Catch-22 (Channel 4) | All 4
Years and Years (BBC One) | iPlayer
Our Next Prime Minister (BBC One) | iPlayer
Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic) | sky.com
Catch-22 has often been described as “unfilmable”, and the first effort in 1970 certainly struggled to convey any sense of Joseph Heller’s authorial tone, lacking most of the dark, dry, sardonic scorn of the 1961 novel. This Hulu big-budget vehicle, mainly driven by George Clooney, who co-produces, co-stars and also directs a couple of the (six) episodes, succeeds with something approaching magnificence, and I’m starting to wonder if there’s any “unadaptable” classic that telly can’t manage in this, its new golden age.
The writers have done a fine job not just of pacing but of condensing Heller’s tricksy timeline into an all-too-credible arc, and also of shepherding the action perfectly between barrack-room lunacies and, actually, seriously exciting CGI’d aerial sequences. I’m not sure whether it was a great idea for Clooney to appear himself, least of all as such an odious character as Lieutenant (later General) Scheisskopf, boorish stickler and cuckold, and the nearest that either book or series comes to cliche. But there are few men who won’t appear even better in the just-so khaki pants and subtle collar stars and tucked ties of the USAAF of the 40s and 50s and so, good-looking boy though George certainly is, maybe he just couldn’t resist the uniform.
But it’s Christopher Abbott who really excels. John “Yo-Yo” Yossarian is an everyman, yes, but with a difference – he’s got attitude to spare, and cojones, and a certain surliness – and Abbott plays him with a streak of fun.
There’s one relatively early exchange when, after basic training and shipping to the Italian island of Pianosa, there to load his B-52 for further pointless bombing raids (the Germans having already fled Rome), Yossarian confides to a colleague:
– “I’m afraid.”
– “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
– “I’m not ashamed. I’m afraid.”
And that, in hindsight, says it all. This is all about someone who’s quite at ease in his own skin yet, strangely enough, just doesn’t want to suddenly die. As the sorties are ramped up, against all logic and sometimes for petty revenge, there becomes an increasingly noxious contrast between life and death. It can be no coincidence that the “life” part is such a good life: the bomber boys stripping off and jumping off Italian cliffs in impossible sunshine, or sauntering through Rome with young lives before them; and then the sudden jump-cut to Yo-Yo in the bomb bay of his aircraft, black blooms of flak all around, his thoughts vaguely on just glimpsed targets and sweating hands, on the pettifogging bureaucracy and bluster back at base, the random illogic and arbitrary bombing lines. And we, too, feel the fear and sigh a heartfelt nervous shudder when we see him back on the beach, knowing it’s got to come again.
Half anti-war paean, half mighty roar against gung-ho lying idiocy, it’s as powerful as it was all those years ago. And genuinely, if pathetically, funny in its mightier moments.
What a storm of a six weeks it’s been in Years and Years, which drew to a bravura end after way too short a time – I could have watched it for weeks and weeks. Not, bizarrely it turns out, for everyone: some souls shuddered at its very believability, at a time of fractious futures for us all, while other stauncher viewers railed against what they saw as preachy PC tub-thumping. I’m afraid I didn’t get either, being perhaps lousy at nuance or wary of being too easily “triggered”: I just loved watching a quite phenomenal drama.
Russell T Davies had his messages, undoubtedly, but all these, and all the wildly inventive futurisms, both technical and political, took a back seat – always – to the tale of the Lyons family, as doughty and angry and loving a batch as you could hope to meet in any current or future crisis.
So many slivers of earlier episodes still live with me. That subtle unnoticed clenched hand gesture of Gran towards Celeste: grudging love but love nonetheless. Danny’s gleeful sense of life. The sisters’ wicked bawdy giggles. The wider picture was terrific, of course, and Viv Rook (Emma Thompson) has been starkly instructive in the magnetism of populism – one found oneself nodding along at “common sense”, until recoiling at the squalor of its logical end – but, at its heart, just that one family, acting their talented socks off. Rory Kinnear, Anne Reid, T’Nia Miller … I’ll miss you all. Davies has said there are no plans for a follow-up but, as a simple salute to his talent, even if he’d never done anything else in his life, this would stand majestic.
While C4’s relatively grownup Sunday-night thing had nothing more to contend with than vainglorious macho quarter-truths, the BBC’s Our Next Prime Minister on Tuesday surely cements the old suspicion that the Beeb really, really hates Tories. What, actually, were they thinking? This was cruel and unusual punishment. Even for five men with so little shame that they’re willing to be elected as “our” PM by the demographic equivalent of an old folks’ home in Mallard Dullard newly high on rightwing crack, in order to further careen their way through the ruination of political trust ever, Tuesday night was bad.
Those seats were ghastly nasty. Never mind “manspreading”; they are quite impossible to sit on without looking anything other than a savagely uncool tit… not even Clooney could have pulled that one off. It was as if Emily Maitlis were trying to interview a batch of children sent to the naughty seat. As ever, one writhed naughtily to slide off. Maitlis struggled gamely. But black mark, BBC: we’re not a jot further forward with “the”, or indeed any, Brexit argument but, worse, you almost made me feel sorry for them.
Yet anyone who doubted the huge import of the outcome – and there are many who, worn down to the point of screaming apathy, just want to elect a pig’s bladder on a stick and be done with it – need look no further than Italy, where deputy PM Matteo Salvini, widely seen as the most powerful force behind the new right, has now threatened to withdraw protection from Roberto Saviano, the investigative essayist under sanction of death from the Camorra. Salvini’s hint feels like little more than a death threat.
Saviano’s greatest work, of course, is Gomorrah, which tells nothing less than the current true story of the mafia or Camorra, currently curling its talons into the highest reaches of, um, government. It’s more popular in Italy than Game of Thrones, and burst back on our screens with sprays of blood, and mood, and prosaic details. Savagely and urgently credible, it is also, sadly, terribly good television.
