This baffling Oedipal saga definitely has big ambitions
Motherfatherson (BBC Two) continues both to baffle and stir. On the one hand, you throw up your hands at the drama’s cloth ear and grandiose overreach. I ask you, what deer chomps obligingly in a glade while a posse of politicos gathers to gaze? But at other times, it cuts through with a fizzing ambition to juggle big ideas.
At its heart, this series is a moral fable about the broken lives of rich and poor alike. The search for a fix is also writ large in the story of the state. Is the panacea offered by irritating opposition leader Angela Howard MP (Sarah Lancashire) no more than a paddockful of unicorns, or can she genuinely heal a nation’s wounds?
One of the niggles created by Tom Rob Smith’s script is that, in taking on such a large canvas, it often has to tell not show. There is no evidence that the electorate is actually suffering – we’re simply informed. Or take the corrupt links between MPS and police. When owlish journalist Maggie (Sinéad Cusack) and Nick (Paul Ready) confronted a sweaty MP with their devastating findings, these discoveries had to be taken on trust because we’ve seen them do barely any legwork.
It could be argued that such a secret nexus is all a bit 2011. Another idea that feels past its sell-by date is that a lone newspaper mogul has the power to anoint an electoral winner. Where Motherfatherson really comes alive is in the Oedipal family saga. Caden Finch (Billy Howle) has already attempted to suckle his mother Kathryn (Helen Mccrory). Now, thanks to the stroke which prevents him from keeping industrial secrets, he poses a mortal threat to his father Max (Richard Gere), who is spying on him.
This fourth episode was stylishly directed by Charles Sturridge (of Brideshead fame), while the integrity of the performances tethers the script’s more outrageous excesses. Howle is undeniably moving as he confronts past iniquities and present wounds. His suicide-and-sex pact with the psychologically damaged veteran Orla (Niamh Algar) was boldly done. I still can’t quite pin down what I think of it all, but a showdown beckons and I’ve no intention of dropping out.
Victoria Wood, a former resident of Morecambe, used to joke that the town is so boring the tide only bothers to come in once a week. But the town is having a bit of a moment. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn randomly canvassed there on Saturday, not wanting to be caught at the People’s Vote march in London. And The Bay (ITV) is attempting to liven up the coastal town’s civic image.
Two episodes in, the array of infractions committed on Morecambe’s patch include murder, drug dealing, police evidence tampering, girl-on-girl fisticuffs in school, talking on the phone while driving and vertical sex in a side street. The list will doubtless lengthen as Lancashire’s riposte to/total rip-off of Broadchurch unfolds.
The murder victims whose bodies turned up at low tide are a pair of teenage twins. It’s as if The Bay literally doesn’t do things by halves. This policy extends to the victims’ stepfather Sean Meredith (Jonas Armstrong). On the night he was meant to be collecting them from the youth club, he instead committed not one, but two infidelities. “I don’t know where you get the energy, to be honest,” snarked DS Lisa Armstrong (Morven Christie), one of the ladies in question, sounding miffed that she’d not manage to satisfy him. “You’ve got stamina, I’ll give you that.”
DS Armstrong is in the odd position, even for a TV detective, of being strikingly unsympathetic. Aside from deleting CCTV footage that linked her to her own investigation, and being horrible to her junior sidekick Med (Taheen Modak), she’s not the best advertisement for single mothers who work as family liaison officers. Her daughter Abbie (Imogen King) has been suspended from school and is being groomed as a drug mule, while her son Rob (Art Parkinson) is an incipient shoplifter. They both get shouted at a lot.
I rather like that I don’t like Lisa, who is winningly played by Christie. The test of The Bay is whether, between them, she and scriptwriter Daragh Carville can maintain the tension in the idea of a copper who may pay a high price for one indiscretion. In yet another plot about a small town where everyone has secrets, hers is much the most intriguing. Motherfatherson ★★★ The Bay ★★★