A real cat-and-mouse thriller . . . but what a pity about the puss!
Ever since Glenn Close boiled that bunny in Fat a l Attraction, no pet in a psychological thriller has been safe. So when a fluffy black-and-white puss snuggled up beside highlystrung Cambridge lecturer Leah (Katherine Kelly) in Cheat (ITV), it was pitifully obvious what would happen next.
Cats in dramas exist only to be dispatched by weirdos. Sure enough, Betsey had been catnapped and run over within half an hour.
Animal killings aren’t just lazy story devices, they actively deter a lot of viewers. I stopped watching Anna Friel’s detective drama Marcella after a child crushed his white mouse to death in his hands.
And when Phoebe Waller-Bridge gritted her teeth and picked up her dead friend’s guinea pig like she wanted to strangle it in Fleabag, I actually shouted at the screen: ‘Don’t hurt the guinea pig!’
Leah’s husband Adam (Tom Goodman-Hill) found Betsey’s body by checking an app on his phone, to track her microchip. I didn’t know that was possible, but it makes sense: Nasa spent trillions of dollars putting GPS satellites into space, so people could find their cats.
Self-obsessed Adam showed no emotion over Betsey’s demise, which meant viewers couldn’t care less when his own corpse turned up on a mortuary slab later on.
All the men in Cheat are disposable: that goes for Leah’s pompous father (also a university don), and the superviser she fancies, as well as a lecherous college porter.
The only believable characters are Leah and her scheming sociology student, rose (Molly Windsor). rose is a ruthless manipulator. She rehearses her tearful performance before lodging a complaint against Leah, and flirts cynically with any man she wants to control.
This being a psychological drama, of course, we can’t be sure yet that writer Gaby Hull isn’t manipulating us too. Perhaps rose didn’t kill the cat, or cheat in her dissertation, or scrawl obscene grafitti about Leah in the ladies’ loo ... though it certainly looks that way.
The question really teasing us, and keeping us hooked as the serial continues over the next three nights, was set up from the start.
We saw Leah and rose talking through a glass screen in prison. Adam was dead, the murder investigation was over, and one of the women was in jail. But which was the prisoner and which the visitor? That’s a strong dramatic concept. There’s no need to overdo it by killing poor old Betsey.
Mary Berry would never dream of cheating. She really did hop on the back of a vespa scooter to be whisked around rome by her very own hairy biker for her new series, Quick Cooking (BBC2).
Chauffeur Jack sported waxed moustachios and a goatee, and Mary clung to him as they whizzed past the Coliseum. But Jack had to sit outside while his VIP (very important passenger) dashed into bakeries, restaurants and pizza parlours to learn a few Italian tricks for fast food. Her favourite was a recipe for tiramisu: ‘Six tablespoons of brandy should give it just the right amount of punch,’ she declared.
Six? That’s not a punch, Mary, that’s a cosh.
The ladies of the Osteria Da Fortunata showed her how to roll pasta, and a jolly man with a waistline like Obelix the Gaul revealed his special invention: a hollow bread cone filled with pizza topping. ‘It’s a stew sandwich,’ Mary told him sternly.
I can’t see her seafood experiments catching on, clams served with spaghetti and sea urchin in rice. But rome looked enticing. Stew sandwich for me.