Normal People’s Connell salvages plodding thriller
Have you been suffering from Paul Mescal withdrawal symptoms? For a few heady weeks, it seemed as if everyone had fallen in love with the Irish actor thanks to his role as Connell in Normal People. Well, rejoice, because he is back, in a thriller called The Deceived (Channel 5).
And he was essentially playing the same character, except this time he was a builder. This means that, instead of looking dreamy while awkwardly discussing his feelings, he looked dreamy while awkwardly saying things like: “Place is a deathtrap. See that? Polyurethane foam. Basically solid petroleum.” Phwoar!
The Deceived is not very good, which isn’t to say it’s unenjoyable. Surprisingly, one of the writers is Lisa Mcgee, creator of the brilliant Derry Girls. The other is her husband, Tobias Beer. It played out like a trashy but fun holiday read and there was enough intrigue to entice me to watch a second episode (it is running over four consecutive nights this week).
But the drama was let down by the screenplay, which was plodding, and the heroine, who was dreary. Emily Reid (seen recently as the luckless Sophia Trenchard in Belgravia) was Ophelia, a Cambridge University student who fell for her lecturer, Michael Callaghan. He was played by Emmett J Scanlan, and we knew not to trust him because he had a sinister beard. Michael said his wife didn’t understand him, and gave Emily a copy of his novel. Before you could say “Do 40-something men really wear tweed three-piece suits these days?”, they were having an affair.
Ophelia narrated the action in laborious voiceover (“That’s when I should have walked away. But how could I have known where it would lead?”) and when Michael did a disappearing act you could hardly blame him. She tracked him down to County Galway and told him she was pregnant, which was either a lie or so badly sketched that it didn’t seem remotely believable.
But the switch to Ireland saw the plot take a turn for the better as it moved into Daphne du Maurier territory: a mysterious fire, a dead wife, a creepy mother-in-law, ghostly goings-on. You might object to staying in a house in which your boyfriend’s wife recently burned to death, or to the fact that he starts dressing you in her clothes, but Ophelia did not appear to have a very probing mind. Then again, who wouldn’t want to stay in a house as handsome as that? Especially when it comes with a handsome builder.
Some football managers end up in entertainment shows: look at Harry Redknapp and his lateflowering showbiz career. Jürgen Klopp started out in one, appearing on a German game show back in 1995 when he was a little-known player for Mainz in the Bundesliga 2. The footage was dug out for Jürgen Klopp: Germany’s Greatest Export (Channel 4), and watching him laugh goodnaturedly as he was mocked by the host was to see a man entirely at ease with himself. Try to imagine, if you will, Roy Keane making a similarly amiable appearance on Blankety Blank.
We’ll take it as read that Liverpool fans enjoyed this documentary, celebrating as it did a man who led the team to a first league title in 30 years, and picked up a Champions League trophy along the way. But Channel 4 doesn’t usually make films that play like extended Football Focus features and stick them in primetime. Klopp has the likeability factor, and charisma by the bucketload, which meant that this breezy profile had a broad appeal.
If the title brought to mind a beer advert, the sponsors were doing their job. It was brought to you by Channel 4 and Erdinger Weissbräu, the brewery for which Klopp is an ambassador. An accompanying press release burbled about “new and innovative ways to integrate our client’s brands closer to the content that audiences love… a perfect example of partnership between brand, media partner and talent.”
No doubt this shaped the tone of the documentary, which had the usual elements of a football package – talking heads, archive footage – but also tried to position Klopp as the hipster’s choice. It had one of those scripts (read by David Morrissey, a Liverpool fan) that thinks it is poetic: “Then I was all alone – no ferries, just the seagulls…” Really, Klopp’s rise from average footballer to inspirational manager was irresistible enough. There were decent tributes from Sir Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard, and enough footage of Klopp himself, joking his way through press conferences, to keep us happy.
The Deceived ★★★
Jürgen Klopp: Germany’s Greatest Export ★★★