The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV preview On your marks, get set, the eternal race for life is on
says, “In times of crisis the natural world can be a source of both inspiration and escape.” Perhaps because of this determination to cheer us up there has been a scaling back on scenes of violence and death (though several remain).
Spectacular, thrilling and magical – the kind of film that makes you wish you had given in to demands for a telly with a screen the size of a pool table. Dang that innate good taste.
You have to hand it to Channel 4 when it comes to programme titles. Take new show
for Codgers (Channel 4, Friday, 8pm), which brings together young people who cannot get on the property ladder with elderly homeowners rattling around in big houses. Lodgers for codgers, see? A tad cheeky, but does the job.
Serious points are made by way of introduction. Did you know that four million over-65s live alone, while five million young adults will never be able to afford their own home? Or that three million young adults still live with their parents – 50% more than 20 years ago?
The scene set, the producers settle down to generating some reality show froth. A “speed dating” session is organised where young and old can meet to see if they would like to try living together for a week.
Marvell, 21, a poet from London, hits it off with retired teachers John and Lynne from Glastonbury. Living with his mother and sister in a cramped flat, Marvell craves some space and peace.
The episode’s second pairing is between Sophie, 20, a fashion student from Solihull, and
Eunice, an octogenarian living in Birmingham.
You can tell immediately where the strains are going to show, and there is an element of trying too hard in some of the scenes. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be entertaining and a little bit enlightening at the same time – exactly what this kind of series should be.
The cynical (guilty as charged) will want to stay for the end credits to find out how it all worked out.
No sooner have you caught your breath after the first series of
than the second one is beginning. The first couple of episodes, stuffed with bare buttocks, cackling women and off-colour jokes, were but a mere shop window display to tempt the viewer in. After that, Harlots became savage and bleak, the characters developed in surprising ways, and the stories took root.
The depiction of a rotten and corrupt London where women were there for the using and abusing makes for some shocking scenes. But the camaraderie among the gals – those that don’t hate each other, like rival madams Margaret Wells and Lydia Quigley (Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville) – is heartening.
Finally, hands hovering over imaginary buzzers please as Darwin College Cambridge take on the University of St Andrews in
at the back, now.
No Googling
All or Nothing: Tottenham Hotspur (Amazon Prime, from Mon)
The 2019/20 English football season was like no other, in particular for Tottenham Hotspur. Following their UEFA Champions League final appearance the previous summer, the London side made a lacklustre start to the campaign and dispensed of popular head coach Mauricio Pochettino.
With the club still settling into its brand-new 62,000-seater stadium in North London and chairman Daniel Levy continuing his mission to transform the local area, a new manager arrived with high expectations. However, nothing could have prepared Jose Mourinho and the rest of the Spurs staff for what was about to occur during the spring of 2020. This nine-part fly-onthe-wall series offers an exclusive glimpse behind the scenes at the football club, chronicling key events both on and off the pitch.
Tennis (Amazon Prime, from Mon)
The 140th US Open gets underway on the hard courts at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre, perhaps better known as Flushing Meadows, today; it’s the first major tennis tournament to take place since the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Last year, Rafael Nadal and Bianca Andreescu were crowned the men’s and ladies’ singles champions, but neither will be around to defend their titles.
There will be no spectators either – it’s been decided it will be safer to play without them; the competitors will be rigorously tested throughout the event, with anybody garnering a positive result being forced to withdraw. Among those we know will be taking part are Novak Djokovic, Dan Evans and Serena Williams
Away (Netflix, from Fri)
Double-Oscar-winner Hilary Swank heads the cast of this intriguing new drama series as Emma Green, an astronaut about to lead the first manned mission to
Mars – a three-year journey that will take her away from her husband and teenage daughter. Although it may sound like a sci-fi adventure, the trailers suggest the emphasis is on human relationships rather than endeavour.
Emma and her family have to deal with being apart for a long period of time and the stresses that causes on their relationship; it’s hinted that her husband, a Nasa engineer, is even tempted to stray. Meanwhile, Emma faces problems on board her ship when a mutiny threatens to break out. Josh Charles and
Talitha Bateman play members of Emma’s family, while ex-EastEnder Ray Panthaki pops up as a fellow astronaut.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix, from Fri)
Any project helmed by Charlie Kaufman is worth a look and this psychological chiller is based on Iain Reid’s acclaimed novel of the same name. The plot focuses on Cindy, a young woman having doubts about her relationship with boyfriend Jake. However, she agrees to accompany him on a road trip to visit his parents at his family’s farm. All four adults are later trapped there thanks to a snowstorm, during which time Cindy begins to question everything she knows about herself, her lover and the world. The cast features Jessie
Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis.
