Like Bodyguard, only northern and grittier
An assassination attempt on a controversial female politician. A courageous police officer saving her life. An investigation which uncovered a tangled conspiracy. A shock death. Yet this wasn’t the BBC’S current mega-hit Bodyguard but the new series of cop comedy drama No
Offence (Channel 4). If the two programmes hadn’t been in production at the same time, cynics might suspect one of plagiarising the other. No Offence even had a traumatised Helmand veteran and a spilt drink necessitating an emergency change of blouse.
Instead it was an uncanny coincidence and fascinating to see how two of our finest TV writers, Bodyguard’s Jed Mercurio and No Offence’s Paul Abbott, tackled similar material. No Offence was Bodyguard in negative – northern, gritty and sweary, as opposed to southern, glossy and sexy – but no worse for it.
As Abbott’s police drama returned for a third run, the Friday Street Station squad faced their most formidable foe yet: the far-right. At a heated mayoral hustings, a gunman took a potshot at candidate Caroline Mccoy (Lisa Mcgrillis), a local lass done good. Cult heroine DI Viv Deering (the superb Joanna Scanlan) saved her from the bullet but in the ensuing chase, DS Joy Freers (Alexandra Roach) was shot.
Freers was rushed to hospital but, in a heartbreakingly silent scene, her colleagues realised that she’d succumbed to her injuries when the ambulance they were escorting through traffic suddenly turned off its siren. Roach was one of the standouts in the ragtag ensemble cast and will be much missed.
“Take your shock, your grief, your anger and turn it into fuel,” Deering told her team with trademark tough love. In their search for the killer, they infiltrated the shadowy, and rather varied, world of far-right extremists and their powerful benefactors. One, a Romanian tramp (who was a red herring) was so drunk, he didn’t notice his rotting toes falling off. Another sub-plot saw a punch-up between a bride and her bridesmaids that resulted in further loss of extremities.
This was a comeback that was by turns tear-jerking and pulse-pounding as well as pertinent. The script tackled such topics as Islamophobia, social media trolling and outsourced public services, while Deering remains one of the most colourfully compelling characters on TV. Who needs Keeley Hawes or Richard Madden’s bare buttocks?
‘Our job is the truth!” trilled a reporter who’d recently graduated from the School of Journalistic Clichés. I’m beginning to fear that Press (BBC One) is no match for Press Gang. Two episodes in and Mike Bartlett’s Fleet Street drama is already suffering in comparison with its near-namesake on Children’s ITV three decades ago.
On one side of the rival newspapers, tabloid editor Duncan (Ben Chaplin) did a favour for an influential friend by discrediting a steel union boss and sent two reporters undercover – one in a comedy polar bear costume – to a VIP Halloween party in search of scandal.
Over at ailing liberal broadsheet The Herald, ineffectual editor Amina (Priyanga Burford) struggled to balance her commitment to serious journalism with the paper’s declining sales. In today’s media landscape, the character’s commercial naivety was laughably unconvincing.
Millennial wet lettuce Leona (Ellie Kendrick), meanwhile, keen to get her byline on a big story, was dispatched by deputy news editor Holly (Charlotte Riley) to investigate a hospital’s mortality rates. Leona not only tried to take a shortcut but brazenly lied about it. Martyrish Holly reacted by uncovering the truth herself, then handing Leona the scoop – rather than firing her, which would have been preferable.
I cut Press some slack when it launched last week, reluctant to castigate it for minor industry inaccuracies and instead weighing its merits purely as dramatic fiction. It didn’t repay my faith because this second episode was markedly inferior.
The children’s TV presenter plot was half-cocked (for proper tabloid splash outrage, she should have been doing something far spicier than smoking and bitching about colleagues). Holly’s hit-and-run victim flatmate, which felt like the emotional centre of the story last week, wasn’t even mentioned this time around.
To compound the narrative problems, this wasn’t even as entertaining as the first episode. If it continues on this path, Press could be tomorrow’s fish and chip paper.
No Offence ★★★★ Press ★★