The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Alison Rowat’s TV review
ALISON ROWAT
IFANCY the writers of are fans of Grand Designs. Why else would they set their darkly comic drama in one of those concrete and steel homes that look like a hot and cold running nightmare to live in?
We met the titular Alice (Keeley Hawes) as she was frantically trying to find a cunningly concealed fridge. She was not having much luck with the voice-activated curtains either.
This “smart home” had been designed and built by her property developer husband, Harry. Only Harry had done something very silly in installing a staircase with no bannister. He “didn’t really like” bannisters, explained Alice.
She was talking about him in the past tense because Harry had duly taken a tumble down the apples and pears on the family’s first night in the house. An accident, or – and you knew this was coming – was it something more sinister?
Finding Alice, being all about death, grieving, and whether anyone really knows anyone, had a tricky comic path to walk, and just about made it home safely. The humour, being as bleak as the third week in January, might not be everyone’s idea of cosy Sunday night viewing. But with a cast that includes Kenneth Cranham, Nigel Havers and Joanna Lumley (the latter as Alice’s parents), it deserves a chance to find its feet.
Strange things happen by the seaside, beside the sea. We knew that already from the first series of
when police family liaison officer Lisa Armstrong (Morven Christie) had an, ahem, “date” with a stranger only to find find he was a prime suspect in her next case. Awkward.
Excessive contrivance being no reason to deny the makers a second series, the Morecambe-set crime drama was back, with yet more oddness. First, Christie, a Scottish actor, was playing a Lancashire lass. In her latest case the victim’s fatherin-law had a Lancashire accent but was played by a Scots actor (James Cosmo). Ditto the victim’s wife (Sharon Small) and his brother-inlaw (Steven Robertson, Shetland). Perhaps there are no native actors in Lancashire and they have to be minibussed in from Scotland.
Ben Fogle is in Scotland
What’s the story?
Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild.
Tell me more.
The penultimate instalment of the five-part series sees Fogle arrive in Scotland, a place he has great fondness for having launched his television career here with a stint on Taransay for Castaway 2000.
What’s he up to this time?
The idea behind Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild is to meet people who have turned their back on the rat race and set up home in remote locations.
In this episode, Fogle visits 70-year-old Jake Williams, a hermit who lives in Clashindarroch Forest, Aberdeenshire. Williams, a musician, has spent three decades at his wilderness home on an ancient settlement.
Hang on, this sounds familiar …
Well spotted. Williams recently featured in the BBC series Frankie Boyle’s Tour of Scotland. A “slow cinema” film about his life, Two Years At Sea, was made in 2012.
Williams gets plenty of visitors for a hermit. What does his life entail?
Wild gardening, eating roadkill stir fries and welcoming Airbnb guests to the Bogancloch Treehouse – a 1960s touring caravan and former film prop – perched 13ft-high among a clutch of conifers on his rambling property.
When can I watch?
Ben Fogle: New Lives In The Wild, Channel 5, Tuesdays, 9pm.
SUSAN SWARBRICK
ALISON ROWAT
AGE should not matter, but when it comes to some cultural criticism there is such a thing as appearing over the hill. I still recall with a slight shudder of embarrassment a review of hip hop artist Childish Gambino/Donald Glover’s video, This is America, by a middleaged critic who really should have known better.
The piece was perfectly informative and well written, and it would have introduced a lot of people to something that might not have been on their radar.
But it was like Mary Beard reviewing the latest Little
Mix album, or Tom Devine deconstructing the Christmas Irn Bru advert. Some things are best left to the young.
As someone whose knowledge of pop music stopped on April 8, 1974, I duly approached
with some hesitation. Then I noticed one of the producers was Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary maker of Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Gibney doesn’t make dull films, so in I jumped in, sheepskin-slippered feet first.
The series title is as good as its word. Each of the six episodes takes one song, traces its origins, assesses who and what makes it great, and why it matters. The first episode looks at Kanye West’s Jesus Walks.
It was fellow hip hop artist Rhymefest who discovered the song’s beat pattern, the catchy hook on which everything else hangs.
He was 22 at the time, working as a janitor, and his marriage was in trouble. “I was hurting,” he says. A friend recommended a track by The Arc (Adult Rehabilitation Centre) Choir. Though gospel was not his thing, he gave it a try and was moved to tears.
“It sounded like pain,” he says. “It sounded like resurrection and redemption, it sounded like