High on diet of intense drama
THE “ethical” BBC is going to overtake Netflix, reckons boss Lord Hall. It must be lovely up there in cloud cuckoo land.
There wasn’t much ethical about Jimmy Savile, nor the Siemens outsourcing scandal, huge severance hand-outs for execs and blatant political bias.
Looking at BBC schedules, the word that usually springs to mind isn’t ethical but eff-all. BILLY Bob Thornton in Goliath. Sky One’s Manifest. The Peaky Blinders soundtrack. Tom Selleck’s tough but troubled cop Jesse Stone, tucked away on 5USA. QUOTE of the week from Kourtney Kardashian: “I hate being the centre of attention.” Try giving the cameramen a swerve, love. NOTHING beats telly at its best. Not the movies, not the stage, not radio.
Only TV gets under your skin like a drug, compelling you to watch episode after episode until your aching eyes can take no more.
Thanks to ferocious competition, our telly screens are awash with quality drama.
Russell Crowe is outstanding as creepy Fox News magnate Roger Ailes, inset right, in HBO’s The Loudest Voice.
Jeff Pope’s A Confession on ITV is riveting and devastating in equal measure and all the more gripping for being true.
Top Boy (Netflix), inset far right, feels grittily authentic. Dodgy media dynasty the Roys on HBO’s Succession are horribly believable too. BBC One’s The Capture is a neat take on fake news and our surveillance society. Then there’s Peaky Blinders, which is madder than a wet ferret but oddly irresistible. There was something gloriously bonkers about Arthur Shelby riding shotgun on a canal boat stuffed with opium to the sound of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs.
Sure, dramas can misfire. Sanditon feels like an Austen parody that’s been cobbled together for a bet, and Deep Water never made much of a splash.
But we’ve already had Stranger Things and the stunningly good Chernobyl this year and there’s still time to watch Fauda on Netflix and season one of Goliath on AmPrime. The downside? I worry about the way facts are twisted in everything from Peaky Blinders to The Crown.
Even The Loudest Voice rewrites history – Ailes did meet Obama with Murdoch. He wasn’t shut out. From Villanelle to Tommy Shelby, drama also tends to glorify the criminals.
Where are the good guys? A well-known producer recently told me villains are a bigger draw than cops. But Jack Regan, Gene Hunt and Dirty Harry prove that’s not true. Hero coppers urgently required. KEVIN Bacon, right, City On A Hill... Callum Turner, The Capture...Succession (SkyAt)...Ashley Walters, Top Boy (Netflix). JAPAN With Sue Perkins – can’t they keep her?...Sanditon – badly done...Deep Water – there’s more depth in a toddler’s paddling pool. TCHOEPdYulilnahnedrepopilnetalesses “professional kitchen” round on MasterChef. Cameron overkill. The Beeb casually replacing AD with “Common Era”. Brexitcast – utterly feeble.
GEMMA Collins, Arg, Alison Hammond...is this the “Big Society” David Cameron used to bang on about?