BBC presents... the Second World Bore
WHAT we really need is a right-on war. Said no one. But that’s exactly what the BBC have given us. World On Fire (BBC One, Sunday) was an attempt to tell the Secondworldwar from different perspectives – Polish, German/american and British.why? Search me.as an academic exercise I could just about support it, but not as a major TV drama. Nor do I detect any huge clamour for such an approach.
Most of us think we found ourselves in a war, we suffered badly, we won it and we told the story.we know everyone suffered too, not equally, otherwise the nonsensical phrase “a good war” wouldn’t exist.what did this drama add to our sum of knowledge on the subject? Next to nothing.
Accepted, it wasn’t a documentary, but a romantic relationship across the borders between an English diplomat and a Polish waitress threw little light on a rather clichéd plot of “How do you stay loyal to your girlfriend at home?”. This time, the position was, “You don’t”.
There was also the curious depiction of the German soldiers on the Polish border.we saw, several times, the brutal execution, at point-blank range, of Polish soldiers.why did we need to see this now, in the 21st century? No one advocates disguising the brutality, but it seemed rather ironic when we were apparently looking at a “right-on” rendering of the subject.
In short, writer Peter Bowker was saying that Germans were brutal (shock) but then there was also the glimmer of understanding, too, from another German soldier in a separate scene. I didn’t know what the drama was saying. Is this really the type of series we can expect in a global TV world?
On the home front, we had the story of Sean Bean’s pacifist – gosh, hasn’t Sharpe gone on a journey? – whose daughter was about to be let down by that horrid English diplomat.
His mother, played marvellously by Lesley Manville, channelled Downton’s Dowager Maggie Smith for a pitch-perfect, cut-glass snob. “I really do like the look of that Mosley...” she said. On which subject, haven’t we had enough of Oswald Mosley, BBC? We’ve had six weeks of him on Peaky Blinders. I would hate to think that this is a heavy-handed metaphor for our times. The last excellent drama to tell the home front story in a powerful manner was SOMETIMES the BBC get something so completely wrong it’s hard to believe anyone is in charge.
In a much-liked national photo competition for a charity calendar was reduced to farce when viewers realised the winning picture of a harvest mouse in an apple was shot in someone’s back room. Very “countryside”. It may be allowed under the rules, BBC, but it’s ridiculous. Isn’t the point of the show to encourage people into the beautiful hills and dales, not mock it up in their conservatory? Amazing own-goal. ITV’S Home Fires, which was cancelled far too soon.
The other big drama of the week was Catherine The Great (Sky Atlantic, Wednesday). If a surfeit of interviews with Dame Helen Mirren could guarantee a hit, this four-part series would be an obvious five-star success. Alas it isn’t. In case you missed it, Dame Helen, who was playing the Russian tyrant, was asked in interviews about everything from democracy to how we’re dealing with Brexit.the Sky News Sunrise presenter Sarah-jane Mee even quizzed her on how the Queen – given that Mirren once played our monarch – must have felt being “misled” by the Prime Minister. The logic of that suggests we get Hugh Grant (Love Actually) to negotiate Brexit successfully before he trips across the floor to the Pointer Sisters. Mirren has tried to find a “progressive” streak to this leader who in the first episode ordered one execution and was warming to another, while at the same time sending her troops into battle to claim more lands and lives. She also had her husband eliminated. Catherine had a tempestuous affair then apparent marriage to General Potemkin whom she intermittently dispatched to do her foreign dirty work. In the first episode, her current lover took exception and enlisted another plotter to beat up Potemkin and throw him out of a window. Potemkin, already in bad shape, landed flat on his back only to open his eyes moments later like a Marvel character who never says die.
The drama, engaging though not compelling, is the most sumptuous this year, but one would be hard pressed to say why we’re interested in a Georgian-period Russian leader – unless you’revladimir Putin, who will be taking notes on her imperial strategy.
Finally, (ITV, Sunday) thrilled audiences momentarily when the continuity man announced jauntily: “Scenes of a sexual nature will follow.” A frisson was felt in living rooms from John O’groats to Land’s End.what hasanne Reid been up to? Alas, it was only Sir Edward and Theward who busied themselves on the marble floor in Reid’s mansion, while the lady of the house reclined infirm, wanting rid of them – together with this drama, one suspects. Where will this all end in two episodes? Most of us are hoping for a freak tide to break over the fictional seaside resort. It really is for the best...