The billionaire who was so mean he washed his own underpants
Telling a story that everybody already knows the ending to is a challenge for any filmmaker. Telling a story that somebody else told brilliantly only a few months earlier, only adds to the pressure.
Trust (BBC2) dramatises the kidnapping of John Paul getty iii, the event that was also the subject of this year’s critically acclaimed film All The Money in The World.
Donald Sutherland takes on the role of billionaire oil tycoon J. Paul getty, portraying him as a meanspirited, tight-fisted bully.
At Sutton Place, his palatial english home, he kept a ledger of every penny the household spent and tutted with disapproval when his butler informed him that The Times had gone up by tuppence.
every night he hand-washed his own underwear and hung it on a makeshift line in his bedroom.
getty also kept a harem of concubines, all forced to sign contracts renouncing any claim to the sizeable fortune that he, proudly, never paid a penny of tax on.
The sadistic billionaire took pleasure in pitting the women against one another. last night, the drama showed him throwing a welcome party for ‘Teresa’ whom everyone believed would be another mistress joining the household.
She turned out to be a lioness, that getty took joy in terrifying his girlfriends with.
This first episode opened with a scene at a hedonistic Hollywood party in 1973 where george, getty’s favourite son, stabbed himself to death with a barbecue fork while high on drugs.
As his father lamented, all he was left with was three sons he described as ‘perfumed wasters.’
When his namesake grandson first visited, getty was enchanted and planned to make him his heir, until he discovered he had racked up debts in Rome and posed nude for an italian magazine.
Sutherland was in his element portraying this deeply flawed man.
Directed by Danny Boyle, the drama was enthralling and beautifully shot, although the rock music backing track felt try-hard and became irritating. Pink Floyd’s song Money being belted out to convey the message of sickening wealth was hardly subtle.
The series is a ten-parter which the BBC has, wisely, uploaded in its entirety to iPlayer. it’s definitely one to binge-watch rather than string out to Christmas, especially since the superior movie version is now available on DVD.
Compared to the monstrous getty, Joanna lumley feels like an angel on earth. in Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure (iTV) she packed her case again for more travel adventures.
Yes, it’s true we’ve had a glut of lumley travel documentaries (greece, india, Japan, the nile), but she’s so engaging that it never feels tired.
Here, she undertook the first leg of her 7,000-mile journey, starting in Venice, where she flirted outrageously with the gondoliers: ‘i bet you’re a real lady killer aren’t you, darling? it must keep you fabulously fit.’
She also visited the Bevilacqua silk house. established 500 years ago, it still weaves silk on a loom, producing just 40cm of exquisite fabric a day that sells for £4,465 a metre.
From Venice to Turkey, where she took tea at the dazzlingly gaudy house of one of istanbul’s wealthiest families.
Joanna seemed to charm all the locals she met, and her selfdeprecating style endears her to the viewer as well.
She’s also probably the only person on TV today who could get away with referring to everyone as either honey, sugar, darling or treasure. The last of which she most definitely is. CHRISTOPHER STEVENS is away.