What is going on inside Stephen Poliakoff ’s head?
In the second episode of Stephen Poliakoff ’s Close to the Enemy (BBC Two), mysterious leading man Callum Ferguson (Jim Sturgess) took his mysteriously war-traumatised brother Victor to see a mysterious doctor, who suggested the young man find something to occupy his mind.
“I’m glad I don’t occupy your mind,” quipped Victor (Freddie Highmore), a mite laboriously. “I wouldn’t want to be in there. Inside that dome.”
It was one of those contrived Poliakoff exchanges that didn’t mean anything. Yet it resonated, primarily because it made me think that my twohour quest to gain a foothold of understanding on Close to the Enemy might finally be bearing fruit.
Perhaps, I thought, it was never intended to be a “thriller” set in bombed-out postwar London, but only a fantasy set exclusively inside the echoing dome of Poliakoff ’s head – a place where realism holds no sway, and dreamlike random association is the order of the day.
Seen in this light, the fact that the entire cast seemed to be acting in different styles – and, to all intents and purposes, different dramas – seemed just that little bit less irksome. As did the lack of direction, the bizarre sudden jump cuts, the refusal of anything to actually happen, the pointlessly contorted dialogue, and the fascination with characters walking down corridors.
That the actions and utterances of the story’s war-weary ex-soldiers, intelligence agents, boffins and Nazi hunters bore no relation to the way in which real-life people – especially those who have been through a long, hard war – behave, or speak, began not to matter either.
I no longer felt obliged to waste energy on figuring out why scowling toffs were hurling abuse at a jazz singer for no reason, or a femme fatale was initiating an utterly gratuitous sex scene. Or even why a child, terrified by a sweaty stereotypical paedophile, would place trust not in her father but in a patently bonkers stranger in a greatcoat. I didn’t even feel the need to wonder what might happen in the five remaining hour-long episodes.
Instead, I accepted that this was an indulgent exercise in eccentricity and went along for the ride, spending my time appreciating the pretty costumes, beautifully lit ruins and atmospheric snatches of jazz. I also recalled a time when Poliakoff ’s Shooting the Past hit me with enough force to think it a work of genius, and how far from that this seemed.
Anthropomorphism was both the Achilles heel and chief appeal of The Secret Life of the Zoo (Channel 4). Some nature documentaries go through hoops to disguise the fact that they utilise not entirely accurate comparisons between human and animal behaviour to engage our interest and sway our emotions. Others simply hold their hands up and go the whole hog.
Or the whole warthog, in the case of The Secret Life of the Zoo and its star attraction Magnum, the ever-wallowing, sleep-loving, broken-tailed and impressively betusked paterfamilias of Chester Zoo’s wild pig pack. Magnum was described as “shirking” his childcare responsibilities at one point, and needing to “buck his ideas up”. Even by porcine standards, the ideas looked like something that rarely entered Magnum’s knob-encrusted cranium.
Then there was Tina, a “feisty” (if feisty can mean barely animated) four-year-old sloth characterised for no discernible reason as “the Marilyn Monroe of the sloth world”. She was resisting the attentions of her newly introduced “suitor” Rico, so the keepers embarked on a different route to her heart, encouraged her with tasty bribes. “It’s a little bit like setting up a room with candles and Barry White, but with enrichment feeders instead,” said keeper Sam – whose efforts were rewarded with some endearingly tender sloth-on-sloth action at the close.
All the animals featured, from under-stimulated Asiatic lions to foaling zebras, got much the same reality show treatment: a storyline with a touch of jeopardy, a journey and, in time, a happy ending. Human interest came via interviews with the keepers – a jolly lot, whose close relationships with their charges guaranteed that emotional engagement stayed high.
With 20,000 animals, 87 keepers and heaven knows how many fixed-rig cameras filming at Chester Zoo for 10 months, there was no shortage of good footage to choose from – and the editing was suitably slick. For those who like their nature full of cute oohs and aahs, rather than red in tooth and claw, The
Secret Life of the Zoo gently ticked all the boxes.