The State (C4) | All 4
Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? (BBC2) | iPlayer
In Therapy: Paul Burrell (C5) | My5
Wasting Away: The Truth About Anorexia (C4) | All 4
Coming so soon after the terrorist attack in Spain, the timing of Peter Kosminsky’s The State, four parts running over consecutive nights, could not, according to some quarters, have been more offensive. Yet did Kosminsky (Wolf Hall; The Promise) glorify or excuse the westerners who left the UK to join Islamic State? Or did this powerful, textured drama do something much more disturbing and vital, in humanising such people, examining their decisions, delusions, self-justifications and eventual regret?
The State began with the protagonists rising early, almost as though to catch a flight for a holiday, before ending up amid the dust and death of Syria. Among them, was idealistic scholar Jalal (Sam Otto), whose brother had already been martyred (it turned out that he was executed for trying to escape), militant, messianic doctor Shakira (Ony Uhiara), who dragged her young son, Isaac (Nana Agyeman-Bediako), into hell with her, and a naive girl, Ushna (Shavani Cameron), who spoke dreamily of “being a lioness among the lions”, as if harbouring thoughts of starring in some jihadi- themed One Direction video.
Early scenes were a jarring jumble of seduction and disillusionment, particularly for the (“defective”) women – their warm welcome promising a veritable “sorority of veils”, but morphing swiftly into curtailments of their options and freedoms. Later, things became increasingly, unflinchingly, barbaric. Among the horrors, husbands were “martyred” almost immediately (“jihadi is my first wife, you are my second”), enemies were beheaded, captured women and their little daughters were sold to be raped, and children at training camps casually played football with the decapitated heads of prisoners.
It is absurd to claim that any of this was tantamount to Isis propaganda. As if to prove the point, Shakira escaped, while Jalal tried (and failed) to help others to do so. The State wasn’t perfect: in its haste to humanise characters, it rather over-delivered on stilted, emotional set pieces, especially towards the end, erring dangerously close to becoming a kind of Middle EastEnders.
However, with an uncompromising script and nuanced performances, far from romanticising or excusing those who choose to join Isis, it gave them an all-too-recognisable human face. This is the story that needed to be told, the question that needed to be asked: how, still now, are British citizens being seduced into travelling across the world for a toxic religious fantasy?
In the new elimination series, Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes?, 12 high-achieving alpha types from science, medicine, art and culture lined up to risk being told, bluntly, that they don’t. In what was a kind of space-themed X Factor for nerds, astronaut Chris Hadfield and his team put the contestants through the first series of tests, involving hovering helicopters, taking blood, number sequences, and crouching in darkness in small white pods – the last challenge being either a test of their mettle in claustrophobic circumstances, or a cruel practical joke taken too far.
The process looks set to be fascinating and brutal – only 550 people have ever made it into space. As Hadfield pointed out, it wasn’t just about fitness and aptitude, it was about strength of character and personality: “Is this the person I want to fly into space with?” For this viewer, there was also a certain grim satisfaction watching people who were obviously smarter, fitter, braver and, frankly, better than me, struggle and fail. A case of: “Yeah, take that, alpha, that’s how some of us feel all the time!”
Watching In Therapy, there was much to sympathise about with the subject under analysis, Paul Burrell, Princess Diana’s former butler and confidante, who only late in life made peace with his sexuality (he referred to his homosexuality as a “monster”). Growing up in a time and place where being gay wasn’t an option, your heart went out to the little boy who hid dolls in cupboards and ran to his mother to protect him from his father’s beatings.
However, this was unfortunately countered by extreme irritation at not only Burrell’s obsession with the late princess, but how too often his sycophancy edged into sly denigration. Even as he arrived at Harley Street to see therapist Mandy Saligari, Burrell couldn’t help mentioning that he used to drop off the princess there … for colonic irrigation. Elsewhere, he spoke of enabling Diana’s bulimia with custard, yoghurt, and cushions in the bathroom, patting her stomach when she was pregnant, and sitting with her “soft and warm” body when she died.
In the last instance, Burrell was comparing Diana’s body to how “cold and hard” his mother’s body had been (they died the same year), but it was still too much. You couldn’t help but wonder if this was the obsequious, uber-devoted mask slipping – revealing someone who not only, as Burrell admitted, enjoyed secrets, but also relished telling them or let’s be frank, selling them.
Saligari sagely observed that there were three people in Burrell’s relationships, but you rather got the impression that, ultimately, this was how he wanted it. “I don’t want her exorcised,” he said. “I’m happy with her.” By the end of the session, I felt sorry for Burrell, but even sorrier for Diana – once again, having her royal dirty laundry publicly, humiliatingly aired on Burrell’s grubby, anecdotal washing line.
Prince William was seen discussing Diana’s food disorders in rather more dignified circumstances on Wasting Away: The Truth About Anorexia, a documentary made by TV reporter Mark Austin and his daughter, Maddy, who suffered from anorexia for three years, plunging their family into chaos. Austin readily admitted that, while he’d covered war and atrocity, he could barely cope with his daughter’s illness, at one point snapping at her: “If you want to starve yourself, starve yourself.”
This sort of thing is important – showing the ugly effect the disease can have on even the strongest, most stable family units. Elsewhere, Austin and Maddy were on a mission to show how sufferers of anorexia were being failed (sometimes fatally) by chaotic, inadequate, fluctuating government services. One young woman, Lydia, who was anorexic at the same time as Maddy, killed herself, unable to cope with what Austin termed “a mental disease that kills”. Austin was quick to point out that if he, a “pushy journalist”, and his doctor wife struggled to get help for Maddy, what was it like for other people?
Talking to health secretary Jeremy Hunt, Maddy acidly observed: “Surely it should be a national health service, not a national lottery.” Well said, Maddy. In a sweeter moment, just before meeting Prince William, she echoed all daughters throughout time by ordering her father: “Don’t make any jokes.”
