Two beasts of the media world but only one roars
The worst genre of interview is celebrities interviewing other celebrities. Glossy magazines like to feature these, and they bore everyone but the subjects to tears. “Tell me,” Gwyneth Paltrow might ask Taylor Swift, “Why are you so beautiful and talented?” “Oh, I’m just committed to my craft,” will come the reply. “But let me ask you a question. Why are you so beautiful and talented?”
Second worst genre: journalists interviewing other journalists. Which brings us to Amol Rajan Interviews: Piers Morgan (BBC Two/iplayer).
The first problem is that journalism is a small world, so these two are a bit close for comfort and the tone was too pally. At one point they went for a pint. Not all interviews need to be Paxmanlike, but a bit of tension doesn’t harm.
The other problem in this case is that you can’t get one over on a man who has mastered the genre. Questions that Rajan hoped would deliver maximum impact just floated to the ground. “Do you pray?” “When was the last time you were kind, or is that too damaging to the brand?” “Are you a narcissist or what?” He asked if Morgan’s well-documented loathing of the Duchess of Sussex was rooted in misogyny, but had no comeback when Morgan said that he was equally critical of her husband.
Rajan did go in hard on phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers. But all he got back were denials, and in the end he let Morgan circle back to criticising the Duke of Sussex.
This is not to say that the encounter was dull. Morgan understands entertainment and has made a career out of voicing forthright opinions. “I like winding up the type of people who I would travel continents to avoid,” he said cheerfully, while claiming that he is hated by people in the Twitter bubble, but gets a much warmer reception from people in the street.
Actually, “forthright” only goes halfway to covering Morgan’s thoughts on Alex Beresford, the weather presenter who prompted him to walk out of Good Morning Britain – and quit his job – during a heated debate about Ms Markle. “Just for the record, I think he’s a treacherous little p---k,” he said, which startled Rajan into silence.
Morgan was robust on the “woke” culture wars and gushing in his assessment of his employer, Rupert Murdoch (“the greatest media figure of my lifetime, possibly ever, in terms of his boldness, vision, reach around the world”). You were left with the feeling that Morgan would have given the same account of himself while talking to his bathroom mirror, which left Rajan pretty redundant. Anita Singh
Squid Game put South Korean TV on the international map. But with a second season of the Netflix hit only just entering production, fans of its mix of ultra-violence and unhinged plotting face a long wait. Or perhaps not. Riotous new Netflix series Black Knight could potentially fill the Squid Game-shaped hole in the lives of devotees of bonkers Asian television.
This post-apocalyptic epic will also appeal to devotees of Mad Max, who are sure to appreciate its mix of motorised mayhem and trigger-happy fight scenes. Fifty years in the future, global warming has wiped out 99 per cent of the population. Quite how the blight of extreme air pollution impacts the UK of 2071 is not revealed across six gripping episodes – though Britain’s Got Talent is surely still on the air. But on the Korean peninsula society has splintered into haves and have-nots. The former live in walled-off luxury, the latter eke out an existence in dust-caked cities overrun with bikers.
What everyone has in common is a pressing lack of oxygen – a hyperprecious commodity for which people are prepared to kill or be killed. The saviours in this scenario are delivery drivers – “Black Knights” – who ferry priceless canisters of O2 around the various zones. The most renowned is 5-8 (Kim Woo-bin), who can get his air tanks from A to B faster than most.
Grumpy 5-8 is a shameless riff on Mel Gibson circa Mad Max – an anti-hero with a heart of gold and dazzling driving skills. Meanwhile, the corporate dictatorship that rules Korea are led by ruthless Ryu Seok (Song Seung-heon), a despot whose solution to the population crisis is straightforward: let all the poors die.
Squid Game’s strength was its knife-twisting dialogue. Black Knight is more reliant on special effects. With much of the filming taking place in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, the show conjures a heady sense of mayhem via roaring bikes and wheezing articulated lorries – all framed by an orange dust.
It’s far too cartoonish to become another phenomenon for Netflix. Still, as dystopian escapism goes, the series delivers thrills, spills and chills with dead-eyed efficiency. Ed Power
Amol Rajan Interviews… ★★★ Black Knight ★★★★