Clueless contestants on trail of the ‘killer’
TV CAN’T GET enough murder right now. There’s true crime, crime drama, crimes of passion and now, solve your own murder! Not literally your own. Your personal success rate would be rather low. Contestants have gone to Murder Island (Channel 4, Tuesday) – no one’s going to buy a house there – where these wannabe detectives will grill a red herring or two, and compete to win £50,000.
Four detective duos who have probably watched way too many Midsomer Murders episodes and now think they can call themselves Barnaby, are putting their skills to the test in a make-believe murder mystery game show, written by crime genius Ian Rankin. I think he’s the one having all the laughs.
Having said that, the whole thing was so ridiculous I was happily guffawing away too. Not least because these untrained sleuths didn’t really have two clues to rub together. As it was after one “interview” with a suspect, one of the investigators turned to her sidekick and said: “It could be anybody!” Well, I think you could rule out the Channel 4 crew and the three former detectives who were on hand to probably have a good snigger behind their hands.
They’re also missing the hallmarks of every good TV detective: no one’s dressed in an unkempt raincoat, no one’s drinking on the job, no one’s driving a Jag, no one’s from a sweet, chocolate box village, no one’s solving a crossword while talking to a suspect and, most importantly, no one’s shouting, “We’re on Murder Island, and we still haven’t had our dinner!”
We’re – sorry, they’re – investigating the murder of a young woman called Charly, who may have got caught up in a dodgy property development. But every now and then, we’re given her crucial back story, just so we can shout at the telly, “These people really are clueless.” Is it a hit? Of course, we’re mad for detective dramas.
Quite by coincidence, in a new episode of Midsomer Murders (ITV, Sunday), a fake murder-mystery evening was played out before a TV murder mystery. I know, completely bonkers. We can’t absorb two whodunnits in one show.
In the fake one, a waiter copped it, while in the real TV murder, a wealthy boardgame maker was poisoned and finished off spectacularly by an ornamental spear. As it was, we never found out who killed the waiter which will remain one of TV’S great mysteries. I’m saying the boss.
Of course, there was no shortage of suspects, but I mostly enjoyed the disgruntled chap who unsuccessfully pitched his new business idea to the victim, based around the Japanese concept of “kintsugi” – or repairing broken plates. How did I miss this concept? I look forward to the C4 reality show set on Kintsugi Island. They could get together with the plate-throwing Greeks. The serious drama of the week was Ridley Road (BBC1, Sunday). I knew it was such because there were three Nazis salutes. Even I can take a hint.
It was an evocative 1960s love story about a young Jewish hairdresser who didn’t like her arranged marriage so went to London (Ridley Road, Hackney, to be precise) to find her true love who, by this stage, was a spy in a fascist group. Keep up!
As we ended the episode, she was intent on infiltrating the group herself, while most of the audience simply looked on at the fantastic production design combining touches of real footage and pics with immaculate sets. Although at times, it felt like a lost episode of Call The Midwife, I shall return for more.
The funniest watch, and where most laughs were surely unintentional, was Prue Leith’s Great Garden Plot (More4, Wednesday). The Bake Off judge, who appears to have more dough than this week’s bread round, is building another house next to the enormous pile in which she has lived for 45 years. And the new house needs a garden, so she’s hired a head gardener, and an inscrutable chap called Ratty, alongside her husband of 10 years, clothes designer John Playfair, who looks like an aged-up Boris Johnson and is quite clubbable into the bargain.
For me, he was the star of the show, putting in many back-breaking hours and in the end providing all the entertainment, chiefly showing us how to fall into a hedge while barely holding on to a strimmer. It was You’ve Been Framed meets Gardeners’ World.
A close second was Prue’s determined effort to simply stand up while inspecting her expansive lawns. “I bet this [shot] stays in,” she joked. At 81, she had warned us earlier that her joints were no longer up to gardening, or much else. She proved this by getting on all fours to lift herself up. “This is the same way I get out of the bath,” she added helpfully. A great sport.