This drama looked lavish but failed to strike gold
This has been a year of superlative drama: Bodyguard, Killing Eve and A Very English Scandal on the BBC; Unforgotten on ITV; Kiri on Channel 4; Save Me, Succession, and Patrick Melrose on Sky, to name a few. We’ve been so spoiled that merely “OK” series have got a little lost. Trust (BBC Two) was one of those and meandered to its conclusion with nobody really noticing.
In fact, the finale saw something of a quality dip. It dealt with the rippling repercussions of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III (Harris Dickinson). As scene-stealing, stetson-clad fixer James Fletcher Chace (Brendan Fraser) told us, breaking the fourth wall: “They all lived happily ever after? What do you think this is, the movies? Stories don’t just stop.”
Still, there were hopeful endings for everyone except soulless billionaire Getty Sr (Donald Sutherland). Dissolute son John Paul Getty II (Michael Esper) went into drug rehab. Hippy-dippy grandson Getty III married and had a son of his own. Butler Bullimore (Silas Carson) and gardener Dennis (Jo Stone-fewings) embarked on a sweetly hesitant romance. Even cynical Chace sought out the son he’d never met.
On the other side of the tracks, gangster Primo (Luca Marinelli) coldly killed his accomplices, then used the ransom money to build a port in Calabria and establish a cocainesmuggling empire. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the story’s main events – kidnapping, ear-removal, the hostage’s eventual rescue – had already happened. As such, this was just an over-extended “what happened next” sequence.
Trust arrived groaning under the weight of its hefty credentials: created by Simon Beaufoy, directed by (among others) Danny Boyle, an A-list cast. It looked ravishing and was enlivened by Boyle’s signature kinetic visual flourishes. One arresting scene here showed how everything Getty touched turned to gold – which meant that, like King Midas, he starved to death. Not literally, just starved of love.
It was all very lavish and yet that wasn’t enough. The narrative suffered from having nobody to root for. Performances were solid but unspectacular, which is what raises the similar based-on-fact franchise American Crime Story out of the ordinary.
I was amused to see this finale was co-written by Alice Nutter – best known as a former member of pop anarchists Chumbawamba, who infamously poured a jug of water over the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s head at the 1998 Brit Awards. I fear Nutter will be remembered more for that soggy stunt than this middling drama.
From its Ronseal title downwards, The Bisexual (Channel 4) was nothing if not bold. The lesbian dating comedy’s concluding episode began with a long, lingering shot of anti-heroine Leila (creator Desiree Akhavan) sitting in bed, staring into space, eyes slowly brimming with tears.
It lasted for more than a minute, which you don’t often get in this frenetic, get-’em-hooked-before-theychange-channels era. Her nipples and hairy armpits were also visible throughout, just to make the ghost of Mary Whitehouse clutch her pearls in horror.
Leila’s ex-partner Sadie (Maxine Peake) had dropped a bombshell: she’d been artificially inseminated at a sperm bank. Once she stopped reeling from shock, Leila decided she’d like to give co-parenting a go. Sadie declined and they broke up. Meanwhile, “emotionally constipated” novelist Gabe (Brian Gleeson) impulsively proposed to French girlfriend Francisca (Michèlle Guillot) so she could stay in the UK. Of course, it gradually dawned on him that Francisca viewed this as a business arrangement, not a romantic one.
We closed with flatmates Leila and Gabe leaning on each other, quite literally. A relationship born in awkward necessity had evolved into genuine friendship.
A sort of lesbian remix of Channel 4 stablemate Catastrophe, The Bisexual was set in a millennial milieu where characters worked in east London warehouses, launched apps, wrote blogs, binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and wore ostentatious berets.
Sure, most of them were insufferably self-absorbed but this was fearless comedy: not afraid to break taboos, share tender, intimate moments or exploit dramatic silences. A few more actual jokes wouldn’t have gone amiss, though.