An eerie Irish Scandi noir — turn the gaslights down and lap it up
On the 2018 shortlist of ‘words of the year’, among ultra-modern coinages such as ‘techlash’ and ‘overtourism’, was a curiously archaic term — ‘gaslighting’.
It means manipulating someone’s mind, convincing them that they must be going mad, by denying things that are obviously true.
Incredibly, the word harks back to a 1938 play, which was remade for hollywood in 1944 as Gaslight. In it, a diabolically suave Charles Boyer makes his wife Ingrid Bergman believe she’s going out of her mind, by the simple trick of turning the gas lamps up and down, while insisting he hasn’t touched them.
Gaslights have been redundant for almost a century. how on earth did this word make such a resurgence? Perhaps the Bergman movie was shown on some latenight cable channel, spurring one viewer to invent a buzzword.
It’s perfect for describing the mindgames of the hogan clan in Blood (C5), a claustrophobic family drama running all this week. Adrian Dunbar (best known as the incorruptible chief from Line Of Duty) plays an ominously charming doctor in a Galway town, whose affability hides a violent nature.
Jim hogan’s wife has died, apparently from a fall while alone at their home. he’s got an alibi, of course. In fact, he’s got four alibis, all conflicting.
Carolina Main plays his youngest daughter, Cat, the only one of her siblings who sees through their father’s brazen dishonesty. Or is she actually deluded? By the end of this 90-minute opener, as Cat stood above her sleeping dad brandishing a candlestick, we couldn’t know for sure.
It’s the twisted psychology that makes a noirish murder mystery so compelling, and Blood is dripping in it. It’s clear how terrified Cat is — the mere act of driving back towards her childhood home leaves her sick and shaking.
even the genial policeman who stops to check she is all right, and who seems unaware that Mrs hogan has died, might be in on the conspiracy to gaslight Cat and make her doubt her own sanity. Is there no one she can trust? Of course, there isn’t.
the rural expanses of the west of Ireland are not unlike the Scandi landscapes of detective serials such as Wallander, all cold salt winds and grey skies.
the plot sometimes tips over into gothic melodrama, but you’d be mad to miss it: this is a thriller to watch with the gaslights turned down low.
Blood had a different significance in the depressing Storyville documentary Poisoning America: The Devil We Know (BBC4). It traced the effect of C8, a toxic chemical compound used for decades in the production of teflon non-stick pans, as well as Scotchguard sprays, Gore-tex fabrics and numerous other household products.
the film-makers claimed that scientists at the Du Pont manufacturing giant in West Virginia were long aware that this substance caused tumours, birth defects and auto-immune diseases — and that it was virtually indestructible. Once it got into the air and the water supply, through pollution, it might be there for centuries.
By the time they agreed to ban it, following a gargantuan legal case, C8 was present in the blood of 99 per cent of Americans and nearly everyone else on the planet. told you this was depressing.
Like gallons of foaming overflow, spilling from a factory waste pipe, facts and statistics gushed over the viewer in a deluge. there was no end to the torrent of evasive managers, devious scientists, embarrassed lawyers and stricken townsfolk.
Finally, though, the evidence stuck against teflon.