Egypt 1332 BC, and in front of a rowdy crowd a man awaits his execution, for poisoning Akhenaten, the pharaoh. The man is defiant though, so first his wife is dragged to her death behind a chariot. Ouch. Then the Thebes Poisoner is sliced open in the middle and his guts spill out with gurgling gut-spilling sound. His son needs to go too, and the job of dispensing with him falls to young Tutankhamun, the next pharaoh. But the boy is not in the mood for killing. To be fair, he is only nine, and he has just been told that he has to marry his sister. Still, he needs to man up if he’s going to rule with honour and distinction.
And so Tut (Channel 5, Saturday) goes on. For hours and hours and hours. Tutankhamun does man up, very nicely (the cast of this epic US-Canadian production seems to have been chosen for how well they look in a ripped tunic and heavy eye makeup or emerging naked from a bath of milk, ahead of their acting talents, with one notable exception whom we’ll come to). Tut becomes a brave warrior, heroically taking on the enemy, the fearsome Mitanni, who grunt as they, too, are sliced open like water melons. And a skilled lover. There’s a lot of that, loving – lithe olive-skinned (and olive-oiled) bodies rapturously and moaningly intertwined in flickering candlelight or as the sun falls behind the pyramids. Was it filmed in the Nevada desert, with Las Vegas’s Luxor hotel in the background? (Actually not – Morocco mostly).
It’s not just the Mitanni whom Tut has to watch out for – he also faces opposition from within his own ranks. From a popular army general; from his high priest; from Grand Vizier Ay, a devious character of common blood but great cunning who schemes and pulls strings in the shadows, ancient Egypt’s Peter Mandelson. What were you thinking, Sir Ben Kingsley, who plays him? Well I imagine he was remunerated handsomely, and it probably was fun to make. Is he laughing behind those heavily painted eyebrows?
Having an Oscar winner on board doesn’t give Tut the gravitas the makers would have hoped. It’s still tosh. But it’s quite jolly tosh, if you like dastardly scheming, big battles, steel-on-steel action, and a bit of hottie-on-hottie soft-porn. I did last the whole two and half hours, for the fighting, obviously. And the history, which is sufficiently ancient and uncertain that no one’s going to get too upset about its accuracy. I’m not sure I’ve got the strength for part two, though.
The game called Stack in The Cube (ITV, Sunday) doesn’t involve parking lorries, closing motorways and making a lot of people – including the Daily Mail – very angry, sadly. It’s just putting blocks on top of each other. But ex-footballer Fabrice Muamba (this is a celebrity edition) somehow manages to make a mess of it. Well, he did die, and return from the dead, like Tutankhamun, don’t forget. And the pressure of The Cube should never be underestimated.
More entertainingly, comedian Katherine Ryan wins a lot of money for her charity, then loses it, but pledges to work extra hard and pay it back from her own earnings. Fair dues.
And that’s it for Humans (Channel 4, Sunday) for now. Just when things were looking as if they were going to get tied up, a stolen flash drive means that our synths may still get the power to spread their consciousness at some point in the future after all. And Humans will get another series.
It certainly should do. The final two episodes weren’t the best, it got a bit bogged down in sentimentality. But overall it’s been a triumph. It is science fiction that appeals also to the non-sci-fi fan; that asks interesting questions about technology and the increasingly unclear line between man and machine; that is frighteningly plausible, not far off in the future probably; that also has resonance in issues of the present and the past – rights, prejudice, racism, slavery; that – most of all – is very human. Plus it’s a cracking pacy thriller, with a fabulous look, a chilling soundtrack, and lots of fine performances – from humans playing humans, from humans playing machines, from humans playing inbetweeners, from Humans’ own movie star William Hurt. He chose more wisely than Ben Kingsley.
Niska, who stole the flash drive, is going it alone, on a train. A Virgin one by the looks of it. So, a second series set in the north-west perhaps?
