyle Barnes (the tremendous Pat Fugit) began to batter a small child to death, but who among us hasn’t been similarly tempted in supermarkets?
Kyle, who it turns out is essentially a leisure centre for demons, teams up with pastor Philip Glenister, replete with pahfect saathern drall, and nice addictions to poker and whiskey, to exorcise the devils “in every town on the planet”. They will have such fun.
As will Mark Strepani and Ben Tavassoli, as the unknown stars of New Blood, one an impossibly charming Pole, one an impossibly good-looking Iranian, all written by Anthony Horowitz, it zooms and skedaddles through a great plot. It’s not art. Horowitz recently spoke about wanting to drag drama back from Scandi-noir to simple fast action. My, it’s stupid. But it is wonderful fun.
