Deborah Ross
A fabulous symphony of sex, secrets and style
Philharmonia Sunday, Channel 4 (all episodes available now on All 4) ★★★★★ The World’s Greatest Paintings Saturday, Channel 5 ★★★★★
Philharmonia is a French thriller, and I thought I’d give it one episode to see how we go, but one became two, and two became three (which is when it properly puts its boots on), and you can guess the rest, I think. I am grateful to it as I thought my concentration was shot. (I’ve given up on so much lately.) And because it does not feature: 1) missing children; 2) a raped woman; 3) any running through the woods, probably at night.
Perhaps it was never about concentration, just a bad case of TV thriller fatigue. (You will know you have TV thriller fatigue when you cast your eye over the synopsis for, say, Cardinal and read that the killer ‘makes off to the forest with his latest two victims’, and note your heart sinking, as what is a forest? (If not a wood but bigger?)
There are no woods/forests here. Instead, Philharmonia, which runs to six episodes, now all available on All 4, is set amid a Parisian orchestra and stars Marie-Sophie Ferdane as Hélène Barizet, a brilliant conductor. She is hired to take over following the death of her predecessor, who clutched his chest and died mid-concert. (Poor fella, but there are worse ways to go, I suppose. Like on the toilet.) Her brief is to make classical music more relevant to young people. (Good luck with that, love!)
The musicians don’t want Barizet. The orchestra’s misogynistic director does not want Barizet. She has been imposed on them and they make their feelings plain by, say, gluing together the pages of her score or, at their first encounter, playing the Mission: Impossible theme to wind her up, but she shows her measure by picking up her baton and making them sharpen their interpretation. (I don’t know much about conducting but, as seen here, it’s simply a matter of waving a stick around quite ineffectually before collapsing on a bed, all passion spent. Terrific.)
Certainly, this is overwrought and melodramatic. Barizet’s husband is having it off with the French horn lady. The oboist is up to no good. The director is married but engaged in a gay affair. Selena, the young violinist whom Barizet has rapidly promoted – because she reminds her of herself, presumably – is pimped out via a fundraising model that you hope won’t catch on. There is also bonking on a grand piano and suicide and a Turkish earthquake and bullying and a sofa fire and, yes, a dead body turns up in episode three, when this properly puts its boots on.
So it is busy, but held together by the music, which is often sensational and would be wasted on young people, and Ferdane’s compelling performance as Barizet, who has her own secrets, a strange relationship with her dying mother and keeps a gun in a drawer. As a person, she does not care about being liked. But for how much longer can she hold out against the hostility? Cracks do begin to appear and as she fears for her sanity, so do we, and all the while you won’t be able to take your eyes off her. Or her splendid wardrobe, particularly the red leather jacket that I hanker for but daren’t Google as I know the price will make me weep.
The most enraging programme of the week was Andrew Marr’s The World’s Greatest
Paintings or, as I would have called it, A Man Solely Considers Male Artists, Yet Again. At the outset of the first episode, Marr, who is himself a painter, said that ‘art, not politics, is the passion of my life, as it gets to the heart of what it’s like to be human.’ How can he say that? How? When he proceeds to leave out half of humanity? I don’t know how to break this gently to Marr and others so I’ll just come out with it: women can be great artists too.
This ten-part series kicked off with Marr’s appreciation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – heard of it? – while upcoming episodes will focus on paintings by Picasso, Van Gogh, Turner, Monet, Constable, Velázquez, Rembrandt, Millais and Botticelli. It was the same with ITV’s Great Art, presented by the Royal Academy’s Tim Marlow. Two series and not a single female painter.
I get that shows like this ‘burnish the brand’ and you have to feature the big hitters if you’re after a popular audience, but couldn’t they have swapped Millais, at least? Who cares about Millais? No one. Couldn’t they have swapped him out for Artemisia Gentileschi (what a story!) or Clara Peeters or Paula Rego or Georgia O’Keeffe or Frida Kahlo? Shall I stop now or keep going? As I could keep going for ages.
Meanwhile, the programme was fine, I suppose, with its talking heads and trips to the Louvre and Florence but it didn’t bring anything new to the party. Whereas Gentileschi would have. Be brave!