Liar is an object lesson in how to ruin a good TV show
If you stuck with (ITV) to the bitter end, you will have learned that Laura Nielson was framed for Andrew Earlham’s murder, but also that she actually did it. If you guessed this, well done. Perhaps the writers thought it would be doubly satisfying. Either that, or they were writing under duress. At one point, investigating officer DI Karen Renton said: “It’s clear to me this story’s bulls---,” and it felt as if it might have been inserted into the script as a mea culpa.
Liar is an object lesson in how to ruin a show’s reputation: take a halfway decent first series, bring it back for the sake of ratings, and trash it. The shifting timelines meant we had to keep reminding ourselves if Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd) was dead yet.
We reached peak daftness some time ago when Earlham was tied up and dumped at sea, only to swim a mile back to shore in his suit. After that, the fact that he was masterminding an elaborate plot to blackmail the police and fit up Laura, all from the confines of a shipping container that handily had a supply of electric light, just seemed by the by. In its way it was entertaining television, just to see what nonsense they would come up with next.
Writers Harry and Jack Williams solved the snags in the plot by bulldozing through them. Need to find out what DS Rory Maxwell is up to? Just have Laura steal his phone with ace pickpocketing skills and crack his pincode in five seconds. Want to find the link between Earlham and a mysterious stranger? Break into Earlham’s house (key under a plant pot, of course) and find the evidence in under a minute.
The nasty little surprise was that Earlham’s accomplice, Oliver Graham – another GHB rapist, because why have one in the story when you can have two? – was a primary school head teacher. There was no sensible explanation as to why Laura (Joanne Froggatt) didn’t go to the police and say truthfully that she had killed Earlham in self-defence. By the end, her character was simply irritating, but not as much as Katherine Kelly’s swaggeringly awful DI Renton. In the final scene, Laura and her date discussed going on with life “like none of this ever happened”. Wise advice for all concerned.
China is having something of a nightmare in the public relations department at the moment, so perhaps it was the BBC’S famed pursuit of impartiality that led it to schedule Du Fu: China’s Great Poet on BBC Four. I confess to being unfamiliar with him so tuned in to this for a little bit of education. According to the experts, Du Fu is to be spoken of in the same breath as Shakespeare and Dante, as one of the poets who created “values by which poetry is judged”.
The documentary was presented by Michael Wood, an accomplished television historian (last seen in 2016’s The Story of China) and professor of public history at the University of Manchester who leans more toward the latter in his presenting style. This meant the programme was focused on the subject, rather than a desire to hog the limelight as much as possible. He was a pleasant guide, and being known in the 1980s as “the thinking woman’s crumpet” doesn’t seem to have gone to his head.
The important places in Du Fu’s life are now tourist spots, which meant that this history sometimes came close to travelogue. The boat trip down the Yangtse looked particularly pleasant.
We learned that Du Fu was a civil servant and poet at a time – the eighth century – when the two went hand in hand. It was quite an eventful life, from the court of the Tang dynasty to forced labour under rebel rule. He escaped, fled as a refugee, and endured starvation and suffering. But he kept writing through it all, celebrating the simple joys of existence.
At times, the history felt like a bit of a slog – how could it not, with a life like that? More interesting was the question of why Du Fu is so revered in China today (in his lifetime, he was not). Although assorted Chinese people that Wood spoke to offered their own theories, Wood didn’t quite get to the heart of this, explaining in poetic but vague terms at the beginning that “for the Chinese people, it’s poetry that gives the truest history of the human heart”. Still, the great treat was Sir Ian Mckellen reciting Du Fu’s poetry in a serene, meditative style and letting us absorb their beauty.
Liar ★★
Du Fu: China’s Great Poet ★★★