Who’s the killer in a dotty thriller: Dr Vampire or the Bride of Dracula?
Maybe it’s springtime madness, or maybe the brexit shambles has driven the entire country round the twist, but most of the current crop of drama is simply nuts.
Kate beckinsale is running around central africa, dodging exploding cars in The Widow as she searches for a husband who likes to do his travelling inside a wooden crate. Morven Christie is a policewoman in The bay, so busy having drunken quickies with murder suspects that she can’t see her own children are feral delinquents.
but these daft thrillers are positively sane, compared to the delirium of Trust Me ( bbC1) — a hospital whodunit starring John Hannah as a consultant so creepy that he ought to be wearing a silk cape and fangs.
alfred enoch, who grew up playing a student wizard in the background of the Harry Potter movies, is Corporal Jamie McCain. He’s been flown home after an ambush Somewhere Foreign wiped out his platoon and left him paralysed.
Inevitably, a murder mystery starring a bedbound sleuth is going to be a bit static, but that wasn’t a problem for Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective.
Sadly, there’s no classic big band soundtrack here, just a lot of ominous electronic music to
accompany Jamie’s flashbacks and nightmares.
In between bedside interrogations by the military police, Jamie is pestered by fellow inmate Danny, a conspiracy theorist.
Danny is convinced that one of the medical staff is murdering patients. He has no evidence for this, except that everyone keeps dying. you really can’t miss it, because the nurses keep carting huge plastic bodybags away.
Who is the killer? Dr Vampire? His lover, Nurse bride of Dracula ( ashley Jensen)? Or troubled junior medic Dr Pillpopper (Katie Clarkson-Hill)? Surely it’s not her boyfriend, long- suffering Kind McHunky (Richard Rankin)?
Whoever it is, they’ve got it in for wheelchair-user Danny. He’s only in hospital while his flat is being redecorated. Tragically, before the second coat of emulsion is dry, Danny has been stuffed into a body bag.
Realising he was safer being shot at, Jamie has to get out of bed. This involves stabbing himself in the leg, to get an adrenaline rush, and then hauling himself round the ward on his elbows. Whether that makes any medical sense, I have no idea (though I have my suspicions) — but I’m quite sure it’s going to get a lot madder over the next three episodes.
at least it was harmless fun. That can’t be said of the venal Great British School Swap (C4), a hateful exercise in stirring up bigotry. Under the pretence of copying a U.S. experiment, the producers sent 15 white pupils from Tamworth to a school in nearby birmingham, and put them in a classroom with 15 pupils from asian backgrounds. Then they were encouraged to treat each other like dangerous alien species.
In case the heavily scripted set-ups didn’t provoke enough controversy, the 13-year- olds were given vile exercises such as compiling lists of racist insults and stereotypes. Their parents were encouraged to get in on the act too.
To claim that britain has ever been racially segregated, or that some kind of apartheid operates in the West Midlands, is as vicious as it is divisive and dishonest.
as if this wasn’t manipulative enough, Channel 4 executives included a child (just 13, remember) called Lucas, who identified as a transgender female. The asian children were encouraged to bait Lucas mercilessly, while the white pupils rolled their eyes.
The whole business was irresponsible, nasty-minded, cruel, pointless and shameful.