Poignant true-crime case is needlessly drawn out
About two-thirds of the way into the first episode of Cold Case Detectives (ITV1), a new crime documentary series, we visited the National Forensic Archive. It is, we were told, top secret, although not so top secret that the makers of ITV crime documentaries weren’t allowed in for a quick swizz. Regardless, the NFA is quite a sight – a cavernous warehouse of floor-to-ceiling box files full of evidence from crimes going back to the 1930s. Its very existence shows immense foresight, because it has been compiled on the understanding that one day, if we just wait, advances in DNA science will mean almost any case can be solved. But to the TV viewer in the age of true crime, the NFA was a sight to chill the marrow – reader, get ready: there is a neverending supply of cases for Netflix et al to pore over in overblown detail.
I hope it doesn’t do the relatives of Carol Ann Stephens any disservice to say that Cold Case Detectives was a whopping great fudge. Stephens was six when she was abducted in Cathays, Cardiff in 1959. Her body was found a few days later in a culvert 60 miles away and the killer has never been found. Cold Case Detectives drafted in Gerry Blake, an investigator who was at Sunday school with Stephens in the 1950s, to go through the files with the police. But the programme admitted at the start that everything depended on what DNA could do now that it couldn’t do a few years ago. As such, after introducing viewers to an undoubtedly tragic case, the rest of the show was an hour waiting to be told a lab result. There was one new, possibly crucial, piece of evidence in this 60-year-old case and on that ITV was going to string out a whole series.
Yes, a whole series – I had assumed that each episode would be a new cold case but it seems as if they’re going to make three hours out of just one. Netflix has a lot to answer for with its painfully protracted true-crime explications but anyone would have felt strung along by Cold Case Detectives. When something called Operation Dudley was suddenly lobbed into the mixer – a series of unconnected historical sex crimes that are also being re-examined after advances in DNA testing – the sense of padding was palpable.
It was a shame because the Stephens case was poignant and perplexing in its own right, and the programme’s portrayal of a small town suffering a horrific crime in another era was affecting. It only made it more frustrating that the whole thing could have been wrapped up inside 20 minutes, case closed.
It probably says something quite sad about me that I found Live Italian, a new three-part travelogue on Amazon Prime Video, so enjoyable. Its message was all about taking things easy, and it’s certainly one that the producers had embraced – this was an impressively unimaginative concoction made up of two parts Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, one part James May: Our Man in Italy, a dollop of Travel Man and a seasoning of every other culinary-cultural travel show since Judith Chalmers first had her passport stamped.
Episode one roped in Jack Whitehall for a week in Tuscany, and you could see why he took the gig: accompanied by the Italian presenter Chiara Maci they drove round in a Piaggio van and stuffed their faces on Amazon’s dollar. Someone had come up with a contrived challenge-narrative to structure the whole thing, whereby at the end of it all Whitehall had to cook a meal for those he’d met. Basically this was a celebrity beano with excellent food.
Reason not the need: I laughed like a drain throughout and booked my summer holiday straightaway. I worry for my sense of humour, but the sight of Whitehall repeatedly asking craggy artisans if they had any alphabetti spaghetti got me every time. And we all know that making rude words out of pasta shapes is the acme of fine dining.
As it happens, living “the Italian way” didn’t change Whitehall one jot – he simply wise-cracked his way from Siena to Florence making chipolata jokes about Renaissance sculpture. He followed simple recipes in a nice kitchen and crashed through the language barrier at every opportunity.
In the much-heralded golden age of television we probably have a right to expect something approaching a new idea every now and then, but 45 minutes of Whitehall farting around was still terrific entertainment. He is the perfect silly British boy to take on “grand tour” and play Bertie Wooster.
Add in the backdrop of Tuscan hill-towns, olive groves and droolworthy food photography and you had the TV equivalent of cacio e pepe: simple, predictable, but matchlessly pleasurable when done well.
Cold Case Detectives ★★ Live Italian ★★★