A tour-de-force turn from Stephen Graham
I DON’T mean to cast aspersions about Stephen Graham’s acting abilities, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at him without thinking of Combo, the violent, racist skinhead from This Is England, whose portrayal first brought him acclaim.
Stephen himself has even admitted that so incendiary was that damaged, dangerous, yet vulnerable performance in Shane Meadow’s 2007 cult film – along with its subsequent TV sequels – that he struggled for ages to find further acting work once the character had headbutted his way into our national consciousness.
But it was Stephen’s quietly tour-de-force turn in last week’s Channel Four drama The Watchman which brought the actor’s most aggro creation back to the forefront of my mind as I watched from behind slatted fingers.
A Beckettian one-hander (give or take), this clammy, claustrophobic drama saw him cast as Carl, a lonely and frazzled night-time CCTV operator who, frustrated at the lack of police response to his reports about a local gang of ne’er-do-wells, takes matters into his own hands.
Stephen, save for a devastating final scene, barely left the coffee-breath fug of his anonymous little office, stewing in impotent frustration. Until, that is, he spied a drug deal going down and enlisted the help of his cabbie mate Lee to turn tables on the pushers.
Of course, it all went horribly wrong and Carl – switching off, one by one, the huge bank of surveillance screens in front of him – reluctantly faced the inevitable and went off to confront the thugs face to face.
Which (spoilers, people, spoilers) is where my earlier reference to Combo comes in.
The last we saw of him was in the back of a van being led away to a bloody, undisclosed fate – the price for his own past, violent transgressions.
And here we saw an impassive Carl meeting a similar end, allowing himself to be driven away by marauding hoodies – an attempt, perhaps, to seek some sort of redemption for his well-intentioned, yet misguided actions.
Just the wealth of emotions which flitted across Stephen’s face as the car pulled away – fear, resignation, even a small show of braggadocio in the form of an almost imperceptible smirk – it was a masterclass in acting subtlety.
Then – right at the end, as the screen cut to black – he gave a quick look to camera... at us, the viewers. And with it came the realisation that we’d been complicit in all this.
Sitting inert at home, we’d been watching the watchmen, as it were – rooting for Carl’s every move, even though each decision was speeding his path to the grave.
You know that old saying, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”?
Well, the opposite was depressingly true here.
CRACK out the tinsel, the Great British Bake Off returned last week – kick-starting the nation’s predictable slide towards the Christmas season. The televisual equivalent of potassium bromide, its cocoa and slippers comfiness hasn’t changed since it first screened back in 2010.
You know when even your dad uses words like “croquembouche” in casual conversation that no one is safe from its mollifying balm.