Sublime acting and a gripping plot — this was telly perfection
Trade secret: rotten television shows are easy to write about, because there’s loads of time to make notes while they’re on. The page fills up with quotes, musings and ideas for what might be done better.
after an episode of The apprentice, I sometimes discover that in elaborately decorated letters I have doodled ‘Fire alan Sugar’, without noticing it. during the opening Strictly gala, a message appeared in the margin that read, ‘ed Balls! Why? Why? WHY?’
But after National Treasure (C4) I glanced down at the notepad and discovered I hadn’t written a word. From the first moment of the first scene, where has-been comic Paul Finchley (robbie Coltrane) was pacing in the alley outside an awards ceremony, consumed with stage fright, I was utterly absorbed.
everything about this four-part production is gripping — the superb cast, the dialogue, the sets. Most of all, it’s the theme, one that TV has shirked for much too long.
Finchley, once a household name but now the washed-up host of a daytime gameshow called Smuggle, is caught up in the backwash of Operation Yewtree. accused of a rape that happened 20 years ago, he is treated outrageously by detectives — marched from his house in front of his grandchildren, and then cynically sold out to the red-top tabloids and humiliated by lurid ‘Sex Shame’ headlines.
It’s a stinging indictment of how police handle historic inquiries, seeking a conviction in the public mind before the investigation has begun. But we quickly start to guess that Finchley is no Cliff richard or Paul Gambaccini (neither of whom were ever charged after abuse claims).
The first clue comes in the middle of the night, before his arrest, when he’s reading his Press cuttings online. The camera swings round, so we can no longer see what is on his laptop screen, and a change infuses his face.
Coltrane didn’t twitch a muscle, but a cruelty entered his eyes. Whatever he was looking at, it wasn’t Google.
The next hint came from Julie Walters, as his wife Marie, in the moment she saw the police at the door. She knew. Like her husband, she went through all the right reactions — shock, bafflement, polite protest — but at her core she already knew Paul was guilty, of whatever they said he’d done, and it showed.
These were sublime performances, and the writing by Jack Thorne merited them.
The most affecting scene was audaciously original: Finchley visited his adult daughter dee (andrea riseborough), a recovering drug addict who spat and snapped at him like a petulant teenage girl. She insisted on telling him about the dream she’d had last night — something surreal, about a family picnic and a stone and a murder that had to be covered up. Finchley sat and listened as though she was reading him a charge sheet.
‘What do you suppose that means?’ she sneered. He knew, and so did we. The unspoken allegations of childhood abuse couldn’t have been clearer if we’d seen them in flashback.
But there were no flashbacks. No showy tricks, no flourishes — just superb performances and a story with the force of a cannonball. The outstanding set design completed it: the way Finchley’s expensive home resembled a furniture catalogue, and the showbiz dinner where execs sidled between circular tables to gladhand the stars.
The One Show’s alex Jones must live and breathe those sorts of industry events, because her entire existence seems to revolve around television. Fertility And Me (BBC1) followed her investigation into IVF and other babymaking treatments, at a time when she and her husband Charlie were trying to start a family.
Most people might be afraid of jinxing themselves. alex was happy to document the lot, even discussing her husband’s sperm count with doctors on camera when the poor chap wasn’t present.
For couples trying for a baby, or wondering whether they dare hold off for another couple of years, this was probably valuable TV. For the rest of us, it was too graphically medical.
It’s hard to imagine anyone watching it for fun.