Day Mandy the vampire formed a ruling Coalition with Eric Sykes
Actor Mark Gatiss has said he channels the undead soul of Peter Mandelson when he is playing Mycroft Holmes, the manipulative big brother of Benedict cumberbatch in Sherlock.
He isn’t kidding. Whenever he appeared on screen as Mandelson in Coalition (c4), the story of the 2010 General Election and its aftermath, Mycroft seemed to be floating into view like a spectre.
that was disconcerting, because it raised our expectations. I kept hoping the Great Detective would swoop into Downing Street and solve the constitutional crisis with a disdainful sneer.
No such luck — instead of Sherlock, here was Nick clegg (Bertie carvel) bumbling around as i f he was auditioning to be the accident-prone policeman from the caribbean crime show, Death In Paradise.
We didn’t get an arch-enemy like Moriarty either, just Gordon Brown (Ian Grieve), who wasn’t so much villainous as radioactive. No one could bear to go anywhere near him except Mandelson-Mycroft — presumably immune because his conscience had been surgically removed.
M-M’s first appearance, through a cloud of dry ice in a tV studio, emphasised his vampiric qualities. When he was negotiating with those political virgins, the Lib Dems, his hooded eyes seemed to be calculating how much blood was in their bodies.
clegg had a Mandelson-Mycroft of his own, the Liberal elder statesman Paddy Ashdown. Unfortunately, the actor playing him (Donald Sumpter) l ooked more l i ke c omedian Eric Sykes.
At least Paddy got a look in. Many of the major figures from that time were simply airbrushed out: Alistair Darling, Vince cable, David Davis, David Miliband and a stack of others, all missing. Ed Miliband did appear, though he did not speak — his job was just to carry Ed Balls’s coffee and stay schtum, which was probably a good policy.
this drama liked to imagine it was a good deal smarter than it actually was. As clegg and his team approached Downing Street by limo, for talks on power-sharing with the tories, the sat- nav chirruped ironically: ‘In 100 yards, turn right.’
Predictably, si nce t his was channel 4, the tories were portrayed as a dyspeptic, grumbling bunch of Victorian aristocrats, knocking back the brandies in a London club.
Meanwhile, writer James Graham conveniently forgot to mention the bankrupt state of the treasury, the national economic crisis or the toxic waste l eft over from the Blair administration. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see none of it bore too much resemblance to recent events.
Historical accuracy is the last thing any fan of Poldark (BBc1) notices. Who cares if the cornish accents veer from Gloucester to Bournemouth, or if plastic guttering and burglar alarms can be glimpsed on truro High Street?
What matters is the supercharged sexual passion crackling between the cap’n and his bride, Demelza. Even the other characters are driven to distraction by it — ross’s frustrated cousin, the spinster Verity Poldark, looked ready to scream every time the newlyweds glanced at each other.
the villagers were standing around on the clifftops, wondering when the pilchard shoals would turn up. But their eyes kept straying to the Poldarks, waiting for them to tear each other’s clothes off. Don’t pretend you weren’t waiting for it, too.
Eleanor tomlinson as Demelza wore one of her husband’s shirts for a barely-there nightie, and managed to preserve a scrap of modesty by pulling up the bedsheets. cap’n Poldark (Aidan turner) had no need of blankets to stay warm — his chest is carpeted with Axminster.
the plot doesn’t go anywhere much. Uncle charles (Warren clarke) had a stroke, then a heart attack and then was apparently killed by a fit of laughing, and was still muttering his last words ten minutes later.
Meanwhile, down the copper mine, the men were setting off depth charges that threatened to send the tip of cornwall floating away into the Atlantic — but they still couldn’t find any copper.
As if that mattered. No one was watching for the mining scenes.