Fleet Street drama is irresistible entertainment
There are few things journalists enjoy more than picking holes in fictional portrayals of their trade for perceived inaccuracies. There are also few things more tedious for non-journalists to read. So I’ll resist nit-picking and consider Fleet Street-set drama (BBC One) purely as a piece of TV fiction.
The slickly crafted opening episode introduced two newspapers, occupying buildings in the same London square. At left-leaning broadsheet The Guar… sorry, The Herald, workaholic hack Holly Evans (Charlotte Riley) reluctantly gave Katie Hopki… sorry, a controversial rightwing female columnist an office tour.
Meanwhile, over at populist tabloid The Su…, sorry, The Post, rookie reporter Ed Washburn (the promising Paapa Essiedu) was given his first “death knock” assignment, doorstepping the parents of a footballer who had committed suicide.
These threads intertwined when Holly, chasing a story about a woman killed by a hit-and-run police car, learned that a nearby corner shop had given its CCTV footage to The Herald. She approached its cocky editor Duncan Allen (Ben Chaplin) about sharing the potentially crucial evidence – because, as we know, tabloids hand their exclusives to rivals (oops, I promised I wouldn’t nitpick).
David Suchet popped up as a sinister media mogul. A Levesonesque inquiry convened. There were unconvincing sub-plots about an MI5 whistleblower and compromising pictures of a feminist MP. Tabloid types wore spivvy suits, worthy broadsheet types wore woolly jumpers. Everyone got coffee from the same barista, which was narratively convenient.
Creator Mike Bartlett, a playwright whose TV stock has been sky high since hit potboiler Doctor Foster, deals in addictive melodrama rather than procedural accuracy – hence this was escapist entertainment, not a journalistic training video. It was no more a realistic representation of newspapers today than Doctor Foster was a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a GP’S surgery.
Although the dialogue creaked like an antique printing press, with exposition clumsily spouting from characters’ mouths (“I want the best layouts, the best images, the best online!”), this soapy saga was irresistible. Neat plot twists and sparky exchanges ensured it was an enjoyable romp, populated by bruised-but-noble heroes and amorally sleazy villains.
Riley was excellent, her character both believable and intriguing. The story showed enough potential for me to return next week in the hope that this could become a State of Play-style conspiracy thriller.
TV hardman Ross Kemp kicked off ITV’S Crime and Punishment season with an in-depth critique of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic 1866 novel. Not really. This is a themed season of true-crime fare and Ross Kemp and the Armed Police (ITV) found the former actor discovering how police forces are dealing with the rising tide of shootings in our cities.
Kemp accompanied armed West Midlands Police units on the streets of Birmingham before crossing to the other side of the law, meeting a smuggler who imports illegal weapons and gang members who used them. Gun crime has increased by 20 per cent in the past year. We heard how the police were armed in response to terror attacks but have instead found themselves fighting drug gangs.
At times it teetered on the brink of self-parody. Clad in all-black and a bulletproof vest (tough!), Kemp conducted grim-faced interviews (gritty!), swaggered down streets (urban!) and burst through doors (butch!), while booming his narration in that Jeremy Clarkson style of long… pauses with random bursts… of SHOUTING. I was reminded of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who is America? spoofs or Danny Dyer’s laddish series about Cockney gangsters and football hooligans back in the Noughties.
With its action movie soundtrack and slow motion shots of spraying bullets, the film couldn’t decide whether it was condemning gun culture or secretly thrilled by it. In fact, it was at its best when Kemp let his guard down: admitting that he was scared during an armed raid or shedding a tear when comforting a mother whose son was gunned down in a London playground.
Kemp has turned into an awardwinning documentary-maker. It was just a shame that this film didn’t strike a more intelligent tone.