BODILY CHARM
Mercurial writing makes for dramatic Sunday night viewing and not a period costume in sight, says Sean O’Grady
Having watched all the episodes thus far of Bodyguard, it is hard to say where the attraction precisely lies – simply because every aspect of it has been so brilliant. Rarely have our Sunday evenings been visited with such tension, nor such fine pitch-perfect performances, especially by the principals, Richard Madden as Sergeant David Budd, Keeley Hawes as Home Secretary Julia Montague, and Gina McKee as a scheming head of the Metropolitan Police. The writing is perhaps the outstanding virtue, for which Jed Mercurio will no doubt be picking up an armful of gongs when the awards season gets underway.
The most effective move was to (apparently) kill off Montague – the one thing no intelligent viewer would have anticipated, given that we all know, don’t we, the main charters in a drama series don’t exit that early.
The move was as unexpected as the various suicide bombings and assassination attempts that have violently punctuated this landmark series. There is talk of a second series, though I can’t see how even Mercurio will be able to follow this particular act. The media is filled with conspiracy theories about Budd and the death of Montague – as if it were a real-life news event. Remarkable stuff on every level – and not a tricorn hat or frilly bonnet in sight. You should be watching.
Less successful BBC drama series grind on this week. Wanderlust has improved, and this tale of adultery, an “open marriage” and the nature of sex is more involving and thoughtful than it first appeared. If you decide to take it out for a date, so to speak, then please be warned that you should probably be watching it only with people you know well and who you know to be of a broad-minded disposition. Otherwise I think you will not be able to get through the full hour of excruciating embarrassment.
Then there’s Press, which has enjoyed a huge slug of pre-publicity as you’d expect for a drama centred on that most self-obsessed group, journalists. Any sort of effort at making our trade come alive (it is a less exciting and far less glam business than most assume) is to be welcomed, but so far it has been marred by some two-dimensional portrayals, which I feel is not the fault of the actors who are doing their best with the material. Every family seems to have a kid who wants to become a journalist when they grow up. Probably not a wise move, on balance, unless you find you can’t do anything else – but certainly not to be seriously influenced by watching the far-fetched Press. So don’t get any ideas, kids; become a tax lawyer and retire early instead.
Last, for dramas, is the bizarre-sounding Killing Eve, which features a “wildly dippy assassin and her nemesis”. It’s been adapted by Phoebe Waller-bridge (Fleabag) from a novel by Luke Jennings, so it should have some potential. It’s got oligarchs and spies in it, so you probably can’t go too far wrong.
I’ve always wanted to go to North Korea, but never quite managed to summon up the guts to go on one of their official trips; the ever-present danger of kidnap, torture and assassination presenting me with handy excuses not to visit the world’s last Stalinist state. Michael Palin is a bigger man than me though, in every sense, and he has added a Pyongyang entry visa to an already packed passport. The fruits of his adventures in the hermit kingdom can be gleaned on Thursday night. I wonder, though, how many “real” North Koreans he was able to exercise that famously easy charm upon. YouTube is actually full of such docs about the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and not a single one with more than a few minutes of illicit filming.
A more novel travel project is Channel 5’s Walking Britain’s Lost Railways. Joking apart (eg they come so rarely you might as well), it’s an intriguing idea – to hike around the arteries of our abandoned rail lines. There are so many after the efforts of Dr Beeching a half century ago and more. They have left their scars on the landscape, even now, and a certain ghostly charm.
Channel 5 should also be congratulated – they so rarely are – for bringing us How the Victorians Built Britain. Some of us just cannot get enough of social and technological history, and really do want to learn more about the innovation of central heating, domestic ovens and electric lighting. If the royal stuff is more to your taste, then BBC4 have yet another look at the extraordinary personality that was Princess Margaret, on Tuesday evening. In truth there’s not that much new in it, and she never really mattered much, as is the way under our constitutional monarchy. But as a celeb of a modern type, she holds endless fascination.
The Circle is Channel 4’s “take” on social media, a mature medium (TV) scrutinising a much newer one. To be frank, I can’t quite get the premise of it all, but I think it’s like Big Brother but played out on a closed circuit social media platform – a popularity contest, in other words. I don’t know what it will prove, but am intrigued to find out.
Last, Bad Move returns for another run. It’s got Jack Dee and Kerry Godliman in it, which ought to transcend any number of other shortcomings, but I was never really able to warm to it. It always struck me as being an even smugger domestic version of A Year in Provence – but seeing as I am in a giving mood, maybe we should grant it a second chance.
Bodyguard (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Wanderlust (BBC1, Tuesday 9pm); Press (BBC1, Thursday 9pm); Killing Eve (BBC1, Saturday 9.15pm); Michael Palin in North Korea (Channel 5, Thursday 9pm); Walking Britain’s Railway (Channel 5, Friday 9pm); How the Victorians Built Britain (Channel 5, Saturday 9pm); Princess Margaret: the Rebel Royal (BBC2, Tuesday 9pm); Bad Move (ITV, Wednesday 8pm)