HOW does the universe end? According to astrophysicist Katie Mack speaking to Laura Whitmore on 5 Live on
Tuesday afternoon there are five potential possibilities: vacuum decay (no Hoovers involved), heat death, the big rip (what it says on the tin), the big crunch and, rather more decorous sounding but no less deadly, the bounce.
All of them involve the destruction of everything, with only the bounce offering any hope for a sequel. Not that any of us will be around to see the climax, of course. It’s a while away yet. I think Mack said it was likely to be “10 to the power of 100 years” in the future. I’m a bit vague on the maths, but that’s a while away.
Such are the incidental pleasures of radio. It’s on in the background and then suddenly you find yourself intrigued by something you had never thought of before.
On Monday night I was in the car listening to On the Menu on Radio 4 where Adam Hart was talking about the animals that, from time to time, eat humans. Lions and tigers and wolves, oh my. It was a fascinating if, at times, horrifying programme – one tiger watched his potential dinner for a week, taking note of behaviour patterns. Going for a toilet break outside at
4am every night is not recommended in some parts of the world.
We’ve always been grub, it seems. The earliest humans were on the menu of, among other things, sabre tooth cats and hyenas larger than lions. Your best chance of escape back then? Climb a tree. So that’s where the idea of tree houses came from.
Listen Out For: Sounds of the 70s, Radio 2, Sunday, 3pm
A special edition with Nile Rodgers sitting in for Johnnie Walker.
TEDDY JAMIESON
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY
Friday, BBC1, 10.45pm
ANYONE with doubts that untested Swedish director Tomas Alfredson can handle something as iconic and impenetrably British as a film version of John le Carré’s cult spy novel will have them eased pretty quickly by the opening scenes of this acclaimed 2011 adaptation, which won a BAFTA and secured three Oscar nominations.
And if the early shots of the cast don’t do it – what a lineup: John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Simon McBurney, Stephen Graham, Kathy Burke, Ciarán Hinds and Colin Firth – then the awesome set design and the fact that it’s a full 18 minutes before Oldman’s George Smiley even utters a word will do the trick.
From stylish start to stylish finish Alfredson handles the material beautifully, helped by a sympathetic and (generally) faithful script from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan. Oldman and Co. do the rest, though it’s up to the viewer to decide if Alfredson is filming the book or making a lush (and very beige) cinema version of the iconic 1979 television series which starred Alec Guinness as Smiley.
There are certainly some cute nods in its direction. At one point we see Smiley go for an eye test and emerge from the opticians wearing a new pair of glasses, but out are the 1960s-style ones he wears in the film’s opening scenes and in are the exact pair Alec Guinness wears.
At the same time there are other touches which seem entirely Alfredson’s. After recruiting ex-Special Branch officer-turned-amateur beekeeper Mendel (le Carré fans will remember him from Call For
The Dead), Smiley and Guillam drive back to London with one
John Hurt) Smiley is asked by top civil servant Oliver Lacon (McBurney) to find him. The search pits him against former colleagues Percy Alleline (Jones), Bill Haydon (Firth) and Roy Bland (Hinds), respectively Tinker, Tailor and Soldier. But which one, if any, is the Russian spy?
THE TRAITOR Curzon Home Cinema Now streaming
Epic in every sense – it clocks in at over two and a half hours – Italian director Marco
Bellocchio’s widescreen gem takes as its subject the so-called “maxi-trials” of Sicilian Cosa Nostra members which took place from the mid-1980s onwards on the instigation of campaigning judge Giovanni Falcone. Specifically it follows the life of the first ‘man of honour’ to turn informer: Tommaso Buscetta, a ‘soldier’ in Palermo’s Porta Nuova gang who spent much of his time in the USA and Brazil and who came to be known as ‘the boss of two worlds’. Opening in 1980 with a grand scene in a beachside house at which Sicily’s various Cosa Nostra families have come together to cement a peace deal – also present is the infamous Totò Riina – it follows Buscetta as he swaps Palermo for Rio de Janeiro and a new life with third wife Cristina, only to be dragged back in to his old life when Riina launches a bloody and savage takeover.
It’s the slaying of several members of Buscetta’s family, including his two grown-up sons, which persuades him to turn ‘pentito’ and talk to Falcone.
Now 80, Marco Bellocchio is an award-winning director whose laser-eyed work has long laid bare the contradictions and hypocrisies of Italian political and cultural. The Traitor is no different.
Through the prism of
Tommaso Buscetta (played by the impressive Pierfrancesco Favino, who also featured in the 1999 film which starred F Murray Abraham as Buscetta), Bellochio examines the Cosa Nostra, its political affiliations (notorious Italian Prime
Minister Giulio Andreotti features) and the eventual murder of Falcone, blown to bits in his car by Riina’s Corleonesi clan in 1992.
