A brave drama that tackled moral dogma head on
Each episode of The Victim, the BBC One drama about a child killer in the vein of the James Bugler case, was supplied to television critics in advance with a list. The list was of the humdinging spoilers that were under no circumstances to be revealed. Who, for example, would turn out to be the child killer Eddie J Turner? Would Anna (Kelly Macdonald) be found guilty of incitement to murder for revealing Eddie’s new identity? If she caught up with Eddie, whoever he was, would she kill him?
The brilliance of last night’s conclusion was that it rendered all of those questions moot – by the end the audience and Anna knew all the answers, but as a devastating, lengthy final scene showed, answers and explanations were no salve to grief and pain. It was fashionable in psychology several years ago to talk about closure. The Victim, over four excellent episodes, has shown how in some cases closure is unattainable.
Usually a hyped drama stripped across a week suffers from a lull around Wednesday, as the writer pads and finagles to get from their startling
set-up to their shocking conclusion while hoping that we don’t notice how not much happened in episode three. The Victim, by contrast, has maintained tension throughout by asking different questions each episode, effectively functioning as a new drama every hour. In episode one the question was who is the victim, the mother of the deceased child or the man being falsely accused of the murder and beaten up 15 years later? By last night’s finale the question had become what is justice and who does it help? If it was perhaps a little pretentious to bookend the whole series with a black screen and a quote from 13th-century Persian poet Rumi – “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there” – then the preceding 15-minute climax, in which Macdonald managed to make anger and compassion seem like different strands of the same emotion, had earned a little pretension. This was a brave, timely drama that confronted moral dogma head on.
There is so much to like about Channel 4’s Lee and Dean that it is matter for genuine regret
that it isn’t very funny.
The two Stevenage-based builders and best mates returned for a second series last night and practically everything that was both good and bad about series one was all present and incorrect. Present: two delightful performances in the leads from writers and stars Miles Chapman (Lee) and Mark O’sullivan (Dean). Also present: that slight uneasy sense that you were being cajoled in to laughing at working-class people. Present: cringe comedy taken to extremes other comedies wouldn’t dare to explore, such as last night’s running gag about how Dean’s father didn’t like him. Also present: the mockumentary set up that was exciting and original at around the same time Neil Hamilton was famous.
But cringe comedy without the laughs is just grating: Lee and Dean’s problem is that too many acerbic set-ups aren’t rewarded with a toothsome joke. After last season’s finale, which saw Lee lose his best mate as well as his fiancée when it was revealed on his stag do that he’d got his posh client Mrs Bryce D’souza (Anna Morris) pregnant, Lee began this new series lodging with a gay couple. So of course they were watching a lot of arthouse cinema. So of course Lee made a gag about how he didn’t understand the foreign movies but at least you were guaranteed “knockers”. That’s sub Bernard Manning.
The frustration with Lee and Dean is that the characters and relationships have a subtlety that the jokes don’t match. Now that Lee and Dean have fallen out, their strange bromance has become even more enjoyable, as they tiptoe around the quite obvious fact that they love each other more than they love anyone else. It’s been said before that TV is not very good at anatomising male friendship beyond ladz, bantz or lolz and in that regard Lee and Dean really is out on its own – it’s men behaving badly in the age of mindfulness. Somewhere in there is a show like no other on TV. Unfortunately, it’s cocooned in an outdated format and hamstrung with threadbare one-liners.
The Victim ★★★★★ Lee and Dean ★★★