The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Cops and robbers for the modern age and Coogan drama falls flat
TELEVISION producers are continually looking to reinvent the wheel that is the successful detective series; how to stick to the same winning formula, yet give it a little spin, make it slightly different.
It’s tricky. Too much investment in the central characters lessens time for plot.
Too much plot and the ‘tecs become hollow cyphers. DI Ray,
(STV, Tuesday) is the latest attempt to arrest viewers’ attention, but this time the USP is the race issue.
This new series sees aspirational copper Rachita Ray (Parminder Nagra) eventually promoted to the murder squad.
But we are told, in no uncertain terms, that this is very much a boxticking exercise.
And then finding herself in her dream job, Ray has to vault prejudice, often unwitting, on a regular basis.
There are the insensitive remarks, the comments that indicate she is defined by her heritage rather than the individual talent she clearly has.
This is a series with potential, but you wonder how long storylines can run in which DI Ray has to continue hurdling the institutional racism before it loses impact. Can she convince as top detective after all?
Television also loves to capture the face of the month – and milk it. One of those faces is the likeable
Jay Blades: No Place Like Home, (Channel 5, Tuesday.) For those who’ve never seen him at work in his main job, The Repair Shop, Blades is the maître d’ of a big shed in which he greets those with broken stuff and passes that stuff onto people more than likely to be able to fix it.
Blades does this so well, we’ve noted, because he has natural empathy and interest in others, developed no doubt while growing up in the East End of London.
This show took Blades back in time to the street where he lived. We discovered his dad left his mum ‘high and dry’. And he revealed that he hasn’t been back for 34 years. Cor blimey, Jay that’s a long time. Why? What happened?
Sadly, Blades doesn’t say. This series is simply a mini-travelogue in which the likeable guy can pull on his flat cap and reveal detail such as
Hackney was once a plush suburb populated by those who made money from the slave trade.
His easy engaging manner will however ensure decent viewing figures. But a sharper insight into Jay Blades would have been welcome.
There was lots of insight however in
Kicking Off: The Rise and Fall of the Super League (BBC2, Wednesday).
‘Greed is good,’ said Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie, Wall Street. But as this documentary illustrates, sometimes greed leaves you with grass stains on your backside having been given a financial kicking – and a very red face.
This was the story of the European Super League, or at the least the attempt to set one up in April 2021 and its glorious failure.
The programme took us back through the excitement and traumatising fear which the concept produced.
The clubs at the top delighted in the idea of making themselves even more money while those who weren’t deemed to be part of the European elite believed it to be the beginning of the end.
It revealed the secret group, formed by 12 of Europe’s top clubs, including Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool,
Manchester City and Manchester United and Tottenham, planned to play in a league void of promotion or relegation. This was an Orwellian money grab by oligarchs, American hedge fund owners, Gulf royalty and European industrial tycoons.
Yet, what the documentary also revealed was that in the past year, only two of the 12 breakaway clubs made a profit.
Were they deserving of some sympathy?
Not a chance. The position was as much due to hubris as market forces, and the party was over.
There was a party being staged in the fourth instalment of Chivalry (Channel 4, Thursday) where Bobby decided to throw her husband a Hollywood knees-up. And of course, it all went wrong. But not as badly as this series.
Despite the fact that sexual politics is rampaging through society and is crying out to be satirised, Steve Coogan has shown the lightness of touch of the tractor claimed to be much-desired viewing material in the House of Commons recently.
Yes, there are many who love Alan Partridge, (I’m certainly not one who can laugh at a one-line joke) but recreating him in
Hollywood form was a poor idea.
And if you’re going to try and create comedy from the darkness that is misogyny and a dinosaur brain you’ve got to be cleverer than this.
Already, we can see Coogan’s Cameron will have to find redemption, but the scripts so far suggest Coogan, and co-writer Sarah Solemani can’t pull it off.