Last night on television Gabriel Tate This incisive psycho-drama was great – but I’m glad it’s over
T he end of Born to Kill (Channel 4) came as a relief. Relief that the whole harrowing, disturbing and gripping affair was over, but also that writers Kate Ashfield and Tracey Maloneway neither Rowan) allowedyet, Of as towardscourse,he cop-outhad couldto was get somehow homicidala led neveraway conclusionnor away with impossiblyhave navigatedin teen his been handcuffs,that Sam crimeswas bleak. their (Jack someandthe vacuumactionssmall insights seemedbehind his intoto have eyes.his penetratedbehaviour Girlfriend Chrissy difference (Lara between Peake), bored having alienationlearnt the and traumatised psychopathy, was reconciled with her dad Bill (Daniel Mays). And even though Sam’s mother, Jenny (Romola Garai), was left with a son in custody and a husband, Peter, dead, it was hard to think of a better outcome for a woman who had earlier been told that her son’s condition could only be managed, not cured.
Born to Kill was that sort of show.
Richard Coyle’s Peter was very much the old block from which Sam was chipped: at the series’ climax, he had lured his starry-eyed son to his boat as bait for his real target, Jenny. Chrissy had come along had naturally),spoketoo and, recently volumes:on Peter’s learningdied “I’m(at blank that Sam’s sorry. responseher hands,Nice gran to meet His you. purpose Come served,on board.” Sam was bashed then dumped overboard, where suppressed memories of Peter attempting to drown him as a child surfaced. He duly made his own father his final victim. I had a queasy feeling that this might have made Peter rather proud. Born to Kill was an incisive study of psychopathy and a nightmare of parental inadequacy and desperation. Chrissy and Sam needed love without knowing quite what that meant, and from parents who couldn’t provide it in quite the right way: Jenny and Bill, overcompensating for absent partners, smothered their kids and drove them away; Bill’s mother (a horrible bully) and Sam’s dad Peter, meanwhile, were monsters in their different ways. Suspension of disbelief was nigh-on compulsory, but Born to Kill was as much about character, mood and atmosphere as the story itself. Director Bruce Goodison’s eye for an unsettling angle or telling close-up was keen throughout, and a brilliant cast put not a foot wrong. In Jack Rowan, meanwhile, a star has been born. Born to Kill ran the risk of being utterly
Dr Michael Mosley suffers from chronic insomnia. For anyone familiar with his particular brand of documentary making, this won’t come as a surprise: who wouldn’t struggle to sleep knowing that they were going to expose themselves to tear gas, ingest cocktails of mood-altering drugs or swallow a tapeworm cyst in the name of science and entertainment? The pay-off has been some great, Reithlite television, the latest of which was The Truth About Sleep (BBC One).
His mission was to examine the deleterious toll of insufficient sleep on the body, then to rustle up some fixes. The first bit made depressing viewing: as a nation, we’re getting less sleep, and what we do get is of a lower quality, as modern life tilts ever more towards working practices and technology seemingly designed to disrupt sleep patterns. Mosley’s chums in academia produced alarming evidence of links with obesity and type 2 diabetes, while a GP conceded that sleeping pills were a dangerously easy option for doctors and patients under considerable stress. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it appears that insomnia can also be genetic.
Most enlightening was Mosley’s encounter with an Oxford professor who had discovered we have several different body clocks working at once, and occasionally in opposition to each other. Awkward Big Ben metaphors notwithstanding, this was fascinating stuff of which I could have done with more, perhaps instead of the many ad hoc (and surely unscientific) experiments with members of the public.
Many of the solutions were common sense, but still worth repeating: sleep in a cool room with plenty of natural light, avoid booze and caffeine, switch off the smartphone at least an hour before bed. Others were a little more eccentric: mindfulness or a dinner rich in fibre, I understood, but eating two kiwi fruit every night before bed on the basis of apparently anecdotal evidence seemed a bit much, even if you’re an insomniac.
Born to Kill ★★★★ The Truth About Sleep