Enraging and brilliant– how Stephen finally got justice
Stephen ITV, Monday The North Water BBC2, Friday
The best programme on television at the moment isn’t Vigil – what happened in Florida can stay in Florida, as far as I’m concerned – but Stephen. It is deftly written, deftly performed, sober and meticulous, respectful and affecting. It’s set in 2006, which is, as the opening titles told us, 13 years after Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death on a chilly London street, and seven years after a public inquiry found the Metropolitan Police to be ‘perniciously’ and ‘institutionally’ racist, yet his parents were ‘still fighting for justice’. It is also, I should have said, enraging.
ITV loves these real-life police procedurals and somehow understands how to make them with class (see Little Boy Blue, White House Farm, The Pembrokeshire Murders). In other hands they can often be a disaster (see Channel 4’s Deceit, ugh).
This is elegantly written by Frank and Joe Cottrell Boyce and stars Steve Coogan as DCI Clive Driscoll, who volunteers to reinvestigate the Lawrence case after discovering that all the files relating to the investigation have been left behind in a now-defunct police station. Nice.
Many feared Coogan would be too Partridge-y for the role but he is excellent. His Driscoll is caring, compassionate, determined and believable, even if, perhaps, he’s a little too saintly. His quirk, after all, isn’t alcoholism or drug addiction or depression brought about by a traumatic backstory seen via flashback. It’s playing the piano for old folk in a care home. Sweet, but there may not be a spin-off series in that.
This week it was episode two (of three). Doreen and Neville Lawrence – played superbly by Sharlene Whyte and Hugh Quarshie – are still being fobbed off by those higher up the chain, while Driscoll uncovers more and more of the Met’s failures. (Even ‘litany of failures’ doesn’t get near it.) The police knew whodunnit, the Lawrences knew whodunnit, everyone knew whodunnit, yet no suspect had ever been charged. Lessons had been learnt by this point, you’d think, but no, not at all. ‘We all know Stephen was stabbed by his own knife when he tried to rip off a dealer,’ says one officer. ‘What are you?’ another asks Driscoll, ‘part of the Lawrences’ private police force now?’ Driscoll is methodical, but this is never plodding, as we can sense a case building, and so want the killers to go down. He revisits all the old evidence, including the forensics. Back in 1993 the official forensic service didn’t even bother with some tests because they said it wouldn’t be worth it. Driscoll orders them to be done by a private company and a hair is found on a suspect’s clothing that could be Stephen’s, and a drop of blood is also discovered that is definitely his.
There were several standout scenes. One involved a witness coming forward who saw everything and could identify all the killers. Why wait until now? he was asked. ‘I’m a racist,’ he says, ‘so I didn’t lose any sleep over it.’ Other gripping scenes included Neville in the cemetery, Doreen in the police station after she’d been car-jacked, and the one in her kitchen where Driscoll, still trying to win her trust, tells her he admires her strength and the way she has kept on fighting. ‘I didn’t plan for it,’ she says plainly. ‘I thought the killers would just be arrested. I didn’t expect getting justice to be my job.’ She then added that she still dreamed of Stephen: ‘He is so, so sad and angry to not be alive… I’m not strong. I have no choice.’ Enraging and heartbreaking too.
The new series The North Water is dark. Literally. I turned the brightness on my TV to full whack, but so many of the early scenes took place in barely-candlelit taverns or barely-candlelit cabins that I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Who is doing that grunting? Who is picking the fight? By the end of this first episode we had, at least, made it to the Arctic Circle, where the light was brilliantly white, but be careful what you wish for. A prolonged seal-clubbing scene ensued. (Please, please, make it dark again!)
This is a five-part adaptation of an Ian McGuire novel by film-maker Andrew Haigh, set aboard a whaling ship in 1859. The crew, as far as I could make out, includes a disgraced doctor (Jack O’Connell), a whaler (Colin Farrell) who is pure evil and may or may not have been the one grunting in the opening scene, and the ship’s captain (Stephen Graham), who is undertaking the mission for secret reasons that aren’t good.
This has terrific production values, as The Terror did, but it is, I should warn you, both extremely grunty and extremely (actually, exclusively) male. I’m guessing we’re in for a survivalist tale that will also explore the beast in man, and if you like that sort of thing you will like this. And that’s my conclusion. From what I could see of it.