Mark Strong: bald, brooding and A-list
I’ve always liked Mark Strong. He does brooding very well, and he gives hope to balding men everywhere that you can remain virile and A-list even without functioning follicles. He was great in the all-time classic Our Friends in the North, and he’s done some great stuff since: The Imitation Game, The Guard, Kingsman (the first one, not the crap second one).
This time, in a British adaptation of a Norwegian series called Valkyrien, he’s playing a doctor, Daniel Milton, in Sky’s Temple (Soho, Sundays from September 15).
Like his last outing, as a secret agent in the dark thriller Deep State, Daniel is a classic Strong character: words are few and well-chosen, and usually a frown or a firm handshake communicate everything he needs to say. This time, however, he’s not playing a cop or a crim, but a surgeon.
Of course, he’s not your typical doctor. The title comes from London’s Temple tube station, beneath which, in a network of disused tunnels, Strong runs a thriving and illicit medical clinic, which appears to use stolen supplies.
As to how he finds himself there, we don’t immediately know: the first episode starts with Strong attending a memorial for his wife, who we learn in flashback had a terminal illness. Intercut is a bank robbery gone wrong, with one of the robbers being shot in the spleen by armed police.
The storylines converge when Strong’s offsider, Lee (last seen playing highly strung cop Danny Waldron in Line of Duty) turns up at his secret surgery with the bleeding burglar and Strong performs makeshift and technicolour emergency surgery.
Not until the final moments of episode one, with a timely and unexpected twist I feel it would be cruel to disclose, do we start to understand why Strong is working (and indeed, potentially living) in the bowels of the Underground train network.
Can the central conceit sustain itself through eight episodes? There’s enough solid observation in the set-ups to suggest some decent scriptwriters at work (the bank robbery is clever and funny), there’s a fairly heavyweight cast on board, and whoever did set design has enjoyed themselves creating Strong’s dungeon. So, yes, it may be worth investing your attention.
As an aside, I am slightly surprised to find myself enjoying Celebrity Treasure Island (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday on TVNZ 2). I like the oddball title music and graphics; I like the raw enthusiasm of host Bree Tomasel, who is generally clad in a naff pink cagoule. I like the juvenile feuding; the ridiculous, low-rent charity challenges; I like actor Jodie Rimmer wearing a giant plastic duck’s head for absolutely no reason and cheerfully sabotaging weatherman Sam Wallace’s empire-building.
I particularly have enjoyed Wallace, whose naked but often ham-fisted drive for selfpreservation has become the centrepiece of the show. If this was real life, his disaffected citizens would have done a Mussolini on him, and strung him up from a palm tree (as a substitute for a petrol station canopy). Of course, it’s not and everyone here knows it (unlike on other such
shows). So as reality television goes, this is inoffensive (indeed, it rather adroitly handled mental health concerns when Karl Burnett quit after one day) and gentle and look, maybe I’m going soft in my final column...
Oh yes, so this is my final television column for Your Weekend. Silence the party-poppers for one more paragraph please.
As a columnist, you always assume your work is met with blithe indifference. In our house, so little attention is paid to my television recommendations that a show will be advertised, my partner will suggest we watch it, then will harrumph when I say I’ve already seen the first episode so I can write my column on it.
In contrast, her friend Amy Roberts of Cambridge apparently watches everything I suggest. Thanks Amy, I’m glad I had one attentive reader.