The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review There’s gold in the hills and heartbreak at the kitchen sink
was terribly ponderous. For something titled The Luminaries it was a struggle to make out what was going on. Everything was gloomy and lashed with mud. Not a place one wanted to linger.
The School that Tried to End Racism, Channel 4, Thursday) set out to pick apart unconscious bias. To put it another way, everyone knows, or should know, that racism is wrong, but could it be that we are racist without knowing it?
The documentary cameras entered a school in south
London that was the first in the UK to try out a programme pioneered in the US. At first the games and discussions were a laugh. “This is the most fun racist game I’ve ever played,” said one 11-year-old.
But then some tough moments came along, not least for the white pupils whose privilege was made only too apparent. Yet it was all done in a caring, careful way, and it was fascinating to see attitudes changing so dramatically. Early days, and three episodes to go, but things look promising.
More cause for celebration with the return of
Alan Bennett’s brilliant monologues have been remade with a new cast to cheer us up in these virus times. Between Imelda Staunton’s poisonous letter writer in A Lady of Letters, and Sarah Lancashire as a mother with a shocking secret in An Ordinary Woman, pain and loneliness ran through these first dramas. It ought to have meant tears before bedtime, but Bennett gave us laugh out loud writing besides. That, plus superb performances, make Talking Heads a must see once more.
Anyway, if you wanted unadulterated niceness and cheer there was always
Why, these contestants even helped out each other if there was trouble with kilt pleating, or getting feathers to sit just so on a carnival costume, just two of the challenges that separated the winners from the losers in the final. The winner turned out to be 1940s enthusiast Clare, who as well as being a wonderful dressmaker was a hospital doctor besides.
PS. Forgot to tell you how the Enquirer got the Elvis photo. At first they had a fake priest with a miniature camera join the queue of mourners. That didn’t work, so they asked one of Elvis’s cousins, who cheerily obliged. The first two attempts were disastrous but third time was a charm. The edition sold seven million copies.
Military Wives (Cert 12)
Available from June 29 on Amazon Prime Video/BT TV Store/iTunes/Sky Store/ TalkTalk TV Store and from July 6 on DVD £19.99
When duty calls and British troops are deployed from Flitcroft military base to Afghanistan, experienced colonel Richard (Greg Wise) bids farewell to his wife Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas) to lead his fifth tour. The couple are still grieving the loss of their serviceman son and only child, so Richard’s absence weighs heavily on his wife.
Kate fills the emotional void by insensitively stepping on the toes of social secretary Lisa
(Sharon Horgan) and undermining efforts to establish the base’s first choir. Scott Thomas and Horgan are well matched as rivals locked in a bitter tugof-war for control of the choir, who discover that life is so much simpler when you come together in sweet harmony.
The Invisible Man (Cert 15)
Architect Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) silently sneaks around the clifftop home of her controlling beau, scientist Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), as he sleeps nearby.
She escapes the glass box prison with help from her sister Alice (Harriet
Dyer) and goes into hiding.
Soon after, Cecilia learns that Adrian has killed himself and bequeathed her five million dollars in his will, to be paid in monthly instalments via his brother Tom (Michael Dorman).
For the first time in years, Cecilia draws breath but a series of strange events convinces her that the news of Adrian’s demise is greatly exaggerated.
Store/iTunes/Sky Store/ TalkTalk TV Store and available from July 13 on DVD £19.99.
Five contest winners arrive at a tropical resort, which promises to make their dreams come true.
Custodian Mr Roarke (Michael Pena) and his partner Julia (Parisa FitzHenley) take care of the guests and encourage the five winners to live out their fantasies to the full.
They are confronted with diabolical, twisted variations on their greatest wishes.
With the help of a private investigator called Damon, the guests unravel the terrifying otherworldly secrets of Fantasy Island and conceive a madcap plan to escape from the clutches of dark forces that intend to claim their blackened souls.
The Wretched (Cert 15)
Troubled teenager Ben (John-Paul Howard) arrives in Porter Bay to stay with his father Liam (Jamison Jones) following a literal and figurative fall from grace.
Ben must spend the summer rebuilding his father’s shattered trust by working at the local marina.
Instead, he becomes fixated on Liam’s next door neighbours Abbie and Ty, who have a young son and baby. The children vanish and Ty blithely denies all knowledge of his tykes’ existence.
The Wretched is a creaky horror thriller of genre tropes and slickly spliced secondhand material.
What’s the story?
Golden moments.
Can you be a bit more specific?
A clutch of the nation’s greatest sporting successes will be shown on BBC
Scotland on Friday and
Sunday nights over the coming weeks. Kicking things off this Friday will be the 1973 British title fight between boxers Ken Buchanan and Jim Watt in Glasgow.
That’s a classic. What else?
Tennis fans can revisit Andy Murray’s triumphs, including his Olympic wins in 2012 and 2016, as well as those historymaking Wimbledon titles in 2013 and 2016.
Anything involving wheels?
All six of Sir Chris Hoy’s Olympic gold medal races.
Good stuff. Although so far, rather male?
I see your point. Well, there’s curling glory with Scots skippers Rhona Martin and Eve Muirhead leading Team GB to gold and bronze respectively at the Winter Olympics in 2002 and 2014.
Talk about a summer for nostalgia.
Vive la rerun.
Aren’t the TV soaps doing something similar?
ALISON ROWAT
TO mark a mini-season of highlights from Glastonbury festivals past, Radio Times this week published the recollections of various bods. Fran Healy reminisced about playing Why Does it Always Rain on Me while it was battering down, Jo Whiley had fond memories of John Peel giving her a piggy back, and so on.
Here’s my “Glasto” story. I was on a train once out of Liverpool Street and a woman got on and sat beside me. She was wearing a beautifully tailored tweed skirt and jacket. Money, obviously.
But she was also caked in mud. Between this, her wellies, and the time of year I surmised she had just been to Glastonbury and was heading home.
She stank to high heaven – that mud, my God, what was in it? – so I tutted very loudly, got up and marched into another carriage. I can safely promise that is the closest I will ever get to Glastonbury.
Which does not mean to say I won’t be in front of the telly for
one of a run of shows to plug the gap where the festival would have been had it not been for the virus.
Only half an hour of what was a two hour set has been seen on television before, so this is a real treat for fans. All the hits are there, from Life on Mars to Let’s Dance, sung by a long-haired Bowie wearing, at one point, a suit that looks as if it was made out of the curtains. He still rocks it, though. And there is not a spot of mud on him. Another must see is Amy Winehouse’s 2007 set (BBC4, Sunday).
reaches its grand finale this week. This was one of the new channel’s hits first time around and has made it back for a deserved second series. The concept is simple. Three judges, an architect, an interior designer and a lifestyle blogger, have a nosey around other people’s