Grantchester would be a car crash without Robson Green
Grantchester (ITV1) is a global hit. I think this is because it makes the countryside look lovely, features a sexy vicar, and generally presents a bucolic picture of Britain that foreigners may imagine still exists, rather than a country of mobile-phone muggings and exasperated people trying to work self-service checkouts.
There are murders all over the place, and social issues are tackled, but in a nice, unthreatening way. It’s Call the Midwife on a motorbike. And it has a wide international appeal. Robson Green, who plays DCI Geordie Keating, told recently of visiting the Australian Outback to make his fishing show. “I was with what I’d call really stereotypical Australian blokes who run a cod hatchery, who told me that Grantchester is their favourite show. I had the same reaction in Alaska, when I was filming on a glacier and a bunch of Americans started going, ‘It’s Geordie!’”
As Reverend Will Davenport, Tom Brittney is the lead character. But Green is the beating heart of the show. As we begin series eight – which has jumped forward to the early 1960s – Geordie is facing forced retirement at the instigation of his “stuck-up, pen-pushing halfwit” of a boss. I know Grantchester survived the departure of James Norton – and ITV has announced that Brittney will leave in series nine – but Grantchester without Robson Green would be a step too far. Will is now expecting a baby with Bonnie (Charlotte Ritchie) and is generally being a good egg. The murder mystery in this episode involved a charity motorbike race, and one of its young riders ended up dead. It was perfunctory stuff but Grantchester is the opposite of, say, Silent Witness, in which the plot’s the thing. The crimes here are secondary to the characters.
As ever, the show brings diversity to its period setting – in last night’s episode, one of the bikers was black and deaf and a mysterious rider called Lightning turned out to be a woman, who disguised her identity because women weren’t allowed to compete – but it doesn’t bash you over the head with its politics. The main problem at the moment seems to be that the show has run out of steam and needs something to perk it up.
Now, spoilers coming up: at the end of the episode, Will had a collision with a man who stepped out in front of his motorbike. An event that sets him on a downward spiral for the rest of the season (I’ve read the series notes), in which he wrestles with guilt and self-loathing. It all sounds a bit gloomy. Let’s hope Geordie rides to the rescue.
Remember when Facebook seemed harmless? Just a place to look up photos of our old school crush and get reminders of birthdays, all while failing to grasp that we were giving away our personal data?
These days, Facebook doesn’t seem so benign, although millions of us still use it (my school crush isn’t on there, but I live in hope). In Zuckerberg:
King of the Metaverse (Sky Docs), one former executive put it this way: “When I first joined, movies were being made; the founder was on the cover of Time magazine; you’re overthrowing dictators. Now, you’re being told you destroyed democracy.”
The film traced Facebook from Zuckerberg’s invention to world domination (now Meta, the company also owns Instagram and Whatsapp) and scandals involving data harvesting, Donald Trump and allegations by a whistleblower (denied by the company) that Meta had knowingly put profits before children’s mental nhealth. The spread of misinformation is a danger, as illustrated here with a case study on Myanmar.
It is one of those effective films that says nothing new, but pulls together the available information in a coherent manner. It was clearly explained using the example of Trump’s team first selling Make America Great caps on Facebook, then asking the company to put a Trump 2016 ad in front of everybody with similar characteristics to the people who bought the caps.
Zuckerberg is not interviewed, but archive interviews and news footage chronicled the shaping of his image by corporate PRS. When he appeared before Congress, it was requested that the air conditioning be turned up high, so that he didn’t sweat on camera.
Most fascinating was hearing Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2016 digital campaign-manager, discuss how he used Facebook to “get into the brain” of users. In his opinion, the company thought it could take Trump’s advertising dollars and laugh all the way to the bank when he lost the election. “I don’t think they saw what was coming. I did,” he says. Zuckerberg is smart, but he isn’t the only one.
Grantchester ★★
Zuckerberg: King of the Metaverse ★★★★