He’s a gold digger and all of the family know it
It is all a bit contrived. Gold Digger (TV One, Sundays) wants us to believe Benjamin Green just happened to meet Julia Day at amuseum. You have to suspend belief. But it does not matter. Day is 60, comfortably off, exiting a divorce and alone because her son has stood her up in London. Green does not stand her up. He lies her down. The chance encounter becomes a passionate affair. It all happens in the dark so you cannot see the wrinkles. The problem is Green, who resembles a young Keanu Reeves, is half her age.
He is a toy boy who has escaped a factory shipment. Soon Day introduces him to her three children. It is like Pol Pot meeting awar crimes tribunal.
Two of the spoilt kids fear for their inheritance. Patrick, a lawyer, decides to check Green out. We then fast forward 12 months to Day’s palatial home, somewhere in Devon. Day and Green are getting married and the family is still plotting.
To show who is boss, Green tells Patrick to find another bottle of champers in the garage. If looks could kill, Green is already deceased and buried in a pauper’s grave.
The story is simple, but will resonate with many people. It is like granny having a fling with Scott Mclaughlin and driving his Ford Mustang GT.
No-one quite believes Green is genuine, certainly not the family.
The appeal of Gold Digger is its writing, its relevance and the quality of acting. I amworried Green might take her money and split. The only person who is not alarmed is Day. Her wine cellar and bank balance might be, but she is having fun.
■ When does Bradley Walsh sleep? He plays Graham O’brien in Doctorwho and hosts The
Chase. Now he has introduced his own creation called Cash Trapped (TV One, Monday to Friday).
It is a complex, slightly weird, quiz game where six contestants sitting in boxes compete through four rounds. They stay until one of them escapes with the money. It is a civilised version of The Weakest Link.
If they answer questions correctly, they Tyson Fury theirmost threatening competitor.
The opponent’s box turns Labour Party red and they are muzzled for the rest of the round.
The quiz needs lots of explaining fromwalsh and the final round, where Cat, one of the contestants, had the chance to escape, was confusing. She claimed a ‘‘brain fart’’ and gave the wrong answers.
Any quiz show featuring Walsh startswith a plus. When it does not have the rapport that the chaser and contestants have, it ends with aminus. ■ Fair Go takes offence over fences. They aremeant to be built by serial conman Neville Thomson, but instead he takes clients’ money and does not turn up. Now Neville has to mend some broken fences.
But first he must build them to break them and then mend them. The ones he has done resemble the S bend at Manfeild.
Welcome back Fair Go (TV One, Mondays). It found a genuine ratbag in its first episode. Now it needs a repetition of ratbags tomaintain the series.
■ A Confession (UKTV Mondays) is everything Bancroft is not. Sian O’callaghan has gone missing and Detective Superintendent Stephen Fulcher sets about finding her.
It is thorough, sometimes plodding, police procedural. It is not flashy and that is its strength, not its weakness.
■ Dr Carol Kenney is incorrigible and insufferable all at the same time. Sadly, in Carol’s Second Act
(Prime Tuesdays), insufferable mostly wins.
The comedy series was not released, it escaped and, like a new strain of flu, found its way to New Zealand. Retired teacher Carol Kenney starts at Layola Memorial Hospital as an intern. On her first day she is amedicinal motormouth. The episode is so annoying that repeats should be shown in New Zealand prisons as punishment.
Kenney’s supervising doctor gives her the job of collecting stool samples. It is an ideal opportunity to flush the programme and the samples down the loo, but then she correctly diagnoses a patient’s condition when his own doctor cannot.
Her action is a reprieve, but the series has to get better and quickly. I am sure the courts are poised to order it for repeat offenders.
The appeal
of Gold Digger is its writing, its relevance and the quality of acting.