Animal magic that’s just the tonic for an outbreak of election fever
The British can laugh at just about anything. Show us a man thrashing a car with a branch, or a couple of market traders dressed as Batman and Robin, and we’ll suffocate with hilarity while other nations simply stare in bemusement.
But any show that shoots a dog and expects us to find it funny is taking a heck of a risk. The Durrells (ITV) returned for six episodes, in a second series brimming with such confidence that they shot the dog and very nearly did it again.
My first reaction, when an airgun went off and pinged poor shaggy mongrel Roger in the hind quarters, was a gasp of horror. Somehow, the situation became comical, even though the unlucky mutt was apparently paralysed and had to be strapped into a canine go-kart.
And then Louisa, the Durrell matriarch (Keeley hawes) accidentally let loose a shotgun blast that nearly took Roger’s tail off.
No other show currently on TV could get away with it. But writer Simon Nye, who has dramatised these tales from naturalist Gerald Durrell’s memoirs of his childhood on Corfu, knows we have taken this eccentric family so much to our hearts that we’ll forgive them any madness.
When the series launched last year, it seemed unlikely to succeed — too much a homage to a longago literary childhood favourite. You might as well expect a Famous Five remake to prove a hit.
But we loved the characters straightaway. The four children and their frazzled mother burst back on to the screen, as exaggeratedly endearing as ever. Novelist Lawrence (Josh O’Connor) was up a tree with his typewriter. Young animal-lover Gerry (Milo Parker) was asleep in the tortoise pen.
Gun-mad Leslie (Callum Woodhouse) was potting pooches, and love-starved Margo (Daisy Waterstone) had pledged her romantic soul to a trainee priest. And it wasn’t even breakfast-time.
It isn’t just the lovable characters who make this sun- drenched Mediterranean comedy-drama so popular. It’s the way it conjures the carefree atmosphere of a lost era. The gorgeous photography does much of the work, and the scenes where Gerry went otter- spotting were especially evocative.
The camera used an effect, familiar to most viewers from the opening credits of Sherlock, known as the ‘tilt-shift lens’. It makes human figures look like tiny toys on a blurred stage. We had the sensation of staring straight into Gerry’s boyhood memories.
Lord knows we’re going to need some light relief over the next six weeks, and The Durrells is just the tonic we wanted.
Another welcome return, also fortuitously timed to keep us distracted almost up to election day, is Grantchester (ITV). James Norton plays the clergyman sleuth Sidney Chambers, a sort of slimline Father Brown with cheekbones like tailfins.
There’s a fantasy Fifties air to this period drama, with live rock ’n’ roll bands at the church hall, in a village that is scandalised to see the vicar giving a married woman a ride home on his handlebars. But any tweeness was swept away by a splash of the macabre, that delivered a satisfying Sunday night shiver. A killer was leaving dead crows for his victims, while the local asylum hid the clues to the crimes.
Sydney and his true love Amanda (Morven Christie) are looking ominously happy. That girl had best look both ways when she crosses the road — the scriptwriters must surely have something dire in mind for her.
But the really fragile pairing is Norton with Robson Green, as the local detective. These two never quite click. Still, their arrival couldn’t be better timed. Thank heavens for escapist telly.