This Eastenders spin-off was a chip off the old block
They came, they conquered, they vanished. Eastenders couple Kat and Alfie Moon (played by Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie), known as Albert Square’s leopard-print-clad temptress and diamond geezer, dominated the soap for 13 years with their will-they-won’tthey relationship and wild storylines including baby-snatching and a lottery win. They’re up there with the greats of TV couples, but, in 2015, they departed for a life in Spain.
Not many duos warrant their own spin-off, but the Moons returned to BBC One in their own drama series, Kat and Alfie: Redwater, set in a picturesque Irish harbour village where Kat was searching for her son.
Redwater has the sheen of primetime TV – high production values, a stirring soundtrack, and a strong ensemble cast including Fionnula Flanagan (Lost) as suspicious matriarch Agnes and Game of Thrones’s Ian Mcelhinney as her respected husband Lance. Directed by Jesper Nielsen, the master behind Danish political drama Borgen, it’s also the brainchild of Dominic Treadwell-collins, who not only dragged Eastenders out of the doldrums by introducing Danny Dyer’s Carter family, but applied his deft touch to the programme’s 30th anniversary celebrations with the Lucy Beale whodunit saga.
Twenty years ago, Eastenders broadcast a similar spin-off in which Pauline Fowler travelled to Dublin to find her long-lost sister. It created embarrassing Irish stereotypes, for which the BBC apologised. However, this first episode implied that these clichés aren’t overly offensive this time round. Sure, it’s still a dated vision of an Irish community: Alfie was accepted by the locals by downing his Guinness, while Kat knocked back the whiskey chasers. Thankfully, there’s enough substance in the murky plot to warrant further intrigue and the couple are much softer, more amiable, perhaps, though the bird-brained Kat referring to Lance – who dresses like Clint Eastwood and travels by horse – as Wyatt Earp is harder to swallow.
There was a twist, involving murder at the hands of the flinty-eyed hipster vicar (Oisin Stack), which came all of a sudden. “Do you want a minute?” said the doomed Lance as he blurted out the friar’s true parentage. Nielsen has compared the show to Twin Peaks and Broadchurch and that is a bit of a stretch. Judging by this first episode, Redwater is like neither of these – but it’s still a serviceable mystery that rattles along without any elaborate conspiracy. Rachel Ward
What is it with Channel 4 and cruel programme titles? From The Missing Chink and Obsessive Compulsive Hoarder to The Undateables and Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, the list is long and toxic. While the channel’s comedy and drama output has been exciting and diverse recently, the exploitative nature of its documentaries is still troubling, as with last night’s Shutins: Britain’s Fattest Woman.
This purported to be a poignant study into the effects of obesity. The woman in question was Sharon Hill who, two years ago, took part in Channel 4’s Shut-ins: Britain’s Fattest People, undergoing radical bariatric surgery to reduce her weight from 46 to 33 stone. It was a success story, of sorts. But there was a slight whiff of schadenfreude, too, as the cameras captured her having a tantrum when her husband, Andrew, failed to cut up her cake precisely the way she liked it; or sulking when a psychiatrist seized all the chocolate from her house.
Both these scenes also featured in the new documentary, which retold her story and then moved things forward. “My body is in too much pain to do most things,” said Hill, tearfully. “Some days I hurt so much, all I wanna do is sit and cry.” Revealing that she’d regained much of the weight she’d lost, the programme then followed her as she received her second bariatric operation, a mini gastric bypass. Again, we were reminded that binge-eating does not make you happy; again, we were fed a maudlin narrative as Hill, now 36, showed the acute psychological effects of trying to get down to 30 stone.
The film’s saving grace was Hill herself. Petulant and faint-hearted, her disposition by the end of the show was sunnier and more resolute. Asked what she now sees in the mirror, she replied with a smile. “I still see somebody fat, ’cause I am fat. But I do see hope, because things have changed. Things are different.” Patrick Smith