Britain’s most hapless bomb squad are back with a bang
You may remember the first series of Trigger Point (ITV1) as the drama in which a bomb disposal expert, played by Vicky Mcclure, entered a building boobytrapped with explosives and decided to flick a light switch. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong thing to do. Have standards been raised for series two? Well, let’s see.
The floor of a multi-storey car park is littered with IEDS hidden underneath bits of cardboard. Have Lana Washington (Mcclure) and her team ensured that nobody enters until the place has been cleared? Don’t be silly. Colleagues from the Met are able to blunder in, and within minutes we’re in a situation where Lana is yelling: “You need to be still, you’re stood on a bomb!”
Oh, it’s good to be back in the arms of a Jed Mercurio drama (he’s the executive producer) in which nobody behaves with any semblance of logic. Sometimes Lana approaches danger with caution and a bomb suit, other times she just strolls in even though the threat level is exactly the same. The show is essentially a string of nailbiting scenarios – a bomb in a lift, a bomb in a house, a bomb in a parcel, a bomb attached to a man beside a radiator, a bomb attached to a woman beside a radiator – linked by scenes on which you don’t need to concentrate because they’re just killing time until the next bomb. Lots of the devices have big LED countdown timers, which I’m not sure have been a component of bombs since 1980s Bond films. Again, though, I’m no expert.
The villains last time were the Far Right. I won’t spoil things for you by revealing who is behind the series two terror campaign, except to say that they’re about as intimidating as Father Ted and Dougal standing outside the Craggy Island cinema with their placard reading “Down with this Sort of Thing”.
Mcclure is such a natural actress that she gives the impression that she’s not acting at all. She’s at her best when giving people short shrift, whether that’s the terrorists – one of them is the most slappable character on screen in a long while – or her colleagues, including the racist fellow “Expo” from series one and a patronising new boss.
It’s all Sunday-night nonsense but also oddly moreish – you’ll keep watching to see what the next explosive encounter will bring, and to find out how Lana gets out of a major scrape in the finale. But my feeling after watching was: I hope the country’s real bomb disposal units are better than this.
Icame to The Dry (ITV1; originally on Britbox in 2022 and ITVX in 2023) assuming that it would be an adaptation of a popular Australian crime novel of the same name. Imagine my confusion when it turned out to be an Irish comedy-drama about a 30-something recovering alcoholic who moves back in with her parents. It’s made by the producers of
Normal People, but the tone and subject matter are more reminiscent of BBC Three’s Back to Life, which was about a woman who moved back in with her parents after serving a prison sentence. Shiv, the protagonist in
The Dry, hasn’t done anything criminal, but her parents are just as nervous about her return: apart from tiptoeing around the alcohol issue, they’re confused by her fancy London ways (she’s gone gluten free). Writer Nancy Harris has created a family saga with Shiv (Roisin Gallagher) as its emotional centre.
I don’t mean to lump together everything that’s Irish, but we’re in Marian Keyes territory, just with a bit more smut. The cast’s biggest name is the reliably good Ciarán Hinds as her father, who waits politely outside the bathroom for his gay son’s latest conquest to finish having a shower. Shiv has come home for a funeral but announces, to her parents’ dismay, that she’s sticking around.
It’s a tale of parents dealing with boomerang kids, youngsters trying to make their way through life, and how imperfectly families manage love and tragedy. We’ve had plenty of comedydramas with messy heroines, and this one isn’t in the Fleabag league. It’s uneven, but Gallagher’s performance is good enough to keep you watching; you’ll care about what happens to her, and cringe at her mistakes. There’s more to come, too, with a second series due to air next month.
The opening episode of series one peppers scenes with the F-word, and when the show goes for laughs it often falls back on sex – leading to the frankly alarming sight of Hinds rutting away beside some bins.
Try to forget this horror, please, and preserve him in your mind as Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. Trigger Point ★★★ The Dry ★★★