A gentle hour with the most in-tune family in Britain
For one terrible minute, on seeing the title of Imagine: This House is Full of Music (BBC One), I thought it was going to be about house music. Were we about to witness footage of Alan Yentob sweating on a dance floor in Ibiza or reminiscing about the time he dropped an E at the Hacienda? Much relief when it turned out to be a documentary about the Kannehmasons, the absurdly talented family of classical musicians.
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-mason is the most famous of the bunch, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year winner who reached a different level of fame when he performed at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But he’s not a family outlier because there are six other Kannehmason siblings, aged from 10 to 24, and all are musically gifted.
The siblings have spent lockdown at the family home with their parents, Stuart and Kadiatu, plus a friend, Plinio Fernandes, who also studies at the Royal Academy of Music and couldn’t get back to his own family in Brazil. They have been live-streaming performances on Facebook, and entertaining their neighbours by giving little concerts on the pavement outside their house. Yentob’s film consisted of interviews with them, conducted via Zoom, broken up with musical interludes.
The music was gorgeous. The family were delightful – engaging, thoughtful and as far from being showbiz brats as it’s possible to be. Yentob asked them a couple of questions, including how they found enough time and space to practise (answer: they have four pianos, three of them loaned; the non-pianists practise in bedrooms or bathrooms). But there was frustratingly little else by way of inquiry, which was odd for an arts series that usually prides itself on in-depth profiles.
How did non-musicians Stuart and Kadiatu, a hotel executive and university lecturer respectively, produce seven children with such passion and talent for music? Were they the classic pushy parents? Have any of the kids been through a period of rebellion by, I don’t know, listening to terrible Europop or declaring that they’d rather study Further Maths? “Imagine being stuck in a house with seven brothers and sisters… it could be total hell. But not for them,” Yentob said. Seriously, what’s their secret? Please tell us, Kanneh-masons. After four long months, the rest of us could do with some tips on maintaining this level of lockdown positivity.
There are two things everyone knows about Natalie Wood. She was a fine actress, and she died in mysterious circumstances. Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind (Sky Documentaries) provided plenty of evidence on the former: clips of her performances, interviews with film critics and fellow movie stars. On the latter, though, it fell very short.
This was a flawed project from the start. It was directed by the film-maker Laurent Bouzereau, but to all intents and purposes it was an officially-endorsed product from Wood’s daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner. Gregson Wagner took it upon herself to conduct the interview with Robert Wagner, her stepfather and the man she calls “Daddy Wagner”, about the events surrounding Wood’s death.
Wood drowned in 1981 after a night spent on a boat with Wagner and the actor Christopher Walken. Dark rumours have persisted ever since, and in 2011 police in California reopened the case, declaring Wagner a “person of interest” (though not a suspect). The boat’s captain has made allegations about Wagner’s behaviour that night, which the actor denies.
Any hope of searing honesty was dashed by Gregson Wagner’s approach. “It’s important to me, Daddy, that people think of you the way I know that you are. It bothers me that anyone would ever think that you would be involved in what happened to her,” she said. And so Wagner was allowed to recount his version of events with no questions asked.
Throughout the preceding hour, we had been told of his calm and loving nature. The sudden switch to hearing of his jealous rage on the boat that night during a row with Walken – smashing a bottle of wine as he told Walken to stay out of their lives – went unremarked.
As a straightforward eulogy to Wood it worked, showing her as a hard-working actress, a loving mother and a woman who fought to escape both an overbearing mother and the strictures of the Hollywood studio system. But what remained behind was the feeling that we were only being given part of the picture.
This House is Full of Music ★★★ What Remains Behind ★★