Haven’t we tired of TV that gawps at dead naked women?
The US streaming service Paramount+ is dipping a toe into the British market. So, to its roster of very American shows featuring Kevin Costner in a cowboy hat (Yellowstone) and Renée Zellweger in a fat suit (The Thing About Pam), it has now added a crime drama set in sleepy Norfolk. There are no shootouts or Hollywood stars in The Chemistry of Death. Instead, Harry Treadaway plays a nicely spoken village GP who investigates crimes.
Based on the books by Simon Beckett, Treadaway’s character is Dr David Hunter, who used to be a forensic anthropologist but has retreated to this job after a terrible tragedy that we see in flashbacks. “You’re not just a specialist in decomposition, you’re the specialist,” says an admiring detective. Thus, instead of calling on the experts that police forces have at their disposal, the team investigating a murder in Dr Hunter’s village just hires the local guy, not minding the fact that he has personal relationships with the victim and the accused. A real police force might make him their number one suspect after he leads them to the crime scene and later lets himself into the victim’s house.
Treadaway is a soulful actor and the production is atmospheric, although it could make more of the Norfolk landscape. The claustrophobia of a small community is well-portrayed, and the film-makers deserve credit for eschewing a chocolate box, Midsomer Murders-style village for something that feels more commonplace. The story spans three episodes and contains one twist that you won’t see coming.
But as with so many other dramas of this type, the crime involves the murder of women, their naked bodies laid out for us to gawp at. Women here are abducted, bound, gagged and chloroformed; they scream in terror and plead for mercy. We first see the corpse – grotesquely arranged to appear as if it has angel wings – when it is discovered by two horrified young boys; then again on the mortuary slab, and again in close-up on the police officers’ screens. Future episodes will have less of this, thankfully.
The USP of The Chemistry of Death is that Hunter solves the crimes using his knowledge of decomposing bodies, so we hear him in voiceover informing us that soon after death a body begins to digest itself, larvae hatch, insects arrive to consume the larvae… it’s grim stuff. Actually, can we have a moratorium on voiceovers? They’re good in Stand By Me and Goodfellas and The Wonder Years, unnecessary in everything else.
Hold the Front Page (Sky Max) is a show in which two comedians, Josh Widdicombe and Nish Kumar, do work experience on local newspapers. Wait! Don’t run away at the mention of Nish Kumar. I know he wasn’t funny on The Mash Report, and is so bad at reading the room that he made Brexit jokes at a Lord’s Taverners Christmas lunch, which led to a particularly irate diner pelting him with a bread roll. But he is amusing here, because he’s paired with Josh Widdicombe. For some reason, Kumar gets top billing – introducing each episode – but it’s Widdicombe’s likeable, entirely inoffensive comedy that sets the tone.
They make a good double act, poking fun at each other and at themselves. It’s a larky, genial show, which this week took them to the offices of The Yorkshire Post. Their assignments included caving in the Dales, visiting the set of Emmerdale, reporting on the sale of a nuclear bunker, and reviewing a Michelin-restaurant where they were served what the chef termed “a variation on fish and chips, which we call Emancipation”, and which looked like a dust ball just emptied out of the Hoover.
Of course, they were hopeless at covering all of the above because this is a comedy show and therefore closer in tone to an episode of The Apprentice than anything fly-on-the-wall. The series credits a writer, Richard Porter, and the scripted element is frequently obvious, especially in the segment where the pair were given jobs as extras on Emmerdale and disrupted every take. The show was more enjoyable when the duo were allowed to riff on real subjects, such as Widdicombe mocking the fact that Kumar can’t drive despite being a grown adult.
Any editor worth their salt would make the most of having two wellknown comedians on assignment. Yet when we glimpsed the article that eventually made it into print – an account of potholing in Ingleborough – it turned out to be a bog standard bit of writing which made no mention of Widdicombe and Kumar bar the byline. Perhaps Yorkshire Post readers are on the side of the bread-roll thrower.
The Chemistry of Death ★★★
Hold the Front Page ★★★