Gaelic noir with whiskey and wisecracks ... I’ll drink to that
DOWN these mean streets, as crimewriter Raymond Chandler said, ‘a man must go who is not himself mean’ — that’s an elegaic and even poetic definition of what it takes to be a film noir detective.
Chandler created the archetypal private eye, Philip Marlowe, portrayed on the big screen by Hollywood heroes including Robert Mitchum, James Garner and, best of all, Humphrey Bogart.
Marlowe was a modern-day saint, a spirit of justice and chivalry whose only source of vitamins was tobacco and who prayed to the god of hard liquor. The saviour of distressed damsels, the scourge of evildoers, it is no surprise that he was modelled on the knights of Arthurian legend.
Iain Glen plays Marlowe with a West Coast Irish accent in Jack Taylor (C5). The only time there’s no tumbler of whiskey in his hand is when he’s nursing a pint glass. We never see him eat, but he puffs his way through a couple of packets of cigarettes every episode — part knight of the Round Table, part smoke-breathing dragon.
There is nothing original about Jack Taylor. He’s a hard man with a soft heart, an ex-copper who is friend to the winos and enemy to the bigwigs.
And he can take a punch, especially when it’s thrown by the girl he loves. This episode ended with a slap in the chops that was textbook Bogie-and-Bacall. She hits him, he ruefully rubs his chin and kisses her
CREEP OF THE NIGHT: Loudmouth Karthik, who claims to model himself on Alexander the Great, bizarrely boasted on The Apprentice (BBC1) that he knew the very hotel room where his baby was conceived. Then he tried to undress in public. He was lucky to be merely fired, and not arrested. — zoom to a close-up on their clinch, and dissolve . . .
Even the dialogue of this Gaelic noir is sheer Chandler. ‘I thought you’d be taller,’ the villainess mocks him. ‘I’m working on it,’ he growls.
Glen, best known as the knight-protector to Queen Daenerys in Game Of Thrones, relishes the role. In his billowing overcoat and threeday stubble, he looks like he’s been sleeping on a bar stool since 1993.
You have to peer carefully to realise how artful that dishevelled style is, and that he has a combover to hide the bald spot on his crown. There’s a reason private eyes wear hats — he should invest in a homburg.
The plotting is nothing special, following a conventional template of murder, suspects, second murder, false trail and showdown. Fans of other ‘death-by-numbers’ shows such as Vera and DCI Banks will read every twist as if it’s laid out on a map.
This formulaic writing leaves more time for moody atmosphere, which is what noir is all about. Galway looks seductively seedy, like a Sin City on the edge of paradise. Especially when seen through another cloud of Jack Taylor’s smoke.
The Connington Hotel in playwright Stephen Poliakoff’s post-war spy drama, Close To The Enemy (BBC2), is striving for moody atmosphere too.
The rooms and corridors seem to shift around, like the classrooms at Hogwarts school, while everything beyond the windows is a cheerless wasteland of rubble and bonfires.
In this nightmarish landscape, it’s not surprising the characters have started to lose their way. They wander around, banging into each other randomly like balls on a billiard table at sea.
Alfred Molina keeps popping up, his shiny face made up with red cheeks like a china doll. Each time we meet him, he is stuffing himself at a dining table, a little fatter than before.
He’ll soon be as bloated as Monty Python’s gluttonous Mr Creosote: in the final scene, he’ll swallow one more prawn vol au vent and explode, taking all the spies and defectors with him.
To add to the sense of unreality, so much of the period detail is off. The neurotic German scientist is perpetually unshaven, which is fair enough, but so is Army officer Callum Ferguson (Jim Sturgess). Back in 1946, body odour and bad breath was more acceptable than stubble on a gentleman’s face.
In a surreal digression, Ferguson’s loopy brother — played by Sebastian Armesto, the one with the electric-shock hair — is running around in a World War One greatcoat, giggling like a maniac as he urges his child companion to join him in search of adventure and hot chocolate.
Be honest, Sebastian: is this your audition for Doctor Who?