On the ball in Barcelona
THERE’S a student drinking game which involves watching the cult film Withnail And I accompanied by strong alcohol. Whenever certain classic lines are uttered in the film everyone has to shout them and take a drink.
I’m not sure Spanish students drink with the same grim determination as British ones but if they do the Barcelona-based drama I KNOW WHO YOU ARE (Saturday, BBC4) seems tailormade for it.
Barely a scene goes by in this judicial potboiler without someone shouting the title, “Sé quién eres”.
This matters less if you are watching it with English subtitles. As with a lot of foreign import crime thrillers there’s a strong chance of flaws being overlooked, along with everything else.
You’re half reading the words, half looking at the screen and in the gaps between the two much passes by unnoticed. But it seemed pretty rum that after law student Ana had only been missing for a few hours her top lawyer uncle Juan Elias (Francesc Garrido) was being charged with her murder.
You could almost forget that though because Juan’s apparent amnesia opened up a rich seam of mystery. After walking away from his smashed car, leaving behind Ana’s phone and traces of her blood, Elias claimed to have no recollection of who he was. In the scenes following, his whole past life as the scheming, power-broking Big Manchego of the Barcelona legal scene came as a brutal shock.
As his wife, top judge Alicia Castro (Blanca Portillo) gave him the guided tour (she knew who he was, you see) tender scenes with his kids suggested someone who could be far nicer.
Starting again was not an option, though, not with an empire depending on him and his brotherin-law, missing Ana’s father, mounting a private prosecution while police hunted for the body. The prosecuting lawyer Eva Duran (Aida Folch) slept with Elias as a student and she’s in little doubt about his guilt either. She knows who he is. Even if he doesn’t.
We may think we know POLDARK (Sunday, BBC1) inside out but last night offered a startling mix of toads, toe-sucking and talking cures.
The latter concerned Dr Dwight Enys (Luke Norris), haunted by his experiences as a prisoner of war but unable to confide in his unhappy wife. Ross (Aidan Turner), being a bit busy saving his brother-in-law Drake’s life and feeding the former employees of his mine, couldn’t help but he knew a man who could.
One of Dwight’s fellow prisoners came to stay for a while and if the talking didn’t cure Dwight he was, at last, able to tell poor Caroline (Gabriella Wilde) how bad he felt. Meanwhile in the seedy quarter of Truro, clergyman Rev Whitworth (Christian Brassington) claimed to be rescuing fallen women. His activities had more to do with their fallen arches, though, and his unnatural interest in them.
A dastardly plot which involved Drake (Harry Richardson) facing the noose for theft and Morwenna (Ellise Chappell) wedding the awful Whitworth in order to save Drake’s neck was wrought by, who else, George Warleggan (Jack Farthing).
At the heart of it lay, not so much that ancient rivalry of Poldarks and Warleggans, as George’s horror of toads infesting his pond and his memory of when Ross stuffed his trousers with them at school. It may be a safe bet for a Sunday but Poldark is never predictable.