Russell Crowe bosses it as the alpha dog of Fox News
When British politicians are described as big beasts the epithet feels comically overbaked. But it sure works for Roger Ailes, the cable TV guru who gave the world Fox News. A bald lump of heaving flesh, his beastliness was swiftly established in The Loudest Voice (Sky Atlantic) as he roared, slavered and oozed sleaze from every glistening pore.
This is the dramatised story of every American’s best/worst news network, which Ailes bossed until he resigned in 2016 following allegations of sexual harassment. He died a year later. That’s not a spoiler, as his fresh corpse was the first thing to be shown. He represents a gift of a role for Russell Crowe, a specialist in alpha-dog machismo who lumbers about inside a fat suit, bossing pretty much every scene.
The show’s creator is Tom Mccarthy, who last dabbled in journalism with the Oscar-winning Spotlight, in harness with the author Gabriel Sherman whose 2014 bestseller exposed Ailes. There is absolutely no one to root for in this cavalcade of horror. Not that such an impediment ever thwarted all those Mafia dramas, nor Succession.
As he makes his ruthless and, it cannot be denied, strategically brilliant pitch for the conservative half of the US audience, Ailes is so vile that he makes Rupert Murdoch, usually portrayed as a scowling psycho, look harmless, even clueless. It helps that he’s played by the congenitally simpatico Simon Mcburney, also under slabs of latex.
After last night’s two opening episodes, it’s unclear why Seth Macfarlane signed up to say, as of yet, almost nothing as Fox henchman Brian Lewis. So far it’s all about Ailes. “Who ordered the pussy masala?” he said after a British Asian newscaster sat for an interview. Yuck. Sienna Miller plays his long-suffering wife Beth, but the more intriguing female role goes to Aleksa Palladino as his mild-mannered gatekeeper Judy Laterza. She had barely any lines but still pulls focus as a sort of an amoral black hole.
It will all change as the women start accusing Ailes. For now, we’ve had the launch of the network and 9/11. In meeting after meeting he roasted and cajoled his underlings until they were all yodelling and air-punching. These samey set-tos came along a little too often for the good of the drama. It felt, funnily enough, like being bullied into submission.
Billy Connolly’s Great American Trail (ITV) is not to be confused with US trips by other televisitors such as Michael Portillo, Lucy Worsley, Miriam Margolyes and, most quirkily, Rich Hall. Here, Connolly wandered down the east coast in a picaresque string of meet and greets.
Did it work? His party piece as a stand-up was to riff off the top of his head. Though he’s been at it for years, the itinerant documentary doesn’t always play to that strength, especially now that the zany energy of yore has made way for a more Yodaish shtick.
At his warmest and best, Connolly had encounters with children reviving the native language Wampanoag, a scientist who collects whale snot, a cohort of drag queens known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and a kooky octogenarian witch in Salem. She took a fancy to Connolly. “You’re a very handsome man,” she drawled, more in hope than expectation.
At other times he did think-pieces to camera or mused in the back seat of the car. Some of it was as superficial as a dashed-off postcard. For the section about the Massachusetts fishermen who drowned in the so-called Perfect Storm of 1991, Connolly evidently wasn’t there for the filming at all.
There was a tenuous Scottish throughline to the narrative. It started with the tartan parade in New York celebrating all those Americans with Scottish forebears. They include 33 presidents of the United States, though he didn’t mention that the White House’s ginger incumbent is one such. Connolly theorised that the first Europeans to land in America were the Scottish slaves of Viking explorers. More provably, though no names were supplied, he claimed that Scotsmen were responsible for the Penn Station and the Chrysler Building.
The episode ended as it began in New York. From the former hospital on Ellis Island he told of the fatally ill immigrants who glimpsed the Statue of Liberty through the window but never made that last mile across the water. This, finally, was Connolly at his most sincere, compassionate and (it would seem) well-informed.
The Loudest Voice ★★★★
Billy Connolly’s Great American Trail ★★★