A TOP BATCH
Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome in the leading role on Sky Atlantic’s new show, Patrick Melrose, says our TV critic
ASTONISHING. That’s the only word that does any justice to Benedict Cumberbatch’s per formance in Patrick Melrose. I’ve never read the five novels on which this series is based (each fills out one episode), but they clearly are semi-fictionalised accounts of the life of author Patrick St Aubyn, who was repeatedly raped as a boy by his father and later developed addictions to pretty much every drug you can think of, and heroin in particular.
The episode opened just as Patrick was injecting himself with that very drug. The phone rang and it was an old family friend calling to say Patrick’s father had died suddenly in New York. Hanging up the receiver, his face slowly loosened and a broad smile blossomed on his lips. The reason for his addictions was gone, but would that mean he actually could quit drugs?
Would it what? After a Concorde flight to the US (the series is set in the early 1980s), Patrick immediately phones an old contact trying to score some more drugs, then buys an entire cocktail of them in Central Park, before taking a taxi to the seediest part of town to shoot up with a broken needle already shared by many others.
The contrast between his wealthy life and the people he comes in contact with through his addictions is deftly handled, and one brilliant scene defined the entire episode.
Meeting an old friend after taking a quaalude, Patrick finds himself unable to use his mouth to form anything resembling normal speech. Excusing himself to go to the bathroom, he literally crawls along a corridor using his hands to gain purchase from the wall, then takes a couple of lines of cocaine. His walk back to the table is as accelerated as his walk from it was pitifully sluggish, and it was a bravura piece of television.
Though other characters featured, Cumberbatch’s voiced inner monologue made this very much a one-man show, and a dazzling one it was. It’s a shame it premiered on the same night as the Bafta Television Awards. With a year to go until the next ceremony, there’s every chance this performance will be forgotten, when in fact they should just engrave his name on it and hand it to Cumberbatch right now.
Altogether livelier was the return
Cumberbatch’s inner voice made this a oneman show, and a dazzling one it was
of Daniel and Majella’s B&B Road
Trip, back for a third series of their reliably entertaining trek around the country. The series opener saw them in Kerry, where I howled laughing as they attempted to play golf in Ballybunion during a hailstorm. Majella took to the bath with a large gin and tonic, which seemed a very sensible move, but worse was to come.
The second B&B owner was a qualified fitness instructor who made the couple take part in a spinning class. Poor old Daniel looked like he was about to expire on the bike, but his good humour, and the couple’s very obvious love and affection for each other, makes what could be a very hokey piece of programming into something a great deal better. It has a big heart and it wears it on its sleeve, and that feels a great deal better than watching someone rolling up his sleeve to inject himself with hard drugs.
Also back for a new run last night was All Round To Mrs Brown’s and, if the opener was anything to go by, Agnes and her guests have abandoned all efforts to sanitise AngloSaxon and now just use the version with the U rather than the one with the E. It doesn’t add a great deal to show, and indeed might put many viewers off but, overall, this was a funny effort, with EastEnders star Danny Dyer’s mum Chris especially spirited and hilarious.
That said, two segments of the first series that just don’t work have been retained when they should have got the chop. Dermot and Buster’s money-making attempts with celebrities – it was Kate Humble this week –remain painfully unfunny, as does Agnes’s reggae dancing with Chef Ali.
There’s a good 45-minute show here aching to escape the one-hour running time, and judicious pruning definitely would pay dividends.
That said, it is another show with a big heart, especially when it celebrates the Mammy of the Week, and for that it can be forgiven the streak of self-indulgence that occasionally threatens to hole it below the waterline.
Patrick Melrose