Bog standard thriller, but at least we can enjoy the canals
Van Der Valk is back, and women are still falling at his feet. It’s a bit odd. Marc Warren is a perfectly attractive man – one with a striking resemblance to Malcolm Mcdowell – but his character can’t go a few minutes without gorgeous women throwing themselves at him. Within five minutes of this episode of Van Der Valk (ITV), which kicked off the second series of the remake, he was trying to have a quiet drink when two pretty young things sidled over to his table and propositioned him. Then he was rescued from their clutches by a beautiful blonde who immediately took him home for a night of passion. I don’t think this ever happened to Morse.
The first series was hamstrung by its need to re-establish the character in our minds, meaning that the script constantly bashed us over the head with the fact that Van Der Valk was moody and lived on a boat. Now the cast has settled in and the pressure of reviving a well-known drama is off, the show is better. Van Der Valk has also warmed up a bit towards his colleagues, including partner Lucienne (Maimie Mccoy) and young officer Job Cloovers (Elliot Barnesworrell). Cloovers uses his brains where Van Der Valk relies on instinct, so has frequent lightbulb moments in which he says: “That’s it! I’ve got it!”
This series comprises three featurelength episodes, and the first involved a serial killer steeped in the history of Amsterdam. There were cryptic clues, calligraphy, windmills (and wind turbines). The first victim was a lawyer who had won a case on behalf of the city to evict an artists’ community – or a bunch of squatters, depending on your point of view – and whose body was discovered strung up on a wind farm. Van Der Valk still has a queasy fixation with the corpses of murdered young women. There were two here, whose bodies had been mutilated with an “X” carved into their skin. I could have done without that gruesome sight (and when was the last time you saw the cameras panning over the torso of a male victim in the same way?).
It’s a serviceable drama with a decent ensemble, including Luke Allen-gale as Brad, a sergeant who refers to suspects as “proper nutjobs”, and Darrell D’silva as pathologist Hendrik Davie. But there is nothing to raise Van Der Valk above other detective dramas; only the Amsterdam setting marks it out as different.
S omewhere in the bowels of Channel 4, an executive is charged with commissioning royal documentaries. They dream of graduating to the fun stuff – Gogglebox!
Naked Attraction! – but for now they must toil away in the gloom, greenlighting yet another film about the Royal family featuring contributors who have never met them.
As there is nothing new to say about the Queen, particularly after a glut of Platinum Jubilee content, any documentary now needs a USP. In The Windsors: Queen of Steel it was this: the Queen is “The Firm’s most successful CEO” who has guided the monarchy through the past 70 years with steely determination and a ruthless attitude even to members of her own family. In case the tone of the show wasn’t sufficiently clear, it was accompanied by a soundtrack much like the theme tune from Succession.
What stopped the programme from feeling forced – and elevated it above many other royal documentaries – was the choice of contributors. Television producers tend to have the same, half dozen royal commentators on speed dial, who are wheeled out to say the same thing they said the last time. Here, we heard from a different set.
Mary Pearson, daughter of royal aide Martin Charteris, provided insights. “My father always said the Queen had superb negative judgment: she knew what not to do, she knew what it wasn’t right for her to do.”
The thought-provoking aspect was the consideration of what will happen to the monarchy once the Queen has gone. Sathnam Sanghera, the journalist and historian, said that the Queen represents “the last remaining bit of stability” in a country of political division and culture wars. More worryingly for the institution, two girls – speaking here because they had met the Queen during her visit to a riding club in Brixton – summed up a feeling among many young people. “After the Queen, of the people who are left, there aren’t many that incite the same kind of fondness,” they said. “It’s like Big Ben – it’s gorgeous and a huge part of British history and it tells the time so it works, but at the same time it’s not useful any more because we’ve all got phones and watches now.”
Perhaps that view should be taken more seriously by palace officials than anything said by royal “experts”.
Van Der Valk ★★★
The Windsors: Queen of Steel ★★★