But as well as being hardhitting The Traitor is stylish too, with episodes from Buscetta’s life story featuring in flashbacks and the man himself having ghost-at-the-feast style visions of dead friends and relatives. A masterful swansong from the last great Italian directors of the neorealist era.
Break (Cert 15)
Available from Monday on iTunes/Sky Store/Virgin Media, and DVD £15.99 Petty criminal Spencer
Pryde (Sam Gittins) discovered a passion for snooker as a boy down the pub with his jailbird father Terry (Luke Mably).
Since the old man went to prison, Spencer has continued to pot black for fun at a local hall owned by Ray (Rutger Hauer) but he makes money by dealing drugs for hammer-wielding thug Ginger (Scott Peden).
When Terry completes his sentence and returns home to wife Cathy (Terry Dwyer), Spencer has the opportunity to realise his sporting dreams under the care of coach Vincent Qiang (David Yip).
He also sparks romance with snooker prodigy
Shelley (Sophie Stevens).
Unfortunately, Spencer owes Ginger £5,000 and enforcer Weasel (Adam Deacon) intends to collect or break every bone in the young man’s body.
Shot on location in London, Beijing and Sheffield, Break tees up a familiar tale of knife crime and punishment on the streets of the English capital, which comes off second best to Kidulthood, Blue Story and their kin.
Once writer-director Michael Elkin screws back to focus on the strained father-son dynamic between Spencer and Terry, then sets up his sporting underdog narrative with a snooker competition in China as the grand finale, he finds a pleasing rhythm.
Gittins is compelling as a working-class hero, filled with bitterness and regret for his father (“He shouldn’t have been a Dad and a villain”).
Yip, Hauer and Jamie Foreman offer eye-catching support, interspersed with cameos from professional snooker players Ken Doherty, Jack Lisowski and Liang Wenbo.
The Blacklist - The Complete Seventh Season (Cert 15)
Available now on NOW TV, available from Monday on DVD £29.99
Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington (James Spader) is taken hostage in the gripping crime thriller.
Red’s cunning abductor is Katarina Rostov (Laila Robins), mother of FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Keen, who intends to use Red as bait to forge new connections to her flesh and blood.
Elsewhere, Aram becomes concerned that his girlfriend might harbour murderous secrets and Donald discovers how far one member of the team will go to protect his life.
The five-disc DVD box set comprises all 19 episodes.
Young Sheldon - The Complete Third Season (Cert 15)
Mary Cooper (Zoe Perry) fears for the mental wellbeing of her mathematics prodigy son Sheldon (Iain Armitage) in the spin-off to hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which charts the formative years of the misfit played as an adult by Jim Parsons.
This series, Sheldon’s father George Sr (Lance Barber) accompanies his boy to The California
Institute of Technology for a lecture delivered by Stephen Hawking.
Also, Sheldon’s brother Georgie (Montana Jordan) experiences romantic woes with girlfriend Jana (Ava Allan) and love blossoms at speed between Pastor Jeff (Matt Hobby) and police officer Robin (Mary Grill).
programme also tells the story of how the city became host to the largest, most accessible, creative arts festival in the world, while contributors including Evelyn Glennie and Fiona Shaw explain what the Festivals mean to them.
SUNDAY
Britain’s Favourite Detective (STV, 8pm)
Sheridan Smith presents a countdown of the top 25 TV detectives of all time, as voted for by the British viewing public. From Marple to Magnum PI, Luther to Line of Duty and Cracker to Columbo, Sheridan takes viewers on a whistle-stop trip through 70 years of the most famous sleuths on television. From the spires of the rapport between the leads – the actors are clearly having a ball, and the hilarity is infectious.
The Accountant (2016) (BBC1, 11.45pm)
In the sharp-shooting thriller The Accountant, Ben Affleck attempts to muscle in on his old friend Matt Damon’s status as a tormented assassin by playing an autistic number cruncher, who is equally gifted with his fists and a rifle. Christian Wolff (Affleck) meticulously investigates
Oxford with Morse to the skyscrapers of New York with Cagney & Lacey, and from the quintessentially British Midsomer Murders to the brooding Scandi Noir of The Bridge, the programme flips through the crime files of the greatest detectives that have ever graced TV screens.
BBC Proms 2020: Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO (BBC4, 8pm)
Suzy Klein presents live classical music from the Royal Albert Hall, as Sir Simon Rattle, making his 75th appearance at the Proms, conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a programme that explores the ideas of dialogue and space. As well as music by Elgar,