Paranoid (ITV) | ITV Hub
National Treasure (C4) | All4
Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? (BBC4) | iPlayer
Airbnb: Dream or Nightmare? (C4) | All4
Two chewingly toothsome dramas, and for once not going up against each other. What happened to the traditional ITV/BBC Sunday and Monday night standoffs (one answer: Victoria is simply roistering it against Poldark). But the BBC didn’t have a dog in the race last week, having blown half its year’s budget yapping nationalistically at us about some people being able to run less slowly than some other people.
Paranoid began nastily on ITV: there was a stabbing of a female doctor in a safe play park. It was sudden and it was gruesome but it was over, didn’t linger. This was the first sign of promise: too many other dramas have ramped, with slo-mo retro, the killings of women. But this thundered its way on with speed into a tight police procedural with knotty twists: and also the humanity of the best cop dramas. It’s too early to say whether it might be another Happy Valley, but it might take a bronze.
Chiefly through Indira Varma, who plays a stroppy cop just dumped by her partner. She’s 38, and suddenly even more angry. “But I want kids,” she shouts to his retreating back: the boyfriend may have been nondescript but his sperm were apparently people. There was also cop Robert Glenister, suffering the kind of panic attacks that might have unseated Thor, wandering for solace into the arms of Lesley Sharp, a surprising but fine casting decision: she’s wonderful, but is she a true, kind Quaker or a Blue Meanie?
There are layers upon the twists, an early Escher doodle and a lot to come. It’s an eight-parter – I’ve watched the next two and it just gets better – so will see me through until bonfire night, with promises of a huge German pharma-conspiracy.
Channel 4’s new four-part drama National Treasure has been dogged slightly by being labelled as An Important Drama for most of the past month. Undoubtedly it is, but that’s to detract a little from the sheer quality of Jack Thorne’s script and his ear for a truthful line, the sort said by actual people, never mind his success in luring the phenomenal Robbie Coltrane back to telly. Sometimes I wonder what it is about players who honed themselves on 80s comedy proving so adept at serious-chops High Acting, and presumably it’s the fact that the better sketch shows demand much dextrous and credible plasticity: Coltrane, Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry, Tim McInnerny, who as Coltrane’s double-act partner is the perfect foil, a one-man Greek chorus, but might just wander centre stage before this is over, and from the side ad sinistra.
It is, as if you didn’t know, the tale of a big but fading star (Paul Finchley played by Coltrane), accused of historical rape. The effect on his family is well imagined: Andrea Riseborough exudes spiky fragility as a truly damaged daughter. I’m still unsure about Julie Walters: like her though I do, I can’t help but go, always, “Oh, that’s Julie Walters, acting someone”: she nails it as the wronged, forgiving, Christian wife, yet is still Julie Walters, acting someone.
But much of this is, of course, about the wider ramifications of Yewtree, and the large questions we have to currently ask ourselves about gradations of sexual incursion and social robustness. How to distinguish between bruised egos and actual filthy abuse. And the smaller ones about the press, and the police. Most media, of course, as in their salacious real life, headlined the sex, rather than the abuse.
Describing his client, Finchley’s lawyer quotes Paul Gambaccini’s line about being made “human flypaper” after police leaked details of his arrest (and incidentally isn’t it great to hear Gambaccini back on Radio 4’s Counterpoint?). “The question is,” writer Thorne said recently, “who do we protect as a society? Do we protect the potential victims or do we protect the potential perpetrators? That question is one that ultimately involves the police taking a moral position. Which I find fascinating.” Other words are available. Especially in a week where there’s been a worrying precedent, with the admittedly loathsome Gazza, for judges deciding what we can laugh at. This is, in the end, both important and great drama.
Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Art? had the usual stupid BBC4 title and the usual BBC4 eventual wisdom. The presenter James Fox mentioned that it would be “a guide for the perplexed” and this surely would have been a better title. He took us through a century and more, from Duchamp’s loo to Piero Manzoni’s tinned excrement, which he unwisely signed off on with, sigh, “If you thought conceptual art was crap, here’s the proof.” Hancock lives indeed.
If I may summarise: essentially, the earliest conceptualists were trying to have a laugh, in their various languages, against romanticism and impressionism, by ripping the jack out of them. It worked, in that it moved things on, but wasn’t seen for the simple fun which was meant.
Far worse was to come later with the embracing of conceptualism by the 21st century, which, dogdammit, was actually taken seriously. There was a huge segment on Robert Montgomery, whose famous lit sculpture The people you love become ghosts inside of you and like this you keep them alive garnered about 23 twillion Facebook postings and yet is, essentially, the inside of a Hallmark card. I live near the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art which is adorned with Martin Creed’s Everything is going to be alright, which I haven’t minded, despite the borderline illiteracy, but will always prefer Nathan Coley’s nearby There will be no miracles here, which are words taken from history. What became slowly clear here was that words are more important to understanding of conceptual art than the art itself: it always has to be explained.
Airbnb: Dream or Nightmare? told the story of a groovy little Bay City – Chandler always referred to San Francisco in this way, which I always like – couple of blokes sticking an airbed (hence airb) on a floor to earn some spondulicks during a conference, and giving the guests breakfast the next day.
It has grown into the worst kind of hydra they could have imagined. Never mind the occasional trashed flat, or the rare couple left in a Spanish pig hole, the impact on capitals has been immense. Residential neighbourhoods turn into polyglottal bus stops: cheapo landlords milk it. New York and Berlin have done much to limit this. London, via George Osborne, of course welcomed its vibrant entrepreneurialism.
As they grew to billionairehood, they turned to algorithms – to vet people, hire beds, sack people, and as usual the algorithms don’t work because they’re not based on people. The two instigators I hope are now pressing delete, delete, delete, alt-delete, Apple-Z for the past 20 years.
