£500 for a toilet seat graced by a royal posterior? Bargain
Did you happen to mislay a chunky gold bracelet containing a lock of Queen Victoria’s hair, in the vicinity of Hinchley Wood? As we learned in Antiques Roadshow: Royal Treasures (BBC One, Sunday), a lady called Anne Wooster was pushing her daughter in a buggy one day when she found the bracelet in the street. She handed it in to a Surrey police station and, when it remained unclaimed three months later, the jewellery passed to her. It turned out to have been a gift from the monarch to one of her maids of honour, and is now worth several thousand pounds.
The discovery happened many years ago, because this edition of Antiques Roadshow was mostly cobbled together from old clips with a royal theme. But there must be somebody out there who recognises it. Did it fall from a wrist? Had it been taken in a burglary? An intriguing mystery that perhaps will never be solved.
Other treasures included a pin gifted by Edward VII to his hairdresser, a pheasant given by George VI to the man who refurbished the Sandringham kitchens (now stuffed and in a glass case), and a radiograph of Edward VIII’S right hand. It was, we were solemnly told, “the hand that held Mrs Simpson” and signed the abdication document. And definitely a more interesting piece of memorabilia than a coronation tea cup.
People do get rather over-excited about items that have come into contact with royal flesh. Not just a pair of Queen Victoria’s big knickers – worth around £16,000, apparently – but her loo seat too. “The royal posterior graced this seat!” yelped presenter Fiona Bruce. How much was it worth? “If I wanted to amaze and amuse my dinner guests and send them to the loo,” said the expert, “I would be prepared to spend £500 on that toilet seat. Wouldn’t you?” No, but each to their own.
The programme was a pleasant schedule-filler, but not one on which the BBC had lavished a great deal of time and energy. One past contributor was followed up: a boy called Ben who had shown his collection of coronation china to Henry Sandon in 1998. He now lives in Israel, so we met his father instead, and saw Ben via Facetime.
A curator from the Museum of Brands brought along some perfectly preserved packaging: a Shredded Wheat box from Elizabeth II’S time, with cut-out-and-keep carriage; a 1953 Smith’s crisp packet. They’re not worth anything, but were lovely to see. It is up to you whether you keep your M&S Coronation Colin the Caterpillar cake for posterity.
Black Ops (BBC One, Friday), a six-part comedy thriller, has been sitting in the BBC’S bottom drawer for a while. It’s not clear why it’s taken two years to make it to our screens, but normally deferred scheduling doesn’t augur well. It suggests the execs have misgivings.
And you can see why, on paper at least, Black Ops has turkey potential. It tells the story of two PCSO “fake cops,” Dom and Kay (Famalam’s Gbemisola Ikumelo and Hammid Animashaun), who are catapulted from hating their jobs and handing out “Stay Safe” frisbees on the street to working undercover and infiltrating a notorious east London drug gang.
It therefore has a high-concept premise that is nonetheless packed with well-worn tropes – it’s an odd-couple, buddy comedy spliced with a hard-edged thriller. It needs to serve up both humour and menace, sometimes in the same scene. It needs to say serious things about racism in the police and gang violence, but in a funny way. Plenty to get wrong there.
Yet against all of those odds, Black Ops doesn’t get it wrong, in fact in the main it gets all it all rather joyously right. Episode one ends with a plot twist that ups the jeopardy and throws the lion’s share of the screentime on to Ikumelo (who also writes) and Animashaun. Happily, they ace it. The two of them are a terrific pairing, playing a streetwise but loafing homebody and a wide-eyed, church-going manchild respectively. Their path from quiet contempt to acceptance and friendship is beautifully written and performed.
As a whole it is consistently funny. Mainly this is because the thriller element – will the drugs gang rumble the keystone cops? – remains thrilling.
Genre-hopping, skipping between jeopardy, action and laughs, is en vogue at the moment, with Barry, Atlanta and Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws all ploughing their own, similar-but-singular furrow. It requires bold direction and writing, but when it works – as it does here – it leaves the viewer never quite sure what’s coming next. Maybe that’s why the execs didn’t know what to do with it. Benji Wilson
Antiques Roadshow ★★★ Black Ops ★★★★