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Alison Rowat’s TV review
I’VE been thinking of teaching a class in the art of television reviewing (whoever said, ‘Shouldn’t that be taking a class?’ ought to be ashamed of themselves). Lesson one would be “warning signs in dialogue”. I can think of no better material than
The Drowning (Channel 5, Monday-Thursday) to illustrate the points.
The drama opened with a tragedy: a four-year-old boy, Tom, drowned while on a family picnic by a lake. The lad had a scar below his left eye. Something to note. Body was never recovered.
Cut to nine years later and mum Jodie (Jill Halfpenny), driving to work, saw a boy who was the very spit of Tom, including the scar (I told you to note that). Over the course of four evenings, mum went above and beyond to prove that her boy did not drown, he was abducted, and against every odd she had found him.
The first sign that we were in desperately implausible territory was when mum said to her estranged husband, “You’re going to think I’m mad. ”Second was when she started a speech with, “I know this makes no sense.” When characters say such things it is because the person is indeed mad, and the story makes no sense. Should you choose to carry on at this point, on your own befuddled head be it.
I did carry on, in part because I’m a professional to my fingertips, but mostly to see just how daft things would get. Answer: howlingly.
Hard to say what was more unbelievable: Jodie’s trips into the criminal underworld to buy forged papers, or her blagging her way into a job as a music tutor.
If Tom had been abducted by aliens it would have been more credible. I felt for Jill Halfpenny, especially in that awful tartan blanket coat. For half an hour I wondered why she was running around town in her dressing gown.
The French crime drama Spiral
(BBC4, Saturday) came to a satisfying close after eight series. It had been two seasons too long, but everything came right in the end. We even saw Laure smiling, an event once thought as unlikely as Emmanuel Macron being humble.
The writers got things back on track by letting chaos erupt among the tribes of cops, lawyers, and bad guys. It was hard to tell sometimes which side of the law they were all on, which was kind of the point. We shall miss you, Laure.
Not much chance of missing the presenter of Joanna Lumley’s Home Sweet Home: Travels in My Own
Land, (STV, Tuesday) because she is on the telly as often as the news. When you are as charming as La Lumley people don’t get sick of you.
In the first of a three part series, Lumley began her journey at Tilbury Docks, where she arrived in the UK in 1947, not yet one-year-old, from the Far East.
Then she wafted on to the Peak District, Manchester and Coronation Street, where she reminisced with Bill Roache about being one of Ken Barlow’s many loves, Elaine. “Just as beautiful as ever,” smoothie chops Ken/Bill told the Lumley of today.
Yorkshire and Whitby followed. Whitby was where Bram Stoker drew inspiration for Dracula, and Lumley once starred in a 1974 film, The Satanic Rites of Dracula. More connections.
At a Goth shop (sold clothes and knick-knacks, not Goths), she was shown a necklace consisting of two hands that draped around the neck. Creepy. When she heard the hands also glowed in the dark, Lumley was in raptures, pronouncing the piece “possibly the best present you could give anybody”. You can see why people like having her around. Next week: Scotland.
They rearranged the furniture
for the return of Interior Design Masters (BBC2,
Tuesday). Out went last series’ Fearne Cotton and in came Alan Carr. A tad drastic: what was wrong with a few new cushions?
Otherwise it was same old-same old, with contestants competing for a contract to decorate a boutique hotel in the Lake District. The ten came from all walks and included Barbara Romani from Glasgow.
Barbara had a thing about room dividers and put one in the living room of a new £1 million showhouse in Oxford. Guest judge Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen did not have a thing for room dividers, and likened the assembled piece to a rickety old gallows. As if he didn’t perpetrate worse crimes against good taste in Changing Rooms.
LLB was more than taken with Jon’s idea for a four poster bed created by running paint up a wall and on to the ceiling to give the impression of a canopy.
“He’s given us a postmodernist four poster bed,” cried LLB. “The entire nation is going to be doing this soon.”
Ah Laurence, it was that sort of insight that caused you to be reduced to a mere guest judge, nowt but an accent vase on the sideboard of head judge Michelle Ogundehin.
Never mind Laurence, like avocado bathroom suites, you might come back into style one day.