Fortitude (Sky Atlantic) | Sky Go
24 Hours in Police Custody (C4) | 4oD
Call the Midwife (BBC1) | iPlayer
Broadchurch (ITV1) | iPlayer
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (E4) | 4oD
“We live in the one place in the world guaranteed a quiet life, one filled with thrills and magic. And now we’re building a hideaway in the ice, a hotel hewn into the glacier, where lovers of the northern lights, lovers of the wilderness – or, or just lovers! – can come to just…” and so continues to confidently burble governor Odegard, a shorn-haired and fur-bedecked Sophie Gråbøl (the sublime Sarah Lund from the The Killing). She is rehearsing a press pitch for her town of Fortitude. Already the mysteries intrigue. How on earth would you persuade even a few press to the Svalbard archipelago: and, perhaps more crucially, how would you begin to persuade a hotel group, other than one possessed of savagely suicidal financial sarcasm, to countenance an investment in Fortitude?
It is the second-coldest place on God’s Earth. (The first, as Douglas Adams once pointed out, is the stairway above platform 19 at Edinburgh’s Waverley station). The Norwegian outpost of Longyearbyen, which doubles here as Fortitude, and translates I think as “long year of crying literal icicles as someone even weirder than you stumbles past your chill darkened door”, survives in an environment that, with no discernible reason, but all the time, wants to kill you. It reminded me of nothing as much as the Massachusetts fishing boat Andrea Gail, cringing beneath a perfect wave of a mountain, utterly doomed, quietly knowing it should never have been there in the first place.
Oh, there are thrills and magic. The opening scene in Fortitude has both Michael Gambon and a giant polar bear. Echoes, already, of both Harry Potter and Narnia. But the true echoes are, of course, of Twin Peaks. Because Gambon’s character Henry shoots not the bear but the mangled man beneath it, to spare his misery.
This is dark, and it is bloody, and it is weird, and so far so weirdly bloody good. Sky have £25m invested in this 12-part original drama, written by Simon Donald, and with fine stars – Gambon, Gråbøl, Stanley Tucci, Christopher Eccleston – and the writer has pulled no punches in investing its opener, as was the case with David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, with a plethora of ridiculous, mesmerising, confusions. Earlier synopses – along the lines of “Fortitude has always been a crime-free town. Until now” – look laughably simple. So far we have a weird sheriff; an overambitious governor (the aforementioned Ms Gråbøl, whom I would now dearly love to see cast in an episode of Death in Paradise, just to see her not look so cold); Tucci as a less weird but still weird detective; much illicit sex; an astoundingly bad heavy-metal band; the unsettling knowledge that no one may be left dead on this archipelago (because what killed them can live on in the cold for millennia, and plague is a light sleeper), a double act with echoes of Fargo, of a Slav and an American with nefarious intent; too-small guns; a casual disregard for the bears; greed; and the internet. Oh, and a frozen mammoth. I am however looking forward immensely to some questions being answered: this lengthy opener set up some scenarios terrifically, but also confused. It ended with a resounding collective “Hmm. And?” I have sincere hopes that it may yet match the status of Twin Peaks. But I have another question. Longyearbyen – it wasn’t all filmed there, mainly in Iceland actually – has 3,000 warm polar bears, and 2,600 cold people, and tin shacks, and a grubby inn. Why would anyone… unless they were born there, but they weren’t all, there are many London accents… choose to decamp to Svalbard? Are they all mad? I suspect we may just find out.
Fierce love and fierce alcohol do not happy bedfellows make. 24 Hours in Police Custody, which focused this week on domestic violence, is, as ever, not just a terrific programme but a terrific conduit for prejudices. Goodness, how I loathed Terry Jones, the layabout div whom I could have happily beaten to death with soft-soled shoes and who had gone for his wife Jodie in a drunken spat. Jodie, as happens, forgave: they’re now on their second honeymoon. Jodie has a forgiving nature but a shoe-size IQ. I will perennially like Cherie Blair, despite her Liverpudlianism and her naked greed, for the work she has done for Refuge.
Rafal Kozlowski, a nice man, just made a mistake by getting drunk, and almost deserved to be forgiven. Liam Moriarty, an even nicer man, made a far worse mistake – near-strangling his girlfriend, punching holes in the wall – but he was hammered and jealous, and that’s little excuse, and he’s now, literally, bereft. Forget “reality TV”: this is reality TV.
Call the Midwife, in Miranda Hart’s absence, was enlivened by Phyllis Crane, an unbearably thrawn Linda Bassett, as, basically, a by-the-book cow. This light series cleverly flatters to deceive: it is, in parts, unbearably and weightily sad. We got to see Ms Agutter without her wimple, holding a man’s hand, sadly. We got to see much of the talented Cherrelle Skeete’s belly, before cloying grief ensued. We got to see Patsy, who now appears to have become a lesbian before they were allowed to be invented, being sad. Magnifico.
Broadchurch unearthed, in obviously stylish cliffhanger fashion, a new suspect for Danny Latimer’s killing. Now we have two. Am I alone in suspecting the killer has really been Danny ’s own dad? (yes – Ed.)
Finally, some fun. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is now the most watchable comedy on American televison since Friends. It translates as deftly – not as slow, not as Ross-laden. Instead we have a precinct full of fools, chief among them Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg). I don’t often laugh loudly, but I grinned as much as 18 tubs of grinning fools.
