Doomed by its own DNA
EVERY now and then a TV show gives me Goodness Gracious Me syndrome. It’s named after a sketch show that aired on BBC from 1996- 2001 and which kick- started the careers of a number of talented British- Asian performers.
With its unique slant ( British Asians laughing at themselves, at their relatives on the Indian subcontinent and at their relationships with other Britons) it was very different from the Footlights tone of BBC comedy, and very welcome. It also, rightly or wrongly, introduced the wider population to the term “innit”.
Despite being important in many ways, it wasn’t all that good. The sketches were often lame, the gags were dragged out and the acting was half- hearted. The idea of Goodness Gracious Me was greater than what Goodness Gracious Me turned out to be – and that wasn’t an easy thing to admit.
CODE OF A KILLER ( ITV) creates the same unease: a noble idea, about an emotive subject, regrettably making bad TV.
It tells, with the aid of a stellar cast including David Threlfall and John Simm, the true story of DNA profiling, from its humble beginnings in a university lab.
Double- helix- style, two stories intertwine: the nerdy, driven Dr Alec Jeffreys with his slides and his test tubes and the wolfhound- faced Leicestershire copper, DCS David Baker, investigating the murder of two young women.
On its own, I suspect, an Eighties, Midlands- set Threlfall as a truth- fixated murder cop would make for marvellous drama.
Equally valuable and enjoyable to a TV audience, would be a short- ish documentary explaining exactly how it became possible, in the early Eighties, to identify a killer or rule out a suspect from the traces they left behind.
Unfortunately, the hybrid of the two is like something created in a laboratory, misshapen and sickly. In the manner of a made- for- schools science or history programme, we have over- long sequences in which people act out the story of DNA profiling.
Attempts to turn Dr Jeffreys into something better than a line in a textbook fall flat. He’s either in his lab, with slides, or at home being nagged by his wife.
But it’s not all about Jeffreys, of course. When the number one suspect confesses to both murders, Baker’s instincts are right and he has to be freed.
Rarely, for a crime drama, the show is brave enough to tackle the emotions of grieving families and their uneasy dependence on the police. Instead of zooming out and cueing the music when Baker breaks the awful news, they show Baker breaking the news, painfully, brilliantly acted, by everyone at once.
As a straight- up crime story this would be seriously good. It’s only the decision, taken way back in the ideas room, to explain the science that gets in the way.
Code Of A Killer, you could say, is doomed by its own DNA.
Unlike RAISED BY WOLVES ( C4), written by Caitlin and Caz Moran and plainly rooted in their own, unconventional childhood. The throw- your- head- back- and- howl lines are too many to list. What raises it, for me, is the truthful undertow.
The way young Germaine, genius- clever, crazy for love, utterly unaware of the world, lusts after nasty, thick lads like Lee is something outside the zany space of sitcom, closer to soap.
When soap was still good, that is.