Horrors real and fantastic in a pulpy genre homage
You don’t have to be au fait with HP Lovecraft to appreciate Lovecraft Country (Sky Atlantic), but it helps. He was the influential author of cosmic horror fiction, creator of the tentacled monster, Cthulhu, and an avowed white supremacist referring to black people as subhuman beasts.
Lovecraft Country took great pleasure in subverting this. “Stories are like people,” said the hero, Atticus Black – how’s that name for symbolism? – near the beginning. “They’re not all made perfect. You just try to cherish them, overlook their flaws.” But this drama doesn’t overlook Lovecraft’s flaws. It shakes them down. The drama was a pulpy homage to the genre but with a black cast, set in segregated 1950s USA, where the threat of being lynched was far more terrifying than anything from the world of fantasy.
Black (Jonathan Majors) was a serviceman recently returned from the Korean War. His father disappeared after sending a mysterious letter about discovering a secret legacy. He set off across country to find him, in the company of his uncle, George (Courtney B Vance), publisher of The Safe Negro Travel Guide, and childhood friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-bell).
This was the Jim Crow era. At the gas station, white people made monkey gestures at them. When they walked into a diner and attempted to order lunch, they were forced to flee. The most heart-stopping scenes involved them being run out of the “sundown town” by a racist sheriff. After that, a gory showdown with a slobbering alien was something the trio could take in their stride.
Created by Misha Green, produced by JJ Abrams (Star Trek, Star Wars) and Jordan Peele (Get Out), and adapted from Matt Ruff ’s 2016 novel, it was ambitious, with high production values and packed with period detail. But the melding of horror and history wasn’t particularly satisfying. The leads were stock horror movie characters – resourceful hero, intrepid scream queen – which meant we had no emotional investment in them (Vance was the more interesting figure). It rewarded a certain level of knowledge – James Baldwin’s 1965 American Dream speech at Cambridge University appeared unannounced on the soundtrack – but reduced all the villains to cartoon baddies. Tonally, it was closer to Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn than the superlative Get Out. But it was a fun ride, and with enough horror references to keep fans of the genre entertained.
Some documentaries keep the presenter out of the picture. The Trial of Alex Salmond (BBC Two) was not one of them. It featured interviews conducted by Kirsty Wark and interviews with Kirsty Wark, interspersed with footage of Kirsty Wark covering the case. Here was Wark pitching up outside the courthouse, coffee in hand, gossiping with fellow journalists, lamenting her absence from the verdict because the Covid crisis called her back to London.
The verdict in the Salmond case, by the way, was not guilty. He was cleared of all charges of sexually assaulting ten women while Scotland’s First Minister. However, it was pretty clear that the programme-makers hoped he would be found guilty; the first 45 minutes of the hour-long film were devoted to the prosecution case. The testimonies of his accusers were read out by actors. “I know that I was telling the truth,” said one. “I know what happened to me.”
Was this fair, given the acquittals? That is for the BBC’S editorial overseers to determine. What appears beyond debate is that Salmond is deeply unlikeable. It wasn’t mentioned on camera, but his defence counsel was overheard referring to the ex-politician as “an objectionable bully” and “a nasty person to work for”.
Salmond’s supporters say he is the victim of a set-up from within the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon, interviewed on Newsnight (by Wark, of course), dismissed this as “nonsense”. It is a story that will run and run. The sexual assault case was cast as the UK’S first Metoo trial, with wide-reaching implications for the workplace. Salmond’s behaviour, even by his own account, was unacceptable.
In Scotland, the case was headline news. In the rest of the UK, not so much, particularly with an approaching pandemic. But Wark was gripped. “I have never, in all of my years as a journalist, witnessed anything like this,” she gasped, describing it as “one of the most dramatic trials Britain has ever seen”. Wark is a first-class journalist with a cool head, but her investment in this particular story seemed to veer into the personal.
Lovecraft Country ★★★
The Trial of Alex Salmond ★★