The War of the Worlds (BBC One) | iPlayer
Vienna Blood (BBC Two) iPlayer
Cold Call (C5) | My5
Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate (ITV Hub)
Guilt (BBC Two/Scotland) | iPlayer
We got a little literary cleverness on Sunday night, in that it was sharp enough for Peter Harness to try to incorporate much of HG Wells’s own life story to his adaptation of The War of the Worlds. Here was indeed [Herbert] George’s exile from London to Woking, and the sneers and curtain-twitching he faced, as a man who had left an unhappy marriage to his cousin and set up sinful shop with his pregnant lover, and the awful revenge he took on that fresh-bloomed suburbia, writing it into fiery oblivion within a few well-chosen pages.
Or would have been sharp enough, ambitious enough, to attempt over, say, 12 episodes, lasting over the festivities. In this three-parter, in which Rafe Spall took the part of George, setting up sinful shop with Demelza off of Poldark (as a man might), it was way, way, too much meta backstory. I was just waiting for the monsters. I was just, in truth, mouthing get on with it. And waiting for the monsters.
When they came, they didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, the BBC doesn’t have Netflix’s budget, meaning that, while they didn’t disappoint, the rest of the set did, the couple’s maid being bloodily floored by a clutch of old Woking Styrofoam, which at least got her away from Demelza’s demented constant grinning. And Spall, fine actor though he is, and the rest of the (surprisingly few) extras (that budget again) betrayed remarkably little distress at the sight of an alien 200ft metal honking tripod stomping their horses and burning their churches: eyes and faces that one might have been expected to be maddened, at least traumatised, all seemed to pass over that hellish vista with a vague, quibbling resentful “tch, now what?”
For all that, it does the business. Acting is mainly sharp and it gets across, albeit a little heavy-handedly, the sense of arrogant entitlement at our thinking any species deserves the right to trample and exploit: I think Wells was reading at the time about Tasmania. But it’s going to have to go some to cram in the full story by end of play next Sunday. It could, with expansiveness, have ramped up the pre-story, the Martian flares, the space science, for at least two threatening weeks, and thus also not wasted Robert Carlyle, who plays the astronomer.
Vienna Blood was an oddity, but most oddities can still be intriguing. This raised unexceptionalism in drama to the level of… tempted to say art form but that would be inaccurate. Perhaps the level of pastime. Oh, it’s nice enough in its own way, sumptuously filmed in the supposed Vienna of 1906, all pastry shops and ferris wheel and Mahler and antisemitism and bawdy clubs and leaking corpses in locked rooms, and the acting wonderfully adequate – but, oh, the plot, the “mystery”, the yawning unintrigue of the “solution”, the dialogue and the bloody length of the thing.
So there’s a young doctor, modernly studying Freud, paired in unlikely fashion with a tough bruiser of a cop, and battling against history in the guise of know-nothing anatomists and recalcitrant police forces. While actors battled with such lines as “Doesn’t fit the profile? What the hell is a newfangled ‘profile’ thingie meant to mean?” [I’m paraphrasing]. “Bring me solid proof, man, damn it”, the two lead actors bonded through nothing so complex as characterisation. Instead, they denoted growing friendship by grinning inanely as one handed the other his hat, dropped after a chase or a fight. Possibly even blown rudely off by a wind excused from its main job, blowing tumbleweed through the script.
The only real oddity was to find it scheduled at 9pm on BBC Two, rather than on ITV3 in the post-lunch cuppa slot. Every faux cliffhanger moment – “Be careful, my son, that this new science does not lead you to dark places” – had me half on my feet towards the kettle, waiting for the ads for cruises and conservatories and coffins.
With the BBC, then, taking us slightly for granted, thank goodness (as I’ve never written before) for Channel 5’s fine drama strand. Cold Call, over four nights, was a cracking little psychological exploration of loss, greed, revenge, all too chillingly credible so often.
Oh, there were flaws, a few wrinkly plot points or side stories better left unexplored. But, by and large, it moved cleverly and quickly forward, showing not telling throughout. Its premise and the two standout characters – Sally Lindsay’s worn-down carer, June, driven to fury at her life savings being scammed via one distracted phone moment, and Paul Higgins’s troubled control freak fraudster, Kirk – still linger. Ultimately, they were their own nemeses and it was a faintly redemptive end. For, surprisingly, both.
But along the way… and what a way it was. We got the grim psychology, or psychopathology, behind cold calling (basically cold reading), the hells of dementia (and of life as a carer), low blackmail and high technology and some very clever little phone scams, and might end up thinking a little more about what boxes we’ve been ticking, online or off, since the millennium. And not a few life lessons, nor a little humour. “Adopt a friendly accent. Glaswegian, Geordie. Never scouse…” I urge you to watch if you missed.
The world’s most cynical audience, that of the UK, tuned in in their droves on Tuesday night for Johnson v Corbyn: The ITV Debate. Everyone was going to “have their say”. And, thus, a problem.
The studio audience, with their incessant 30-second tribalist applause, interrupted Julie Etchingham to the extent that she had little option, timewise, but to cut to the ads. Neither Johnson nor Corbyn was allowed to expand the chew of the arguments, and no matter that I suspect one might have had better chew than the other, Etchingham had to close them both down with “thank you, thank you”. A problem was the angry, open-ended questions. “What can you say to reassure me?” “How can this nation trust you to have the personal integrity and individual strength of character to rescue us from this mess?”
Oh, come on. Ask about preciseness of borders, tax, immigration, numbers of nurses or carers or peregrines or iPods but spare me unquantifiable “individual strength of character”: what the gillywhilly do you think they’re going to say? These questions let both off the hook: our obsession with feelings is sautéing brains. Better was the later thing involving Swinson, Sturgeon, etc. And one thing we can celebrate is the collective heft of Etchingham, Emily Maitlis and Nina Hossain.
Also celebrate the success of Guilt (BBC Two and Scotland); an utter triumph, a word-of-mouth dazzler. I’ve loved it, and it’s (almost) open for a second series – are Max and Jake, yin and yang, lost to our worlds yet? Max’s serene last scene moue of “ah, fuck it. But it’s been lovely. Then again, wait one…” is the story of Scotland.
