Aidan Smith gives his verdict on The Nest
Aidan Smith reviews drama’s final episode
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Halfway through this intelligent, gripping and questioning drama, Martin Compston posted a splitscreen image of himself on Twitter with the caption: “One bench, two jobs, 17 years apart and both in my home town.”
In the Ken Loach film Sweet Sixteen, the Greenock-born actor was a troubled teenager who decided his best escape was to steal heroin and flog it to buy a caravan for his mum when she got out of jail.
Nicole Taylor’s series concerned another troubled teen, Kaya (marvellous Mirren Mack), who was dubbed Scotland’s Mary Bell for the fatal stabbing, aged 11, of her pregnant aunt. She decided her best escape was to carry a baby for Glasgow property kingpin Dan Docherty (Compston) and his wife Emily.
What a tangled web Taylor weaved, stretching from a sink estate to a propertyporn dreamhome. Who was exploiting who? What’s a baby worth? Who were we supposed to feel most sorry for? If Docherty could break out of poverty and into middle-class respectability via crime, why couldn’t Kaya when her “offence” seemed like a good deed?
Confirming just how tangled surrogacy can be, this was how the radio’s phone-in rattled and hummed when news of the Dochertys’ £70,000 splash broke: “Paying for a baby shouldn’t be allowed ... that means everything’s for sale now ... women have a right to do whatever they want with their bodies in the male patriarchy ... if that’s what feminism is, renting out your womb, it’s a disgrace.”
Apart from the final ten minutes when there was probably no avoiding the clutter of explanatory chat, Taylor kept all of her plates spinning, along with all of our emotions. Almost every character dipped in and out of favour, although some like Kaya’s mother (creepy Shirley Henderson) didn’t get back in. The only one who was consistently noble was Liz Ewing’s social worker. The only one who was consistently an erse was the newspaper editor, a lazy relic who called his female reporters “wee lassies”.
So the Dochertys got their baby, kind of on loan, and Kaya could resume her dreams of becoming a top businesswoman (“I want to go on planes, have one of these pull-along cases ... ”). Is there enough intrigue for a second series? I’d say so.
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Quiz takes us back to a more innocent and carefree age when a cough was just a cough and you didn’t suspect Covid-19. When it was no more sinister than a trigger for helping a cheat win Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?
ITV’S dramatisation of the “Coughing Major” scandal isn’t sparing ITV. The early scenes on the genesis of the show were a hoot with lots of tellybabble similar to W1A as the network acknowledged how the BBC had “won” coverage of Princess Diana’s death and challenged themselves to come up with their own “event TV”.
Millionaire?, according to Mark Bonnar’s excitable exec, would be more than just a game show, being inspired by the pub quiz – “a uniquely British invention combining our two greatest loves – drinking and being right”.
I love when TV eats itself. The Beeb produced some exceptional, and exceptionally dark, dramas a while back about telly totems (Tony Hancock, Hughie Green) and this is a riot. Matthew Macfadyen is the major, nice-but-dim and presumably about to turn plausible-and-conniving. Bonnar is threatening to steal the show (again), but Michael Sheen as Chris Tarrant doesn’t seem nearly irritating enough. Quiz continues tonight and tomorrow, so there’s time.