Thrilling? This twerp makes Frank Spencer look dynamic
Follow that! Doctor Foster, the infidelity epic starring Suranne Jones and Bertie Carvel, thrilled millions with its superheated story of a woman scorned and the terrible revenge she meted out.
So a lot is expected of writer Mike Bartlett’s new three-part drama. He boldly tackles an original topic, bullying at work — but so far, Sticks And Stones (ITV) is more dribs and drabs.
Thomas (Ken Nwosu) heads a sales team at an anodyne firm with their open-plan offices in a satellite city outside london. This isn’t quite Ricky Gervais’s office, but it’s in the same business park, so to speak.
with his inspirational slogans and iron-on smile, Thomas plans to be a millionaire by 40. Meanwhile, his junior colleagues are plotting to sabotage his career.
Thomas’s problem is that he’s a bit thick, and more than a bit of a wimp. Heading for a crucial dinner meeting, he doesn’t notice that his subordinates have changed the time on his phone. He misses the appointment.
Hours later, when he realises he’s been tricked, he heads back to the restaurant in his pyjamas and his wife’s coat.
The kindest explanation is that poor old Thomas is easily flustered. And gullible. And a pushover. That’s why he says nothing when sly new boy Andy hijacks his bonus.
But when he follows a trail of arrows around the office, without wondering whether it’s a prank, or just grits his teeth when someone papers his desk with Post-It notes, Thomas looks worse than feeble. He’s making Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em seem like a ruthless entrepreneur.
Thomas has apparently been successful up till now, but we’re left wondering how. Never mind closing a business deal, he’d struggle to close a window.
The drama teeters on the brink of farce, but it isn’t funny. Nor is it very dramatic. we’re watching an incompetent middle manager having a bad week, nothing more.
Surely there’s office CCTV of the twerp who vandalised his desk, for instance. So far, our hero has done nothing except gouge the paintwork on a car with his key, which isn’t exactly admirable.
It’s hard to retain sympathy for Thomas if he doesn’t fight back. within reason, of course — not like 12-year-old Ray and his brother Nathan, 23, who fought back and inflicted more than 70 stab wounds on their abusive stepfather in Responsible Child (BBC2).
Based on a real case, this oneoff dramatisation by Sean Buckley asked whether it was right for a boy this young to be tried for murder in an adult court. It stirred up conflicting emotions: Ray, a solemn and studious boy, looked so innocent, except when he was drenched in blood.
The achingly liberal lawyers and social workers who defended him saw a child driven to violence by a beer-swilling, wife-battering thug. They didn’t see what we did, a schoolboy who could butcher a man as he slept and then go off to the garden to play on his swing.
His defence team bewailed a world that could put a boy of 12 in the dock. They all called him ‘mate’ and ‘my friend’, and were so patronisingly trendy that I wouldn’t have blamed Ray if he’d murdered the lot of them.
Tom Burke, looking tubby and pasty-faced, did a great turn as the heartless prosecution barrister. The star, though, was Billy Barratt as Ray, whose churning emotions were locked away behind a blank stare.
His final scenes, tormented by nightmares in a hellish institution for young offenders, rocked us with their power. This young actor is one to watch.