The hunter became the hunted in a toothless show
On Monday, football fans watched through their fingers as the Three Lions got slayed by Iceland. Now came the turn of actual big cats in
The Women Who Kill Lions (Channel 4), a documentary about the rise of female trophy hunters. Is it worse for women to indulge in a pastime that men have pursued for so long?
In 2013, US TV presenter Melissa Bachman sparked worldwide outrage by posing smugly with the body of a lion she’d shot in South Africa. In 2014, Texan cheerleader Kendall Jones was similarly vilified for posting Facebook pictures of herself next to dead elephants and leopards. Much of the abuse came from the UK.
Was the online trolling they received more vicious because they were women? I’d argue both yes (the abuse was worse, with a nasty seam of misogynistic violence) and no. The internet does provide a voice for chauvinist cowards and bedsit bullies, sure. Last year, though, a Minnesota dentist attracted stronger criticism for killing Cecil the Lion – and this one, Walter Palmer, was male.
This film followed two big game huntresses, Rebecca Francis and Jacine Jadresko, in a bid to understand their motives. Wyoming rancher Francis’s photograph of her posing with a dead giraffe became a cause célèbre and, in disgust, comedian Ricky Gervais shared the picture with his millions of Twitter followers.
She was a dead shot with bow and arrow, and we saw her experience “buck fever”, trembling with adrenalin after felling a black-tailed deer. However, the stress of daily hate mail led to health problems. By the time the credits rolled, Francis had pulled out of filming.
Croatian-Canadian Jadresko was a less sympathetic character. A millionaire’s daughter with tattoos, a pit bull and possible daddy issues, she was teaching her 10-year-old son Diesel (presumably conceived in a petrol station or denim shop) to hunt. They high-fived when he shot a robin out of the sky for fun. She used bear skulls as lamps and actively enjoyed her notoriety.
Of course, hunting has always happened – it’s the oldest profession, ahead of prostitution. What’s new is the trend for hunters to show off kills online, unrepentant cheesy grins on their faces; as if they’re taunting animal rights types, provoking a reaction because, deep down, they know it’s needlessly cruel.
The film ended abruptly and provided few answers. It would have been fascinating to see what Louis Theroux would have done with the subject. Ultimately, unlike the poor lions, this documentary lacked bite.
“All the way with LBJ” was Lyndon B Johnson’s campaign slogan and most of it provided the title for All The Way (Sky Atlantic), a feature-length drama about “the accidental President” sworn in after the assassination of JFK.
These were tumultuous times, so there was no settling-in period while Johnson (Bryan Cranston) got his feet under the Resolute desk. Upon arrival in the White House, he had to deal with the escalating Vietnam War, while pushing through the Civil Rights Act under pressure from Martin Luther King.
Tension came from Johnson’s precarious position: torn between liberals and traditionalists, between diluting the historic bill’s content and alienating the “Dixiecrats” who brought him to power. This was government as gladiatorial combat. As Johnson snarled: “Politics is war by other means? Bulls--t. Politics is war, period.”
Newsreel footage and on-screen captions reminded us this was fact, not fiction. Adapted from Robert Schenkkan’s Broadway play, the film betrayed its theatrical roots with a densely talky script, the action tending to take place in beige meeting rooms or chintzy hotel suites. However, it was given barrelling momentum by its star’s tour de force performance.
Reprising his Tony-winning stage role, Cranston (best known in the UK as Walter White in Breaking Bad) was restlessly physical yet disarmingly vulnerable. He bawled threats in one scene, sobbed with self-pity the next. He guzzled whisky, had a hair-trigger temper, told homespun anecdotes and held meetings on the loo.
The supporting cast was solid but thoroughly eclipsed. Just as Johnson steamrolled opposition en route to a landslide 1964 election victory, so Cranston’s charisma blew everyone else clean off screen. The actor also went “all the way” and it was absorbing to watch.