Unsaid Stories (ITV) | itv.com
The Australian Dream (BBC Two) | iPlayer
The Great Heist (Netflix) | netflix.com
Mandy (BBC Two) | iPlayer
One of the remarkable things about ITV’s Unsaid Stories was just how much it managed to cram into four 15-minute short films. So many questions, spanning so much: if the intent was to remind that there is no such thing as one catch-all black experience in modern-day Britain, it succeeded and with bells on. Searing, awkward and crucial viewing, yet I’m still not sure whether the truncated nature of the slots distilled the drama to an essence or left one wanting. I’ve watched “uplifting” lockdown adverts featuring caterwauling children which have lasted longer than 15 minutes, or it certainly felt that way.
The four shorts, broadcast on consecutive evenings last week, dealt with a BLM protest, a privileged young lass arguing with her broke white ex-best friend, a police stop-and-search and a mixed-race daughter. All four were splendid in their own way, if occasionally a little tell-don’t-show, perhaps an understandable casualty of the timing strictures, and featured among the talents the ever-watchable Paapa Essiedu. Yet it was in the two films featuring white characters that the passion of the arguments really got to some nubs, possibly because that is the way some new dilemmas are going to have to be resolved.
I truly felt for Amanda Abbington, cast as the villain of the piece – or was she? – in a double-hander with writer and co-star Nicôle Lecky, for having made an arguably crass statement about the baby over which she was cooing. Which culminates viciously in mixed-race daughter Jordan (Lecky) fuming: “I don’t want my baby to have a ‘Karen’ for a grandmother.” I suspect Lecky is too smart and honest a writer not to have been aware she was casting herself, partly, as the villain: that anger, those recriminations, against a kind liberal mother, are volcanic. There is a lovely reconciliation. After 15 minutes I let my breath out.
I almost couldn’t watch at some points the slow, appalling crumbling of the psyche of Adam Goodes, erstwhile Aussie Rules star and one-time Australian of the Year in The Australian Dream. This remarkable feature-length documentary, fortunately available now on BBC iPlayer for much longer than the usual mayfly-span, told us, along the way, that if Britain has a step higher to climb on to any kind of level playing field regarding equality and race, Australia is just crawling its way on to the first rung of the ladder.
Goodes is part-indigenous, part of a history that existed for 65,000 years before James Cook appeared on the scene. And Goodes was widely feted until he made the mistake of “calling out” prejudice after a shout of “ape” from the stands. Unfortunately for him the miscreant ejected turned out to be a 13-year-old girl. Cue growing years of outrage from pompously rank shock-jocks, and a sustained booing campaign: Goodes had made the error of being “a black man who complains”. As said Stan Grant, a fine Indigenous Australian journalist, “the booing was the howl of the Australian dream, and it said, to us, ‘you are not welcome’.”
Netflix’s six-part drama The Great Heist is the true story of the 1994 Colombian bank snatch thought then to be the biggest robbery in history, the fallout from which almost broke an economy already struggling with drug cartels, corruption and widespread poverty. Almost certainly the catalyst behind this is the blazing global success of Spanish drama Money Heist for Netflix – but anyone looking for more of the same will find little of the style, charm and wit which made “the professor” and his team such a deserved hit.
Instead, the Colombians are (relatively) ugly, graceless and surprisingly inept, and the coup is only accomplished by bribing cops and inside men, although there is still, in this tale, the dream of a perfect non-violent crime: only one gun is loaded. Yet this has the huge advantage of being a real-life story, with often savage consequences: it is genuinely thrilling, and we even begin (if eventually) to warm to these ragbag losers. Whether it’s with wheels spinning in jungle mud, bribing their way through checkpoints bristling with ordnance or throwing up in seedy hotels, this dirty crew is indefatigable, and hearts will be in mouths: and it chronicles too, fascinatingly, the economic fallout of this little-documented (outside Colombia) narrative.
Mandy, the latest Diane Morgan creation, is I suspect going to be a little bit splitty-nation. Beehived of hair, gleefully dismissive of societal niceties or even basic interview skills, Mandy is every jobcentre’s nemesis, which, given that she spends much of her life there, makes for big awkwards. I, for instance, loved it, but I like most of Morgan’s tinder-dry take on life, most notably in Motherland.
On the other hand I’m almost sure some will see it as punching down, dismissive of the indolent, heedless working class, and it is in some ways true that Mandy is not a lazily spat piece of gum away from the execrable creation Vicky Pollard. Where I reckon this is saved is that there’s a heart to her, a remorse for the catastrophes she causes – and the death toll is mounting. This is another strength: if you’re going to go down the slapstick route, you might as well go gleefully over the top rather than just have a wee dead vole in a pitta or some such. You might find yourself snorting despite yourself, but snort you will nonetheless.
