Portillo’s Railroad Journey is more reliable than our trains
More than a decade after he left politics, Michael Portillo will be familiar to a generation of viewers only as a genial broadcaster. And his train programmes have become fixtures of British television that are easy to take for granted. Over a mild half-hour, Portillo travels from landmark to landmark, talking to enthusiastic locals and pondering the course of history.
Last night, he returned and trundled around Boston, for the first in a new series of his Great American Railroad
Journeys (BBC Two). As ever, he was resplendent in block pastels – in this case, a lemon-yellow jacket.
There, he heard about the Tea Party political protest and saw the exact spot in the harbour where the stuff was dumped, visited an old textiles factory, and learnt about the origins of the Boston subway. It’s funny how things turn out. This “Lion of the Right” was meant to be prime minister, but Britain came round to his views too late. Instead, he found himself, at the age of 64, in suburban Massachusetts, clutching his old Appleton’s Railway Guide, hopping on and off train carriages and strolling down platforms. He seemed entirely sanguine about the development, as well he might. Clutching a glass of white wine, he congratulated a man in an oyster bar on his shucking ability. He donned a tricorne hat to hear an actor playing Sam Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, denounce the English.
It’s an old-fashioned production, which is both good and bad. In an era of prevailing slickness, it’s refreshing that the interviewees and subjects are given room to breathe and digress. But, on the down side, some of the edits were less-than-perfect, and one or two interviews were longer than they needed to be.
In the final section, Portillo went upstate in search of a massive organ, presumably to give us all a right old Carry On-chuckle. There, a choir sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It was at moments like these that it looked like he realised the instrument might not have been worth the trip.
While the programme is the lightest of travel guides, its format is well oiled. It depends almost entirely on its presenter, and while Portillo might not be the most rigorous historian on our screens, he remains eminently watchable. And luckily, there are plenty of railroads left for him to venture across.
Next of Kin (ITV) was billed as a family thriller. That was an ambitious plan: families, by and large, aren’t thrilling. Yet, over six episodes, this series promised to combine a story of terrorism with the pathos of its effect on the families of those involved.
As the third episode opened, Dr Mona Harcourt (Archie Panjabi) was recovering in hospital. Last week, while in Lahore on the trail of her nephew Danny (Viveik Kalra), Mona had been shot in the midriff by British security. In the hands of many writers, this would have led to the protagonist having some time away from the centre of the action. Not so for Mona. Husband-and-wife scriptwriters Paul Rutman and Natasha Narayan had their heroine up and running again in no time, investigating Danny’s links to Islamic extremism.
As fans of US drama The Good Wife have known for years, Panjabi does a nice line in steeliness mixed with vulnerability. This was displayed when we saw the conflict between Mona’s faith in Danny and her growing realisation that he had got himself tied up in something dark on her worried face. Mawaan Rizwan was convincing, too, as Danny’s goodnatured brother Omar.
But the rest of the cast struggled to hang the episode together. In particular, Claire Skinner and Jack Davenport, as a security agent Vivien Barnes and Mona’s political lobbyist husband Guy respectively, struggled in vain with leaden, predictable dialogue, and ridiculous implausibilities. As she interviewed Mona about Danny, Barnes managed to gloss over the fact that her agents had shot the GP. And goons popped up whenever the plot demanded them. It was impossible to believe that these people were anywhere near the front line of British counter-terrorism.
There are still three episodes to go, and it’s possible Next of Kin will finish strongly. But, on last night’s evidence, it’s hard to believe. A straight thriller can often get away with a dodgy script. Believability is a small price to pay for the right kind of bangs and whizzes. A family drama, on the other hand, cannot. To believe in the emotion, we need to believe in the events.
Great American Railroad Journeys ★★★ Next of Kin ★★