The Herald - The Herald Magazine
The politician who faked his death – a la Reggie Perrin
DARREN McGarvey makes a grand, hopeful statement when he declares; “Scotland has a problem. I want to find out why we can’t say no. And how we can get better.”
What McGarvey is talking about is our country’s relationship with alcohol and drugs. And there is little doubt the social commentator and writer brings a great deal of personal knowledge to this series Darren McGarvey’s Addictions (BBC Scotland, Tuesday, 10pm). as a result of his personal odyssey.
This three-part series sees the presenter ‘delve into the causes of addiction, the science behind it, and the very human cost, travelling across the country talking to both experts and people who have suffered directly in their own lives.’
As you would expect, he presents the viewers with a clutch of examples, revealing how we freely pour our lives into pint – or Prosecco – glasses and drink them away.
He joins a hectic Friday night shift with the ambulance service as they attend life-threatening overdoses and drug-induced seizures in Glasgow. And he talks to patients at a Liver Unit in Dumfries who are facing a terminal diagnosis as a result of their alcohol dependency.
But is it enough? Will moving pictures of tragedy take us any further forward – or will this series make a real stab at preventing Friday night stabbings? Do we need a gloomy, nihilistic reminder of the Scots’ age-long propensity for assuming that almost any attempt at enjoying life has to be accompanied by a bottle of booze?
What we do need is answers. We need to find ways to stop young people assuming that getting out of their face is the only way they can look at themselves in the mirror.
And let’s hope McGarvey can steer us, at least, in the direction of solution. What we don’t need is yet another Scottish series that ends with the summing up: ‘It’s society to blame.’
“Addiction is one of the biggest issues that we face, and given my level of experience, personally and also in the community, I recognise I’m in a position to shine a light on it in a way that hasn’t been done yet.”
Well, shine on, Darren.
What we’ve been desperate to know for 15 years is what happened to a four-year-old girl in a Portuguese holiday resort.
Now, Madeline McCann:
The Case Against Christian B, (Channel 5, Wednesday, 9pm) suggests the answers will be forthcoming.
The documentary studies the past of new suspect, Christian Brueckner, who has been linked to the case during the past few months, with Portuguese police making him an official suspect in April 2022.
The documentary investigation has been carried out and hosted by detective-turned- investigative journalist Mark Williams-Thomas, the man who exposed Jimmy Saville in 2012.
This will be the first active British TV investigation into the new suspect, including an account from the suspect himself. However, more information about Christian B is coming to the fore. He was made a suspect two years ago in his home country of Germany and is currently serving a prison sentence for the rape of
a 72-year-old woman in Portugal, 18 months before Madeleine disappeared.
German prosecutors also believe that the suspect made a phone call from near the apartment where Madeleine was staying on the night of her abduction, placing him at the scene of the crime.
And they claim he confessed to the snatching and murder of the youngster to an associate.
And more recently, German prosecutors suggest that there has been evidence found in the campervan belonging to the suspect that links him with the little girl whose disappearance touched the world when she was taken from her bed that fateful night in Praia da Luz.
The disappearance of John Stonehouse attracted headlines when he disappeared in the Seventies.
We learned later, however, the former Labour Cabinet minister had faked his own death, inflicting a great deal of pain and suffering on his family and colleagues.
His story is told in The Spy Who Died Twice, (C4, Monday, 9pm) and what a fascinating tale it is.
This documentary reveals he left his clothes behind on a Miami beach in 1974 and it was presumed he’d drowned. But Stonehouse was found alive and well in Australia.
Why the subterfuge? He was penniless. Yet, although evidence suggested the debt-ridden politician was selling state secrets to the Soviet Bloc at the time, for reasons explained, he was never convicted of spying.
After that weight of dark revelation, an end-of-the-week laugh is called for. And it seems The Other One (BBC1, Friday, 9pm) will offer exactly that. This tale of two sisters, both called Catherine, who have the same father but never knew of each other, manages to explore the humour that can explode from lurid revelation and death.
Stonehouse left his clothes behind on a Miami beach in 1974 and it was presumed he’d drowned. But he was found alive and well in Australia