Pose (BBC Two) | iPlayer
The Riots 2011: One Week in August BBC Two | iPlayer
Deceit Channel 4 | All 4
Ghosts BBC One | iPlayer
Oh my heart, how I’ll miss Pose, the New York-based HIV/Aids-era LGBTQ drag-ball drama – even if, having greedily gobbled down all eight episodes of the third and final series, the relentless weeping/ wailing/ “learning moments”/ speechifying (“I got you!”) sometimes felt akin to being slowly suffocated with a feather boa.
When it began in 2018, the show (the brainchild of, among others, writer-producers Steven Canals, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk) attracted attention for its largely transgender cast. What hooked audiences, though, were the characters: their drag houses, Abundance and Evangelista (for “houses”, read found-families of defiant misfits); their triumphs, tragedies, struts and spats (“I’ll see you on the ballroom floor!”). Characters such as the earnest Blanca (MJ Rodriguez), who’s seen in the opening double bill of the new series decrying the commercialisation of drag (do I sense shade being thrown at the RuPaul’s Drag Race juggernaut?), but is also in love and considering a career in nursing; Pray (Emmy-garlanded Billy Porter), who’s ailing and drinking; and Elektra, played by Dominique Jackson, a board-stiff but charismatic performer who has all the best finger-snap lines: “She’s got a good heart under that unfortunate wig.”
At its best, Pose serves as a dramatised echo of the once-hidden drag subculture seen in documentaries such as Paris Is Burning (1990) and The Queen (1968), as well as books such as Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the Aids Epidemic (1987). Just as Russell T Davies’s It’s a Sin dealt with HIV/Aids in the UK, Pose has endeavoured to tell the US story (in this series, Aids activism is celebrated).
The bad news: in the final-season scrabble to wrap up character arcs, there are a few heels caught in the grate. The self-help droning is endless; the emotional death of a huge figure is exhaustingly spun out; the wealth accumulation of certain characters (palatial apartments, glossy weddings) is ridiculously unrealistic. When some characters become hooked on crack (“Throw away the pipe!”), it’s all so prettified it makes drug addiction resemble a Goop-level spa treatment.
Still, these are quibbles. With its heady mix of glamour, humour and vulnerability, and bleak undercurrents of generational loss, Pose ends as it began: compelling, revelatory, necessary. What a series, what a ride!
The Riots 2011: One Week in August (BBC Two), a documentary directed by James Jones, told the story of the largest wave of public disorder in the UK since the 1980s. This was a complex, difficult topic: while some rioters 10 years ago were driven by the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, as well as longstanding racial and societal injustices (Tottenham had been a tinderbox since the 1985 Broadwater Farm estate riots), others embarked on a spree of destruction, usually of their own neighbourhoods, and opportunistic looting, with some looters as young as 12.
The film meticulously picked a way through the smoke and the chaos, using footage and accounts from onlookers, commentators, police and disarmingly self-aware rioters and looters to build a vivid picture of how, within days, the riots spread across the country, causing an estimated £200m of damage. With the then prime minister David Cameron and mayor of London Boris Johnson dragged back from their holidays (nice you could make it, chaps), the eventual crackdown resulted in 2,158 convictions.
The emotional pulse was interviewee Tariq Jahan, whose son died after being run down by rioters in Birmingham: in the midst of his own raw grief, Jahan appealed for public calm. Elsewhere in the documentary, Stafford Scott, a Tottenham community activist, was a sage and measured presence: he despaired over the devastation, while observing: “I don’t know of any riot or disturbance that happens in a vacuum.”
What went wrong with Deceit? Written by Emilia di Girolamo, directed by Niall MacCormick, this true crime Channel 4 drama was based on the murder of Rachel Nickell, who was raped and stabbed in front of her toddler son on Wimbledon Common in 1992. It focused on police attempts to sexually entrap suspect Colin Stagg (Sion Daniel Young) into confessing to undercover officer “Lizzie James”, played by Niamh Algar (The Virtues). The “honeytrap”-case against Stagg was thrown out of court and he was awarded £700,000 in damages. While the police focused on Stagg, Rachel’s murderer, Robert Napper, murdered Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter, and was subsequently convicted for four other sexual assaults.
From the opener onwards (all four episodes are now available to stream), something was unnervingly off with Deceit’s tone. While individual performances were nuanced (Algar, Young, the ever-superb Eddie Marsan as the psychologist Prof Paul Britton), at times the production was as grimly overstylised as a downmarket slasher movie. It was also jarringly eroticised; I appreciate that Stagg was being sexually enticed by a fake devil-worshipper, but that doesn’t entirely excuse the cheap satanic imagery, sadomasochistic overkill, or overwrought dialogue: “We need you to indulge his darkest fantasies.”
There are ways of telling true crime stories powerfully but non-exploitatively, as demonstrated last year by Des, with David Tennant as Dennis Nilsen, and White House Farm, with Freddie Fox as Jeremy Bamber. Deceit’s premise – that Napper’s victims were let down – was admirable, but dramas like this let victims down further.
Last week saw the return of Ghosts (BBC One), the offbeat sitcom from many of the cast of Horrible Histories and Yonderland , in which young couple Alison and Mike (Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smith-Bynoe) live in a crumbling mansion full of bickering ghosts, including a caveman, a trouserless Tory MP and a witch-burning victim.
The opening episode explained how one of the spectral residents managed to lose his head. By now, three series in, you either enjoy the innocent spookiness of Ghosts or you don’t. My own barely concealed inner goth can’t help but be charmed. The show has inconsistencies (ghostly hands slide through people but can pick up TV remotes), but whatever, it’s not a documentary. Its superpower is that it’s reminiscent of a lost Ealing film-style Britishness; so much so that I was surprised to hear that a US version is in production. Ghosts is about as scary as a ghost train ride in broad daylight, but it’s always a hoot.
What else I’m watching
Kurupting the Industry: The People Just Do Nothing Story
BBC One | iPlayer
Origin story of the Bafta-winning cult BBC Three comedy about a pirate radio station and their People Just Do Nothing mockumentary (now set for a big-screen release), featuring collaborators including Clara Amfo, Dizzee Rascal and Martin Freeman.
I Hate Suzie
Sky Atlantic | sky.com
Sky is re-airing 2020’s darkly brilliant Bafta-nominated dramedy about a former pop star/actor (Billie Piper) struggling with the fallout from her hacked phone. Created by Piper and Lucy Prebble, a second series has been commissioned.
Exploring Northern Ireland With Siobhán McSweeney
More 4
This new four-part travel series follows McSweeney (the blessedly sarcastic Sister Michael from hit comedy Derry Girls) riding around the six counties of Northern Ireland. When I say “riding”, her mode of travel is an electric bike.
