Who needs coherent plots with chemistry like this
We’ve been starved of new detective dramas during lockdown. To get my whodunit fix, I’ve been forced, albeit fairly happily, to watch reruns of Line of Duty and Foyle’s War. Others have been comfort-viewing vintage Vera, Morse or Midsomer Murders. Last night ITV even resorted to running a public poll to find Britain’s Favourite Detective, just as an excuse to air classic crime-cracking clips.
How welcome, then, that JK Rowling’s dishevelled sleuth should limp back onto our screens with a fresh case to crack in Strike: Lethal White (BBC One). It’s been two-and-ahalf long years since the last series, Career of Evil, climaxed with a cliffhanger at the marriage altar.
As we rejoined prosthetic-legged war veteran Cormoran Strike (the excellent Tom Burke), he was at odds with sidekick Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger) following her ill-advised wedding to the insufferable Matthew (Kerr Logan). Robin’s porcelain doll features were further creased with worry because she was in therapy for PTSD after being violently assaulted during Career of Evil. Her panic attacks were so viscerally portrayed, viewers might have found themselves hyperventilating in sympathy.
Such problems were forgotten when the investigative duo received an unnerving visit from a psychotic, knife-wielding young man with a penchant for etching the Uffington White Horse into every available surface. They were soon embroiled in a labyrinthine mystery involving a long-buried body, hard-left activists and a blackmailed Tory minister (Robert Glenister). The latter led to Robin going undercover in the House of Commons, somewhat implausibly.
Strike’s attraction lies in its two charismatic leads and their sizzling chemistry, rather than the knotty cases. These can feel rushed and clumsy, becoming fiddly to follow in the transition from novel to screen. A reliance on flashbacks hardly helped.
Still, there was much to savour. Its 1960s-style title sequence, seedy Soho setting, ale-swigging hero and dogged procedural plotting give Strike an enjoyably old-fashioned feel. Rowling, writing under her pen name Robert Galbraith, cleverly found a way to sustain the slow-burning romantic tension at the heart of the drama, despite Robin’s recent nuptials. It all galloped along with gusto and noir-ish charm. Cormoran Strike might not be Britain’s Favourite Detective yet but he could enter the frame in future.
Sketch shows are a dying genre, more’s the pity, so it was a rare delight to revisit one of our all-time greats. The Fast Show: Just a Load of Blooming Catchphrases (Gold) was a glorious 25th anniversary special, reuniting the cast of the quotable 1990s phenomenon. Does my bum look big in this? Suit you, sir. Scorchio! You get the idea.
The Fast Show specialised in what Charlie Higson called “sketchlets”. He and partner-in-mirth Paul Whitehouse revealed how they based its rapid-fire style on a sampler tape sent out to the press, resulting in “a comedy show which was just the highlights”.
What made this a cut above was its new material. The team revived some characters, meaning many favourites got a knowing 21st-century update. Womanising aristocrat the 13th Duke of Wybourne had fallen victim to the #Metoo movement. Sex-obsessed tailors Ken and Kenneth lamented how you “couldn’t get away with it nowadays”. Such skits built to a climax that left me breathless with hysteria.
The Fast Show often operated on the cusp of humour and pathos. Higson and Whitehouse rightly declined to revive their most beloved bittersweet creations, country squire Ralph and groundskeeper Ted. However, Whitehouse did don prosthetics to reprise dear old Rowley Birkin QC. Since we last met the rambling retired barrister, he’d allowed fracking on his estate and offended feminists while director-general of the BBC. Naturally, he was still very, very drunk.
Even more poignant were heartfelt tributes to the team members we’ve lost: producer Geoffrey Perkins and, particularly, the great Caroline Aherne. In one tear-jerking silent sketch, John Thomson gave a masterclass as submissive husband Roy, utterly lost without Aherne as his domineering wife, Renée.
This added emotional heft to a retrospective which was far better than it needed to be – made with palpable love and relish for detail. It combined the new with the nostalgic to terrific effect. To deploy yet another blooming catchphrase: brilliant.
Strike: Lethal White ★★★★ The Fast Show: Just a Load of Blooming Catchphrases ★★★★★