‘Allo, allo, allo, to crime drama from creator of Spiral
THERE have been so many outstanding dramas on terrestrial television of late that I cannot be alone in wondering if it is still worth paying for a streaming service. To paraphrase a certain blueeyed actor, when the likes of The Responder and Anne are on council telly, why pay extra for Netflix?
This weekend a new Saturday night serial launches that will keep me with the Beeb and away from the latest series on decluttering, or selling multimillion dollar properties in LA. For now, anyway.
The Promise (BBC4/iPlayer, Saturday, 9pm/9.55pm) is a French crime drama from Anne Landois, writer-creator of the much missed Spiral. For those with a Commander Laure Berthaud-shaped gap in their lives, The Promise might have just the actor you need in Sofia Essaidi.
Essaidi plays Captain Sarah, a cop, much like Laure, who will always go the extra mile. The drama opens with another driven officer, this one convinced his colleagues have arrested the wrong man for a girl’s abduction.
The story moves back and forth across the years and the cases, building connections between the two. By the end of episode one (of six) Landois has the viewer reeled in.
It is perhaps not quite the Valentine’s Day viewing recommendation you might have expected, but no apologies for selecting
Rise of the Nazis: Dictators at War (BBC2, Monday, 9pm) as the pick of the day/week.
The 2019 series (still on iPlayer if you missed it) set out in gripping detail how Hitler turned Germany from a democracy to a dictatorship in just a few years.
The new series has a wider sweep, covering Stalin and the war on the Eastern Front.
It picks the story up after France has fallen and Hitler is at the height of his power.
As he tours a Paris empty of its citizens, the dictator visits Napoleon’s tomb to pay his respects to another would-be conqueror of the world. The two will turn out to have more in common than Hitler could imagine.
What makes these documentaries stand out in a crowded field are the talking heads. Usually, a film will have one or two outstanding contributors with the rest average. Here, they are uniformly top drawer, from General Sir Mike Jackson, former head of the British Army, to Professor Sir Richard Evans.
Having watched the first instalment, the “star” of this series looks likely to be Garry Kasparov, chess grandmaster and expert on Stalin. Sharp, witty, and with his own insightful take on the Russian mind, the filmmakers wisely feature him prominently.
With the help of dramatic reconstructions and footage from the time, much of it in colour, the hour races along. As in the first series, some lesser known stories of heroism are picked out, further freshening the mix. Unmissable.
A bonus point for the makers of The Big Design Challenge (Sky Arts, free to view, Monday, 8pm) in for not incorporating the ubiquitous “Great British” in the
title. Otherwise, there is much that is familiar about this Lauren Laverne-presented show.
There’s the intro for a start, where we are told that “eight top creatives” are going to battle it out “to be crowned Britain’s next design superstar”. One half expects the contestants to march in to the studio Apprentice-style, wheeled suitcase in tow, to the strains of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights.
That said, the contenders here seem to mean business. While some are recent graduates, others have their own firm or are otherwise established and award winning.
Divided into teams (yes, just like The Apprentice), the challenge is as much to work well together as it is to come up with a convincing design.
The brief in the first week is to create a children’s outdoor play area using steel, and present it in a scale model. With none of the contestants having children, their first stop is play areas where they can see what works for the discerning playground customer. Then it’s back to the studio for lots of drawing on iPads and brainstorming.
Every show of this kind must have judges, and here the two regulars are Tej Chauhan, an award-winning industrial designer, and Morag Myerscough, an artist and designer whose colourful spaces have become her trademark. Joining them each week will be a guest judge. In the first episode Konnie Huq, author and presenter, does the honours.
The hour is lacking in drama, unless you find getting measurements wrong thrilling stuff, and the bickering is not Apprentice-level, though some will find that a positive. You do learn a little bit about design, the chief lesson being that the finished item has to work.
For those with a Commander Laure Berthaud shaped gap in their lives, The Promise might have just the actor you need