On paper, Sherwood is superb – so why can’t I fall in love with it?
BBC1, Monday & Tuesday Hacks Amazon Prime
Every now and then along comes a show that makes you feel it didn’t fail you but you failed it. And I would count Sherwood as one of those. I wanted to love it. I strived to love it. I watched ahead (a further two episodes), convinced that at some point I would grow to love it. But I could not love it. Even though I knew I should. What can I say? It’s not you, Sherwood, it’s me?
It has everything on paper. On paper, it is exactly everything I would want. It is written by James Graham, who also wrote Brexit: The Uncivil War (terrific) and Quiz (ditto). The cast is magnificent: David Morrissey, Alun Armstrong, Robert Glenister, Lorraine Ashbourne, Claire Rushbrook and Lesley Manville whom, as you know, I would follow to the ends of the Earth. And also Joanne Froggatt and Adeel Akhtar and Kevin Doyle, who I couldn’t place until I could (Molesley from Downton!). And Stephen Tompkinson and Pip Torrens… they just kept turning up! But the storytelling was somehow not compelling. Who, what, am I meant to be interested in here?
Billed as a ‘crime drama’, it is equally a political drama set in a Nottinghamshire working-class town still divided by the miners’ strike of 1984-85. Graham grew up in such a town and drew inspiration from that, as well as two killings that happened there.
The first episode was, perhaps necessarily, heavily expositional so we might distinguish the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers, which went on strike) from the UDM (Union of Democratic Mineworkers, which did not) and understand how this is still playing out nearly 40 years later.
It’s a town where neighbours may not speak to neighbours, sisters may not speak to sisters, and men in dimly lit working men’s clubs snarl ‘scab’ at each other. Tensions still run high, as we were shown, once, twice, many times over. (I get it!)
That slowed the action down, as did the sprawling number of characters. Who’s that again? Is he the lad from the drugs family?
As we hopped around it was hard to feel invested. At one point I was most invested in a missing dog, because I knew where I was with that. And even though there was a killing midway through Monday’s episode – via a crossbow and arrow; this is Robin Hood territory – it didn’t lead to any kind of focus or through-line. Instead, more and more subplots were thrown at us.
Tuesday’s episode employed our old friend, flashbacks, and on top of that there were redacted police documents and ‘spy cops’ and that local drug family and a solicitor who appears to be in danger. And there was a second killing, but it was so unrelated to the first it felt as if it had been airlifted in from
a wholly different drama. And because we knew who the killers were, in both instances, there was no tension or suspense.
I watched ahead, as I said, and it doesn’t pick up pace or develop any sense of urgency. If a killer is out there with a crossbow and known to be living in the woods, why wasn’t a manhunt instigated immediately?
It is, I suppose, as much a mood piece as anything, but it is also slow and relentlessly joyless. Which isn’t to say the performances aren’t up there, as they are. Manville, in particular, can convey grief and the depth of sorrow in a way that is miraculous. But I still couldn’t fall in love with it as a series. However, remember: it may just be me.
On to Hacks, which I have never had to strive to love, I don’t know why. Because it’s clearly wonderful? That could explain it.
It has returned for a second season, the first having won multiple Emmys, and for those not yet in the know – what, have you been living under a rock? – it stars Jean Smart, who played Kate Winslet’s mother in Mare Of Easttown, which you will almost certainly remember. Here, she stars as Deborah Vance, a Joan Rivers-style comedian who has the wealth and the mansion and the little dogs, but her following is not what it once was. She needs a new act and, to this end, is paired with Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a struggling young comedy writer. It’s an odd-couple scenario that is sometimes dark but always funny, and it has the best insults.
Deborah: ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to get your moustache waxed?’
Ava: ‘No…?’
Deborah: ‘Oh. Guess I just thought that.’ The first series was set in Las Vegas, but this season the pair are on a tour bus before finally ending up in LA. Each character is exceptionally well drawn and multilayered. They can be likeable one minute and not at all likeable the next. They can be decent and also behave extremely badly. They can be selfish, and then not unselfish exactly, but less so. They feel like real people, in other words, and there’s proper chemistry between the two leads. Also, it can be heartfelt and affecting.
I cried at the end of this series. There are eight half-hour episodes and each one is wondrously sharp. And not a slog at all.