Pudding is over-egged as The Tourist comes home
The Tourist BBC1, Monday/Tuesday First Dates Ireland RTÉ2, Thursday
Mr Bates v The Post Office
Virgin One/UTV, Monday to Thursday
WHEN the first series of The Tourist debuted in 2021, it was like a bracing cold shower. The premise was simple, as Jamie Dornan played a man who, after being deliberately rammed in his car by a truck, was left with no memory of who he was. What soon became apparent was that lots of others people knew him, and all of them wanted him dead.
There followed a kaleidoscopic trip across the Outback, with a young police cadet, Helen (the excellent Danielle Macdonald) in tow. Finally we learned that his name was Elliott Stanley, that he had done some very bad things, and that he might have been dead at the very end.
Fast forward 14 months in drama time, and Helen and Elliott, very not dead, travel to Ireland after receiving a letter from someone purporting to have been his best friend when they were young. Intrigued by the possibility of reclaiming some more of his memory, Elliott arranges a meeting, but instead is brutally kidnapped and held captive in a cave off the coast of Donegal. What he soon learns is that his name is not Elliott Stanley, but Elliott Cassidy, and that his mother Niamh is the head of one of two warring families in the illegal drugs trade (the other gang is led by Frank McDonnell, with Francis Magee basically playing a character identical to his thuggish Brendan Kinsella in Kin).
As we would expect from any script by the Williams brothers, Harry and Jack, who gave us The Missing and also Baptiste, there is a strong reliance on outrageous characters, in this case Detective Ruairi Slater (Conor MacNeill), who talks to a mannequin of a woman in the basement of his house (and maybe something more gruesome there too), and Fergal McDonnell (Mark McKenna), the runt of his crime family who is naïve and mildly cunning in equal measure.
In all this, there is the distinct feeling of a pudding being over-egged,
The Tourist Elliot, very not dead, travelled to Ireland after getting a letter
not least when Helen’s ex-fiancé and one of Elliott’s former drug mule victims find themselves seated side by side as both also fly from Australia to Ireland to seek explanation of, in one case, and retribution for in the other, the past.
Most of the filming was done in Co. Wicklow, and for once, the washed-out cinematography makes the landscape look a great deal more menacing than the usual picture postcard imagery. We’re a long way from John Hinde, that’s for sure. At the end of the second episode, Elliott is free, and he gets a brief insight into how he thought his name was Elliott Stanley, but now Helen is in peril. Those of you who have access to the BBC iPlayer no doubt have binged all six episodes. Personally, I’m happy to stick on the rollercoaster over the next few weeks and see where the Williams boys are taking us. First Dates Ireland returned to RTÉ 2 on Thursday, and with it came a salutary lesson in why you never should prejudge people. One of the hopefuls was a guy in his 20s, Hansun, who also had a drag queen alter ego called Pluto, and he said flat out that she was the biggest bitch ever.
Hansun’s date was a guy called Ciaran, whose favourite pastime was to drink a can of cold beer in the shower, and who looked as if butter wouldn’t melt, and all that. Pretty soon, though, it turned out that Hansun was the more vulnerable of the two, and probably used his Pluto identity to compensate for his natural shyness and gentle demeanour. As for Ciaran, well, if anyone ever wanted to write a manual for how to be coldly dismissive, a chat with him could be their first stop.
Every attempt made by Hansun to get conversation going was blankly met, and Ciaran even was downright rude about Hansun’s hometown, Drogheda. Most bitingly of all, he delighted in reminding Hansun that Pluto is ‘not even a planet anymore – you’ve been downgraded, babes’.
In the history of the show, I’ve never seen two people so quick to say ‘no’ when asked if they’d like to see each other again, and I was glad it ended too. It made for an uncomfortable watch, and my sympathies lay entirely with Hansun, who asked for nothing more than common courtesy, only to be repeatedly slapped down.
Fortunately, Killorglin farmer Tom and Dutch woman Elly, who comes from a farming background and now lives in Killarney, got on like a house on fire, and their free-flowing conversation was like a soothing balm on my wounded conscience after I got the other pair so utterly the wrong way round.
The prosecution of hundreds of people who ran post offices in Britain has been called the biggest miscarriage of justice in that country’s history.
The Post Office and Fujitsu installed a new computer software system called Horizon which was used by these people to balance the books, but it frequently showed discrepancies that left these small post office owners allegedly owing thousands of pounds.
Many lost their livelihoods as a consequence, and at least four tragically took their own lives. Despite becoming aware of the glitches, the Post Office continued to persecute and prosecute, until one former sub-postmaster, Alan Bates, started a campaign for justice.
Played by the brilliant Toby Jones with a fierce moral courage, Mr Bates took the case all the way to court, where £57million in compensation was awarded to those wrongly accused.
It was a stirring David v Goliath tale, and many hearing it for the first time took to social media to express their absolute outrage.
Like all good television drama, it provoked a fierce response, and it reminded me why, despite its many entertaining tics, a drama such as The Tourist will be long forgotten when this is remembered. Like I say, never prejudge.