The magic of love letters shone through this sad story
Itry not to, I really do, since I know full well he’s an awardwinning actor who’s just turned 30 (it’s his birthday today, in fact). However, I still can’t help thinking that Daniel Radcliffe actually is Harry Potter. I partly blame the fact that my children are potty for Potter and the eight films are in constant rotation at home.
Thus, when I came to watch Radcliffe’s edition of Who Do You
Think You Are? (BBC One), I halfexpected a bespectacled orphan to discover that his parents were murdered by an evil wizard without a nose.
Of course, this didn’t happen. Without a wand or a Weasley in sight, Radcliffe delved into his ancestry and uncovered two heart-wrenching stories, both told via correspondence.
First he learned that the robbery of his great-grandfather Samuel Gershon’s Hatton Garden jewellery business was far darker and more scandalous than he ever imagined. We never definitively found out who did it, but the police, influenced by anti-semitism, suspected an inside job for insurance fraud and the shame drove poor Samuel to take his own life. His suicide note to wife Raie was so full of adoration, it moved Radcliffe to tears. “I want to reach into the past
and comfort him,” he said.
On his father’s side of the family, a cache of his great-great-uncle Ernest Mcdowell’s letters from the First World War trenches conjured up another emotional romance. Having served alongside his three brothers, Ernie was the only one not to make it home. Happily, though, he’d married his sweetheart Jeannie in their local church on Valentine’s Day while home on leave. Their billets-doux were endearingly passionate.
Throughout the journey, Radcliffe was wide-eyed with wonder and endearingly articulate. “Everyone in my family was really loved,” he concluded. “Ultimately that means the time they had on Earth, even if it ended prematurely and sadly, was worth having.”
The genealogy stalwart, now on its 16th series and fresh from another Bafta win, remains consistently superb. Its latest line-up of celebrities – including Kate Winslet and Paul Merton over the coming weeks – promises to be another corker. Radcliffe got it off to an absorbing, affecting start. Four points to Gryffindor. Michael Hogan
The closing episode of the second series of Big Little Lies (Sky Atlantic) delivered nothing like the wallop of the first season finale.
This US series, focusing on five women’s lives in the affluent Californian coastal city of Monterey, was water-cooler TV the first time around, in 2017. This time, the buzz has been somewhat lacking, although rarely has the calibre of the show actually dipped.
Controversy swirled recently, generated by a report that British director Andrea Arnold, brought in for the new series, had had her work re-edited (by a man). But showrunner David E Kelley’s tight script, and strong performances from the show’s A-list cast meant that, honestly, it would be hard to detect any failure of nerve unless you knew to look for it.
In fact, this episode was the first of seven to have had any discernible longueurs, a sense of drift as various storylines were tied up, slightly unsatisfactorily. And yes, that made a dull hour if you compared it to the jaw-dropping shock of the death of violent husband Perry Wright that ended series one. But not if you compare it to your average TV drama.
Here still was Nicole Kidman mesmerising in her incarnation of Celeste, a woman poised perilously between triumph and disaster. Here were children acting with such naturalism that you’d think them prodigies. And here too was Meryl Streep, making wickedness sympathetic as her character, Perry’s mother Mary Louise, finally, thankfully, got her comeuppance.
The episode did have frustrations: why would Celeste have kept back the information she knew could destroy Mary Louise for so long? Why on earth would the Monterey Five decide, unanimously, it was in their interests to tell the truth about Perry’s death (that they’d pretended was an accident) – except to provide a season cliffhanger? Why has it been so hard to care about Bonnie’s (Zoe Kravitz) storyline?
But the drama’s attempt to portray the messiness of marriages, the strange wisdom of children, the personal disasters hidden behind life’s daily detritus is still sophisticated, curiously non-judgmental and, ultimately, powerfully moving. Bring on series three. Serena Davies
Who Do You Think You Are? ★★★★ Big Little Lies ★★★★