Martin’s gone from Man Behaving Badly to sensible Uncle Norman
NEW BOY OF THE NIGHT: Joe Lycett is having a hoot as host of The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC2). Camper than Larry Grayson in a tutu, he couldn’t care less about ramping up the ‘tension’ or ‘urgency’ — and the show is so much better for it.
MARTIN CLUNES is on his holidays. He’s been slowly unwinding for the past fortnight and now he’s really quite getting into the swing. He might even have a dance.
Watching his Islands Of America (ITV) is like going to Pontins in the Sixties with your uptight Uncle Norman, the one who won’t even take his jacket off to go paddling on the hottest day of the year.
Martin is not a frivolous fellow. We love him for Men Behaving Badly, but his real personality is very much Chap Behaving Sensibly. The director has been encouraging him to go wild and Martin has resisted at every turn.
In Hawaii he didn’t dream of attempting to surf — he wouldn’t even buy a Hawaiian shirt, because it reminded him of garish wallpaper.
In the hippy paradise of Washington state, he visited a marijuana farm and got giggly sniffing the plants. The very idea of rolling a ( completely legal) joint was unthinkable, though.
Let’s face it, if he won’t wear a psychedelic shirt, he’s not going to start Puffing the Magic Dragon.
So by the time he arrived at a rum distillery in Puerto Rico, and the friendly owner breached a 30-yearold barrel to let Martin savour the raw spirit (130 proof, or 65 per cent alcohol), we could guess what his reaction would be.
The presenter took a sniff and, eyes watering, tried to smile. ‘I don’t think my liver would stand it,’ he said, like Uncle Norman refusing a glass of home-made rhubarb wine.
Mostly, when TV shows send a comedian on a voyage of discovery, we expect acerbic commentary and a reckless readiness to try anything. Billy Connolly set the template.
But Martin is an actor, not a stand-up. He isn’t trying to be clever, world- weary, sarky or foul-mouthed.
I suspect he isn’t quite sure why he was asked to make this travelogue but the opportunity was too good to miss — so he took the job and politely, but firmly, said ‘no’ to filming anything that made him uncomfortable.
Gradually, the experience has won him over. He had a go at salsa lessons: he dances like a giraffe, but he enjoyed it.
In the mangroves, he threw himself into the warm water at night and watched the swirling patterns made by bioluminescent microbes. It was like swimming in neon.
His favourite excursion took him to Chincoteague island, off Virginia, where wild horses are rounded up by a bunch of good ol’ boys for a rodeo in the river.
It wasn’t what you’d call a sensible activity, but Martin didn’t care. ‘Fascinating,’ he said, ‘ fabulous to see.’ He’s in the holiday spirit.
All the American islands have been a sight sunnier than Shetland (BBC1), where the skies were perpetually purple and bruised like a black eye.
Last week, I warned that a bloodbath was brewing on this show. That proved to be an understatement: within five minutes, a woman was hacked to pieces in her kitchen, while one son was stabbed to death in his sleep and the other lay dying in his car.
By the end, one of the suspects had slashed his own jugular with a ballpoint pen. Balamory this ain’t. It could be farcical and lurid, but for Douglas Henshall, who imbues noble copper Jimmy Perez with a laconic toughness that is never aggressive.
When a local fisherman, reluctant to be questioned, backhanded him across the mouth, Perez barely raised an eyebrow.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that was just stupid.’ Like Martin Clunes, he’s not one for flamboyance.