Wise and warm pupils are an inspirational lesson to us all
‘What’s the capital city of Kenya?” “Narnia.” Well, at least she got the first two letters right. Do you get any marks for that in Geography GCSE? Educating Greater Manchester (Channel 4) found the fly-on-theblackboard series moving to another new setting: this time, Harrop Fold Secondary in Salford. Having honed its skills across the four previous series, the Bafta-winning observational documentary strand is masterfully edited to spin compelling stories from everyday school life.
Cue ill-fitting blazers, fat tie knots and furrowed brows in trigonometry lessons. The comedy came from pupils comparing Donald Trump’s hairstyle with Hitler’s and misspelling rude words while cheekily writing in the grime on a dirty delivery van.
This time, proceedings also had a tragically topical twist. Cameras happened to be in the school after May’s bomb attack at the Ariana Grande concert, a mere eight miles down the road. Eight Harrop Fold students and one teacher had attended and told their tearful accounts.
The school was already adjusting to an influx of foreign pupils. Under the leadership of charismatic headteacher Drew Povey, staff wrestled admirably with the challenges of a modern multicultural comprehensive. Syrian and Afghan refugees, traumatised by the wars back home, rubbed shoulders with Polish teenagers who had never seen darker skin before.
Islamophobia bubbled up, with “terrorist” and “Osama” used as playground insults. Yet for every dispiriting incident, there tended to be several happier ones. Here it was the genuinely affecting tale of blossoming friendship between the painfully shy Rani, an 11-year-old Syrian refugee struggling to settle in Salford, and old-before-his-time local lad Jack, who invented an elaborate handshake and invited Rani around for tea (pizza and chips, naturally).
There was a lip-wobbling scene when Rani graduated from his remedial English class to mainstream Year 7 lessons, where he could sit next to Jack. Describing themselves as “brothers”, the pair earnestly vowed to stay best friends forever. As Jack’s mother Steph sagely observed: “Kids are a bit like rubber balls. They bounce back all the time.”
A welcome return for this and cleverly constructed series, which was as warm, wise and inspiring as ever.
Could Top of the Lake: China (BBC Two) snatch a lastgasp televisual victory from the jaws of defeat? I’ve been disappointed by the second series of Jane Campion’s artsy thriller about the dark side of Sydney’s sex and surrogacy industries. This misguided mess of a drama has been let down by overwrought dialogue, heavy-handed misogyny, cartoonish characters and a case riddled with implausible coincidences. Not so much Top of the Lake as bottom of the barrel.
As its finale began, though, the narrative belatedly seemed to be gathering momentum and getting somewhere. Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) was plunged into a nightmare when a gunman stormed brothel Silk 41 and took her daughter Mary (Alice Englert) hostage.
A Where’s Wally?-esque manhunt was launched on Bondi Beach, with the crowded beach searched by undercover cops – incongruously sporting swimwear and earpieces.
As an added complication, Griffin was still drunk from her sorrowdrowning sex session the night before. With winning gallows humour, she kept breaking off to vomit, take naps on morgue floors or breathalyse herself.
Sadly, the story soon fell apart again. We at last learnt the truth about what happened to sex worker Cinnamon, aka “China Girl”, whose body washed up in a suitcase six weeks ago. The answer turned out to be deflatingly prosaic.
The denouement was a mishmash of dangling loose ends. Mary might have been saved but primary antagonist Puss (David Dencik) escaped to cackle evilly another day. Robin’s gawky sidekick Miranda (Gwendoline Christie) was shot and lay in a critical condition. Supporting characters either vanished from view or were left in limbo.
Mad Men alumnus Moss shone in a series that was as much a character study as a police procedural. Combined with her lead role in The Handmaid’s Tale, she’s surely a shoo-in for TV actress of the year. Moss did her best to carry this depressingly dysfunctional tale. Her worthy efforts weren’t enough.