A grim, gripping drama that didn’t go for easy answers
‘What goes around comes around,” said the subject of The Interrogation of Tony Martin (Channel 4, Sunday) with a chilling sneer. “That’s how things are, boy.” This one-off “verbatim drama”, with every word taken from original transcripts, recreated police interviews with the reclusive farmer who confronted two burglars when they broke into his remote Norfolk home one infamous night in 1999. Was he a gung-ho vigilante or just a vulnerable man trying to protect himself? Easy answers weren’t forthcoming, which was perhaps to be expected from a case that fiercely divided public opinion.
Martin (a pugnacious performance from Steve Pemberton) made for an erratic murder suspect, veering from frightened confusion to dissembling arrogance, while DC Peters (Daniel Mays) patiently tried to unpick his inconsistent version of events. Martin claimed that he’d fired his pump-action shotgun from the stairs when a torch was shone into his eyes. The prosecution would later prove that he shot the intruders in the back as they fled.
Pemberton and Mays were both excellent as ever, but the drama’s secret weapon was Stuart Graham as DS Newton, who communicated his scepticism with sidelong glances and slight changes of facial expression. The way in which he put on his glasses and took them off again was a masterclass in subtle exasperation.
Written and directed by David Nath, this was provocative, talking-point drama – intensely claustrophobic, psychologically fascinating and grimly absorbing. The one-room setting was stagey, the circuitous dialogue Pinter-esque at points. Overhead shots were reminiscent of a CCTV feed, while the colour palette of greys and blues provided a cold institutional feel.
A full dramatisation would have inevitably ended up being partisan in one direction or another. With its narrow focus on the verbatim interviews alone, this approach enabled viewers to make up their own minds.
That is, until an epilogue interview with the real Tony Martin, outside the now boarded-up Bleak House. He wasn’t just defiantly unrepentant but showed a startling lack of remorse about gunning down 16-year-old Fred Barras. Indeed, he insisted he’d do it again. It was, fittingly, a bleak ending.
Ihaven’t cared this much about penguins since my childhood love of the chocolate biscuit. The second episode of Dynasties (BBC One, Sunday) headed to Atka Bay in Antarctica to follow a colony of Emperor penguins battling to survive the coldest, cruellest winter on Earth.
This was wildlife documentary as an epic film, from the moment the first penguin appeared silhouetted in the frozen landscape, slowly waddling into view like an avian Lawrence of Arabia. He was soon joined by many more, gathering to breed the next generation. We saw a penguin version of Strictly Come Dancing, as newly formed couples cemented their bond by moving together in symphony. “Penguins are beautifully designed for many things,” said David Attenborough with understated comic timing. “But mating isn’t one of them.” Cue an ungainly male falling off his paramour and huffing sulkily.
The sun set for two months, leaving our cast of thousands in a twilight zone. The subsequent struggle was full of heart-wrenching moments. The phantom pregnancy where a female kept an egg-sized snowball on her feet. The corpses and abandoned eggs when a storm cleared. The mothers whose chicks had died, desperately trying to kidnap other babies. The chick lost in the blizzard, chirruping for its parents. The mother using her beak as an ice-pick to heroically haul herself out of a ravine.
This stately hour of television oozed prestige from every pixel. Shot over a year in brutal conditions, the gorgeous photography flitted from intimate close-up to painterly long shot. Stirring music swelled and ebbed to enhance emotion without ever becoming manipulative or intrusive. And then, of course, came Attenborough’s commentary.
So comfortingly familiar have the 92-year-old’s whispery tones become, it’s almost like he narrates nature itself. One day, nature programming will feel deeply strange without him. It’s almost too awful to contemplate. In the meantime, drink in Dynasties and be thankful.
The Interrogation of Tony Martin ★★★★ Dynasties ★★★★★