The Herald - The Herald Magazine
TV review Gold drama shines brightly, but something stinks
NEIL Forsyth, creatorwriter of the superb Guilt, has only bleedin’ gawn and dun it again. Apologies for the outbreak of Cockney, but such is the appeal of The Gold (BBC1, Sunday) the viewer is prone to getting caught up in the moment. As the Sweeney’s DI Jack Regan was never done saying, it’s just so immersive, innit?
Indeed, I enjoyed it so much I am going to resist, for as long as possible, mentioning the part I hated. You know what it is.
Back in the land of drama inspired by real events, it is 1983, the year of the Brink’s-Mat gold robbery, as covered recently in a documentary and a Channel 4 comedy drama. No matter, it’s a great story, and a crime, we are reminded, that “changed British crime and policing forever”.
The Gold looked and sounded the part from the moment the door to the warehouse was booted in (if there was an Oscar for flinching that skinny security guard would breeze it). The cast and characters were terrific, from Hugh Bonneville’s decent copper to Dominic Cooper’s iffy solicitor, plus Charlotte Spencer and Emun “Watch Anything He’s in” Elliott as detectives. Costumes, setting, dialogue, editing, music – all tickety-boo and then some. But ...
I could buy into the idea of the robbery and investigation as a branch of the class war. The thieves from downstairs doing the time while those upstairs in Thatcher’s Britain profited from the crime, all that. But Kenneth Noye as the man who would be a working class king, a latterday Robin Hood, with his Loadsamoney blouson jacket and his Socialist Worker politics? Worse still, Kenneth Noye as played by handsome, tousle-haired, endlessly charming Jack Lowden?
If by any chance you are unfamiliar with Noye and his grisly deeds you can Google him or read this week’s papers: the drama has brought them to the surface again.
Now, it may be that The Gold shows Noye’s true colours in time
(all episodes are on iPlayer if you want to get ahead), but his portrayal in that first episode was hard to stomach.
Better (BBC1, Monday) made for
altogether easier viewing, as long as you didn’t mind that it was basically Line of Duty set in Happy Valley country. That’s slightly unfair, but it does take place in Leeds, the central character is a woman copper, and she’s bent.
There is a satisfying twist, though, in that the relationship between DI Lou Slack (Leila Farzad) and the local Mr Big, Col McHugh (Andrew Buchan), is hard to read.
When her son survives meningitis the DI promises the fates that, in return, she will be a better person. But will she keep her word?
The first episode pushed its luck in that you could tell where things were going from miles off, but Farzad and Buchan are an intriguing pair and worth a second look.
Right, in the mood for a discussion of euthanasia? It was a measure of the good-natured approach of
Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip (Channel 4, Thursday) that there was laughter amid the obvious sadness.
“I’d encourage all families to go on the road and talk about death,” half-joked Danny Kruger, Tory MP and son of Prue Leith. She was for “assisted dying”, he was against “assisted suicide” – the two sides cannot even agree on terminology.
The pair went to places in America and Canada where the process is legal. It was a hard road, for
them and the viewer. Mother and son walked carefully through the arguments, their interviews providing moving and illuminating moments. I don’t suppose many minds were changed, but no one who watched this documentary could fail to see that there is much more to be said on this subject.
Some light relief in
The
Piano (Channel 4, Wednesday).
Make that light relief and loveliness all round. The idea is: invite amateur musicians to play on one of the pianos that have popped up in rail stations, and choose the best to play at the Royal Festival Hall. Simple. And since it came from some of the people who brought you the Great British Bake
Off, slickly done besides.
The players, in the way of such things, had inspirational backstories. Some had taught themselves in lockdown via YouTube.
The judges (pop star Mika and Lang Lang, “the greatest classical pianist of the modern era”) were kept hidden, and the concert was sprung on the group at the end. The week’s winner was announced with the… usual …. long … pauses.
Wonderful as some of the players at London St Pancras were, Lang Lang rather stole the show as soon as he laid his fingers on the keys. In a second the difference between good and worldclass was obvious. Regardless, I predict a rush on keyboards. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Next week it’s Leeds, then Glasgow.