There but for Grace of plod goes John Simm as Ozark body count keeps rising
The more that changes in TV cop land, the more it remains the same, writes
What is it about Britain’s most southerly shores that makes them so irresistible to location managers for crime dramas?
Is it a Brexit thing? Maybe in acknowledgment of so many in those coastal counties voting Leave, TV has decided on a robust representation of Blighty, patrolling and protecting.
The Dad’s Army theme – and the cartoon titles – now play in my head whenever a new fictional detective breathes in the salt sea air and reports for duty. We met John Simm in a Grace pilot last year but this is the first full series on ITV.
He’s a Brighton-based det supt and his quirk – because all crimebusters need one – is a belief in spiritualism. Enlisting a medium’s help in an earlier case got him into trouble and now his boss wants him transferred. Maybe this would be to an entirely landlocked county and he could reasonably ask: “But, guv, no seaside – how’s that policing?”
Roy Grace needs a result, a big one. So in the opener there’s dismemberment and decapitation. Someone dies in a bath of sulphuric acid and someone else is killed live on the internet.
Sorry for the grisly details and now I’m remembering an old editor’s exhortation: “The readers don’t want this with their ham and eggs!” But maybe we’ve become inured. The original transmission began an hour before the watershed.
A snuff porn channel is operating on the dark web and Grace needs specialised intel. Enter “Dot” Cottan from Line of Duty. Well, Craig Parkinson, who played the bent copper. Here he’s a detective who knows all there is to know about vice and throws the acronyms around like he’s back on his old show: FGX, EFK, MSOG (look them up on Google, this is a family newspaper). Another of
Grace’s team is incredulous that there are sick subscribers for such a channel, forking out £1,000 a month to watch murder.
Grace says it’s hardly surprising, given the glut of crime shows on regular TV, but face-to-face with the station supremo he’s moved to ask: “Death for entertainment – is that where we are now?” The reply comes back: did he miss the history lesson on the Roman Colosseum?
Kicking his heels between takes, I wonder if Simm thought about breaking the fourth wall and announcing: “It’s a fair cop – Grace is part of that glut.” He’s the best thing about this but I’ll always prefer him as a cop in a more innocent age, nicking Life on Mars’ lags and crims to a glorious soundtrack of Free and Mott the Hoople.
It’s the end for Ozark (Netflix) and what a wild ride this has been. Jason Bateman and Laura Linney are back in Chicago from where they fled five years ago, unaware just how far they would be able to take the tale of a financial adviser and and his wife fleeing to Missouri's “redneck riviera” after her cheating and his scamming – and how successfully they’d shrug off comparisons with Breaking Bad to become the stars of a great show in its own right.
Marty and Wendy Byrde are trying to put behind them the drugs, the money laundering and, up until the first of the last run of episodes, the 223 deaths for which they’ve been at least partly responsible. Almost right away there’s the 224th, which complicates the exit strategy, so they blitz the hotel minibar and pick over old sores. “You suggested this life,” accuses Wendy. “We chose it together,” insists Marty, “you were excited by it.”
The episode, though, is almost a one-hander for Ruth (the show-stealing Julia Garner) who, beneath dandelion curls, has sulked and scowled like no one else on TV during these five years, although the action opens with her smiling and laughing on the roof of her shack with Wyatt, a flashback to happier times with her cousin having since joined the body count.
They’re playing a game where one shouts out a pop album and the other must name the opening track. “Red,” offers Wyatt. I know this, I know this! Ah, they mean Taylor Swift, not King Crimson. Too bad, but I’m going to miss Ozark and, fearful of the body count rising some more, I’m coming out of it very slowly.
Here We Go (BBC1) is a Brit take on an American classic, Modern Family. Paul is Phil, the devoted, plonkerish dad and instead of magic and trampolining his big passion is archery. He’s played by Jim Howick from Sex Education and the rest of the Jessop clan are comedy dependables like Katherine Parkinson and Tom Basden who was Ricky Gervais’ newspaper editor in After Life and has also written the gags. They’re pretty good, referencing Pep Guardiola and Monty Don, onions and bunions. The youngest in the family is filming their misadventures for his media studies and Alison Steadman is Gran, always saying something inappropriate. The only thing missing is a Gloria.
Family newspaper or not, I feel duty-bound to tell you about 365 Days: This Day (Netflix), the sequel to Poland’s Fifty Shades of Grey. Our insatiable lovers Olga and her over-inked hunk Massimo get married. He – finally – buttons up his shirt for the ceremony but then swans off to play golf. Typical man!
But wait … those lush greens can be incorporated into the furious bonking. The R&A will be appalled but, guys, participation in your sport is falling. Something to consider?