A real star turn in a satisfyingly dark finale
Amere fortnight ago, the titular heroine of Paula (BBC Two) had an ill-advised one-night stand with her handsome handyman. When the credits rolled on this series finale, four people and one dog were dead as a result.
Playwright Conor Mcpherson’s three-part psychological thriller about a damaged, self-destructive chemistry teacher at a Belfast school reached its searing climax with scares and twists that took the breath away. As we rejoined them, both the enigmatic Paula (an electrifying performance from rising star Denise Gough) and infatuated cop Mac (Owen Mcdonnell) were nursing their wounds after last week’s balaclava-clad attack by psychopathic white van man James (Tom Hughes). With the villain at last languishing in police custody, where could this story go now? Into even darker corners, it transpired.
When Mac dug into James’s past, he found a disturbing childhood trauma that explained his ghostly hallucinations. Meanwhile, Paula lost both her job and her brother, who never recovered from the fire started by James. Small consolation came from her adoption of a stray spaniel, although even that came about in curious circumstances – and was doomed to end badly.
Mcpherson spooked us with creepy sequences in a boarded-up house and at a fairground. When James was eventually released on bail, Paula confronted her tormentor one last time – except this time, she was prepared for a fight. Terrifyingly prepared, in fact – wreaking her revenge by tapping into James’s worst nightmares. Recalling films like Kill Bill Vol 2 and The Vanishing, this wasn’t a scene for viewers with claustrophobic tendencies.
It was a macabre, wilfully downbeat ending, yet with a glimmer of optimism in the final frame. Could there be a happy ending for Paula, her unborn baby and Mac? A long shot, sure, but we needed something to cling to amid all the gloom.
With its sparse script, supernatural flourishes and unpredictable plotting, Paula might have been uneven but it was also bold, memorable and never less than compelling. Samuel Sim’s haunting score ramped up the foreboding atmosphere. And in award-winning stage actress Gough – whose brilliantly expressive face the camera couldn’t help lingering on – this surprising series might just have heralded the arrival of a major TV talent.
Oprah Winfrey’s media empire often overshadows her considerable gifts as an actress. She chooses roles wisely, having starred in two award-gobbling films (The Color Purple and Selma). So it was a rare treat to see her take the lead in
The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks (Sky Atlantic), an emotionally charged factual drama about “the mother of modern medicine”.
In 1951, humble tobacco farmer Lacks had cancerous cells removed from her body without her knowledge or consent. They could be replicated indefinitely, meaning that Lacks inadvertently became instrumental in the fight against all sorts of diseases. Yet she was airbrushed from history. Her children couldn’t even afford healthcare to benefit from the advances their mother brought.
Based on Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book, this film followed the attempts of daughter Deborah (Winfrey) to reclaim her mother’s legacy, spurred on by scientific journalist Skloot (Rose Byrne). As Deborah put it: “Our family’s the only people who ain’t made a dime off our own mama’s cells.”
The two leads were excellent, as the focus gradually shifted from the earnest Skloot to the erratic, embittered Deborah (refreshingly, no attempt was made to paint her in a saintly light). This was a story of whitewashing, medical ethics and genealogical discovery, as Deborah got to know the mother who died when she was two and uncovered dark family secrets en route.
This was a typically classy HBO production, handsomely shot around urban Baltimore and rural Virginia. Evocative sepia-tinted flashbacks swung to Branford Marsalis’s jazzy score. But scenes of journalism – rifling through papers, thoughtfully chewing pens, tapping at keyboards – aren’t the most visually thrilling screen spectacle. The film also tended towards the tear-jerkingly sentimental. As a portrait of unlikely female friendship and impassioned campaigning, though, it did justice to little-known heroine Lacks.