Homeland comes to East Anglia in this fearless drama
ITV’S new six-parter Fearless was nothing if not different: a conspiracy thriller with a top-flight cast that brought all the brimming self-confidence of Homeland to remote East Anglia, like a brash American crashing a garden party. Indeed, one of the best things about it was that, despite the focus of this first episode being a small-town Suffolk murder and miscarriage of justice, it clearly had no intention of being just another crime procedural. It was definitely going for the global perspective.
Helen Mccrory played Emma Banville, a human rights lawyer with a mysterious activist past and a penchant for hopeless cases. She’s the sort of TV lawyer who drives a clapped-out old Volvo to prove she’s above material concerns. Having been contacted by the former partner of a man imprisoned for the murder of a schoolgirl, Emma rooted about in the case files a bit and, amazingly, found sufficient evidence to prove that he’d been fitted up.
Meanwhile, she was under 24-hour surveillance by the counter-terrorism squad in London (something they can barely manage for actual terrorists) for no apparent reason other than that a client of hers had flown to Syria. Even the simple act of taking the sim card out of her phone resulted in a couple of spooks all but running her off the road and threatening her. It was as if creator Patrick Harbinson has spent so much time writing Homeland and 24 for Hollywood that he forgot how unobtrusive and under-resourced the intelligence services are on this side of the pond.
But that wasn’t altogether a bad thing and if Fearless was a touch overwrought, with too many characters jostling for attention and a great deal of threat looming without consequence, it was also gripping and undeniably intriguing. Bafta winner Wunmi Mosaku didn’t have much screen time but made her presence felt intensely as the policewoman behind the fit-up and, possibly, a whole lot more. Michael Gambon also impressed in a scene bolted on to the end of this opener as a British éminence grise threatened by the quashing of the conviction and harassed by a CIA agent (Robin Weigert) seemingly bent on blackmail.
With Mccrory as magnetic a screen presence as ever, and Fearless’s absolute confidence in its own sinister internal logic carrying it forward relentlessly, it was impossible to resist the impression that something fiendishly exciting would come along, eventually, if only we allowed enough time.
Not so fraught but dramatic in its own gentle way was Amazing Animal Births (ITV), which offered proof that even the simple television formats can be winners. This is a series that invited us to look on in unsophisticated awe at “the extraordinary moment when a little baby comes into a huge world”.
Each birth was an opportunity for wide-eyed wonder. Even the relatively mundane occurrence of a ewe struggling to deliver a lamb in the Yorkshire Dales was replete with emotion for zoologist and presenter Lucy Cooke, who shared the fact that her grandfather had been a shepherd, and that she was keen to see if lambing was in her blood.
Well, not obviously was the answer to that, but, fortunately, she had some experienced sheep farmers by her side to show her how to perform an assisted delivery, and get the newborn lamb to bond with its mother.
“That was just the most amazing feeling, I feel suddenly totally emotional, totally overwhelmed by the experience,” bleated Cooke like a typical townie while her rustic minders stared stoically on. But the wonderment on her face and the quiver in her voice were genuine.
The next birth featured was the far-rarer instance of a black rhino calving at a wildlife conservation centre in Kent. Fixed rig cameras captured this significant moment for a critically endangered species, allowing Cooke a remote ringside seat. Once again, the cute factor was uppermost in the editing, the awkward little newborn all head and legs struggling to its feet, or its five-ton mother reacting with astonishing speed when it toppled over into a feeding trough.
Here, Cooke’s commentary was surplus to requirement. Your skin would have had to be thicker than a rhino’s not to be enchanted by the sight of this surprisingly sensitive mother and her precious new calf nuzzling together in the hay.
Fearless Amazing Animal Births