A stylish but patchy drama with a Getty-sized budget
There was an irony to the opening of (BBC Two), the Danny Boyledirected, American TV series about John Paul Getty, then the world’s richest private citizen. The camera swept across the lawns of a Hollywood mansion as an extravagant party took place, peopled by the young, the beautiful and the rich. Pink Floyd’s Money blared from the soundtrack, in case you didn’t get the point.
But while the choice of music, of course, referred to the over-the-top party, it could just as much be about Trust’s high production values. This was the sort of Bacchanalian scene, with hundreds of extras and highflying shots, that suggests a Gettyesque budget. I use Getty-esque to mean incredibly rich, of course, but judging from this bitter family drama, it could mean the opposite: mean and miserable.
The series centres around oil baron John Paul Snr (Donald Sutherland), who despises his sons, all of whom are a huge disappointment and not fit to take over the family firm. Enter, the errant grandson (John Paul III) who, because he shows an interest in Getty’s art and the oil business, is anointed as successor. Never mind that he’s an irritating, self-centred twerp with a desperate need for cash (he owes some criminals big-time), he is the chosen one. That is, as we will later see, until he gets kidnapped.
To tell this story, Boyle uses a full range of directorial bells and whistles, aided by that Getty-esque budget: sweeping shots, luxurious set pieces in the grandiose home and glitzy scenes that look like TV adverts.
Luckily, at the heart of the drama there is a towering performance from Sutherland: irascible, powerful and malicious, it is a gripping portrayal – one which actually makes us rather like the hateful, tight-fisted old boy. However, apart from his main girlfriend Penelope (Anna Chancellor), the rest of the family are unimpressive ciphers, meaning the drama comes alive only when Sutherland is on screen.
So, while the production is lavish, the stylised, in-your-face storytelling and the patchy characterisation make Trust hard work. With nine more episodes to come, it is difficult to see who will stick with it till the end.
Joanna Lumley certainly has her own quirky presenting style. Last night, in Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure (ITV), when exploring the history of Venice’s silk trade, she watched the last remaining hand loom in operation and was touched. “In the world, in the olden days,” she told us, “every bit of fabric was made on looms like this. Gee whizz. Respect.”
I am sure you’d never hear David Attenborough or David Starkey saying “Gee whizz. Respect”. But that’s what makes Lumley so successful: she is simply herself. As such, her travelogues have been on our screens for 10 years, starting on the Nile in 2008. This time she is exploring the Silk Road, the ancient trading route between Europe and the Far East.
Few other people would get away with the fact-light content and broad-strokes history, but Lumley is such an amiable travelling companion, it is forgiven. She (and her production team) know to keep the mixture frothy, with just enough facts to let viewers feel they are learning something (Marco Polo left home at 17, Venice was hit by bubonic plague three times).
This opening episode was a whistle-stop trip from Venice to the far side of Turkey and, as usual, Lumley was resolutely upbeat. She loved Venice, of course (“absolutely astounding”), loved Istanbul (“fabulous”) and loved the subterranean city of Cappadocia (“so wonderful”). She even loved her sleeping compartment in a Turkish train (“so divine”) and a herders’ shack in the mountains (“how lovely”).
A church with religious wall paintings provided more deliciously idiosyncratic description: “As ever, I am making this up as I go along, with the faintest grasp of my Christian upbringing, at a wonderful convent where they told us all this, and I was sharpening my pencil at the back of the class and drawing pictures of Elvis Presley.”
Earlier this year, I saw Lumley shopping in a supermarket in London, wafting through the aisles, looking at once perfectly at home yet much more composed and elegant than the rest of us. And that is how she comes across on her travels: one of us, yet not one of us. More how we might like to be.