The masterstroke in this tragic tale of abduction ... an ailing shaggy dog
Afellow dog-walker in my local park regales me when we meet with graphic accounts of his labrador’s digestive difficulties. It’s revolting... but I can’t help liking the bloke and his pooch.
The masterstroke in Kiri (C4), the drama about a missing sixyear-old girl, was to give her social worker Miriam (Sarah lancashire) an ailing, smelly dog. Jesse is a mongrel with a shaggy coat, arthritis and abominable wind.
Miriam fusses over him constantly. She even takes him to work, parking him under a desk. She buttonholes strangers, of course, to deliver monologues on his various health problems. And because of Jesse, we’ll forgive Miriam just about anything.
She certainly needs a lot of forgiving. everyone — from the foster parents, Miriam’s bosses and the media — blames her for the child’s abduction. The central question of this four-part drama is: was it the social worker’s fault?
little Kiri( played with confident aplomb by felicia Mukusa) was apparently taken by her birth father, a drug-dealer with a long criminal record, during an afternoon with her grandparents, Tobi and Rochelle. Miriam had pressed for the visit: she thought the child would experience ‘cultural benefits’ — because Kiri and her grandparents were black. The foster family were white. Miriam’s bosses suspect she failed to carry out proper safety assessments, and reporters accuse her of being in thrall to political correctness.
Most damning of all, Kiri’s foster carers say Miriam manipulated them, by suggesting the visit would help their application to adopt the little girl. The storyline was set up in a deft 20 minutes, all beautifully controlled by Sarah lancashire as a mouthy, cavalier renegade — very different to her indestructible police sergeant in Happy Valley.
And then it took a dramatic turn into darkness.
Just as we were prepared for a long search, Kiri’s body was found, dumped at the edge of woods. That twist was a horrible jolt. writer Jack Thorne, who created last year’s sex abuse drama National Treasure with Robbie Coltrane, has set up three more episodes that will inevitably explore all the events leading up to Kiri’s murder.
whether she is to blame or not, Miriam has played a central part in a violent tragedy. And she wasn’t coping well — sloshing back spirits at the wheel of her car. If we’re to keep forgiving her, that dog has its work cut out.
Coincidentally, another Miriam was proving surprisingly likeable in Miriam’s Big American Adventure (BBC1), reining in her tendency to insult everyone within earshot, as she motored through the mid-west of the United States. Since they’ve all got guns, that was probably wise. la Margolyes, Britain’s rudest export, was in surprisingly emollient mood. It’s true that she started by driving the wrong way up a one-way street, but she sweet-talked the traffic cop like a professional, even lapsing into a redneck accent.
Meeting inmates in a female prison — most of them drug addicts — she listened attentively to their stories and offered kindly advice, reducing two women to tears as she implored them: ‘You’re young, you’ve got your whole lives to lead.’
She could have been judgmental and snooty. After all, as she earnestly told the camera, she has never touched drugs and only ever once been drunk.
we were seeing the actress on best behaviour — far removed from the caricature harridan of The Real Marigold Hotel.
Still, she’s no ambassador for Britain. ‘I met the Queen,’ Miriam told three American youngsters. ‘I didn’t like her very much — she told me to be quiet.’
Good for you, Ma’am.
DODGY DETOX OF THE NIGHT: ‘The juniper berries in G&T are part of my five-a-day,’ declared Sue (Miranda Richardson) in Girlfriends (ITV). If gin counts as health food, from now on I’m referring to my cheap panatellas as scented candles.