A fine drama let down by its own pomposity
Ambition is no bad thing, but the BBC’S most naked attempt to emulate Netflix to date has been an object lesson in less being more. So much of the dialogue in Motherfatherson (BBC Two) has felt overworked, so many of its sub-plots perfunctory (the missing girl?), so many allegories hammered home so vigorously. Yet frustratingly, there was a fine drama straining to get out from underneath it all, bolstered by some memorable performances, not least from the central trio of Helen Mccrory, Billy Howle and Richard Gere.
Mccrory has played queens and countesses but has surely never had such a magnificent array of frocks as Kathryn here; her combination of tenderness, hauteur and rekindled ambition was often electrifying. Howle was even more extraordinary, bringing pure commitment to the really difficult role of family scion Caden as he recovered from profound physical and psychological trauma. Gere had fun as the monstrous media tycoon Max, although it felt like both actor and character had more to give. Certainly, his lazy-lidded star quality served him better as charismatic authoritarian than tormented patriarch. At the end of the final episode last night, with Caden cut loose and Kathryn left to
clean up his mess, we left him eyeing new worlds to conquer, bugs in place, politicians courted, spots unchanged and Larkin’s parental maxim unsullied.
By contrast, everyone outside the family felt two-dimensional. Paul Ready and Sinead Cusack’s journalists came, railed and then went again, one to meet her maker, the other to Israel. Damaged soldier Orla performed her function and redeemed the errant Caden as Niamh Algar confirmed her fearless talent, recently showcased in Channel 4’s Pure and The Bisexual.
Joseph Mawle served the plot as elegantly as one would expect, while Danny Sapani and Sarah Lancashire lent real weight to the cardboard characters of the compromised, compromising PM and the fascist with her own lunatic blonde fringe.
Ultimately, the narrative overreached and the dialogue underserved: an unfortunate combination. In spite of the contemporary debates over democracy, populism and exploiting division, it felt oddly removed from reality, filmed in a heightened manner, part-dream, part-nightmare, that was for a time effective and unsettling but eventually discombobulating and distancing. What could have been a tight, compelling and intimate four episodes was instead a distended, occasionally daft and pompous eight.
Chimerica (Channel 4), at half the length and twice the intensity of
Motherfatherson, continues its lean and purposeful drive towards its destination. It probably helped that its three-hour stage incarnation, as brilliant as it was, has had its claws sharpened and insights honed by creator Lucy Kirkwood updating proceedings from 2012 to 2016 and the Trump election; the personal and political felt naturally, urgently entwined, rather than glued on.
On the one hand, the second episode was a classic gumshoe thriller, with Alessandro Nivola’s Lee Berger, teetering between maverick and messianic, and Cherry Jones’s wry, ego-pricking Mel Kincaid pounding pavements, working contacts, greasing palms and bending laws to track down the man they suspected was Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man. Having trailed around launderettes, offices and florists, local colour enhancing rather than distracting from the story, a clandestine rendezvous on a park bench was the least they deserved, even if it was only with their editor (F Murray Abraham). It all furthered the impression that this was at least in part a fine cover version of Alan J Pakula’s Seventies conspiracy thrillers.
Less familiar and even more absorbing was the bleary-eyed world of Lee’s friend Zhang Lin (Terry Chen), finding booze an inadequate replacement for the wife he lost in the Tiananmen Square massacre. His gradual emergence from an alcoholic haze, due to a possible romance with his quietly subversive neighbour, appeared derailed by the woman’s sudden disappearance and apparent “re-education” at the hands of the Chinese authorities. Instead, we left him declaring “I am awake”, suggesting that the hero of this saga may not be the white American lone wolf that we’re used to seeing.
And while it was clear where Kirkwood’s sympathies lay, deft writing and performances have so far ensured Chimerica could never be dismissed as left-wing polemic. Hypocrisy lurked on all sides, yet there is coherence among the chaos and optimism as the world goes to hell.
Motherfatherson ★★ Chimerica ★★★★