So, Graham Norton – is this a crime drama or a comedy?
Holding ITV, Monday ★★★☆☆
Jeremy Kyle Show: Death On Daytime Channel 4, Sunday, Monday ★★★★☆
Holding is a crime drama based on the bestselling novel by Graham Norton and it’s not a posh-house-thriller, for which we must be thankful, but it is a return to one of our other old friends: small town, big secrets.
Personally, I blame Broadchurch, which isn’t to say this doesn’t have some charm. Brenda Fricker is in it, for heaven’s sake! And it features some decent character work, the best cooked TV breakfast of the year – early days, but I’d be surprised if a better one comes along – plus it is nicely gentle without being Midsomer Murders or Vera. For which we must also be thankful.
It’s set in Duneen, a sleepy village in West Cork where the local police officer is Sergeant PJ Collins (Conleth Hill, although sometimes I was put in mind of Benny Hill. I lived in fear of him chasing a half-naked woman round a tree).
We first meet him waking up in bed while, downstairs, the Garda station’s housekeeper, Mrs Meany (Fricker), cooks up his breakfast – sausages, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, fried bread... but at least she uses a low-cal oil spray. Only kidding. A whole block of butter goes in there. Collins is overweight and not happy about it, judging by his look when he catches sight of himself in the mirror.
He is, you sense, lonely and melancholic, and whatever is missing from his life he attempts to fill with food. There’s a crisp packet amid his bedding. He wolfs processed cheese slices in his car. You did feel for him, straight off the bat. He is certainly underwas worked, as established at the outset when he has to convince the local busybody (played by Pauline McLynn as Mrs Doyle, thereby introducing a Father Ted vibe) that someone painting their shop a colour you don’t like is not a crime. But then human bones are excavated at a construction site and suddenly he has a case. There’s a terrific moment when he says: ‘We need to call… ah… hmm… forensics!’
As directed by Kathy Burke, this is slowpaced but, at the same time, characters were introduced so quickly it was initially hard to work out who was who. Is that one of the sisters? I was also confused by this: when he doesn’t have time to eat that breakfast and Mrs Meany puts it in a baguette, why does he go to eat it in the farmhouse that’s about to be demolished? Do you know?
The bones likely belong to Tommy Burke, who had disappeared from the area, and was involved with two women: Evelyn (Charlene McKenna) – one of three sisters, I finally worked out – and Brid (Siobhán McSweeney), whom he jilted at the altar, and is now an alcoholic. Mind you, Mrs Meany is also hiding something, given the amount of time she stares out of the window.
In fact, everyone stares out of the window, into the middle distance, at some point or another. What is it about secrets that makes you stare out of windows in this way? This beset by cliche. ‘I am not an alcoholic,’ says Brid, before falling over. And I’d certainly put money on Collins not being as bumbling as he seems and showing up that Dublin detective.
Plus it was tonally all over the place. Was it meant to be comic? Or not? I’m not sure I yet care who killed Tommy, but I’ll keep with it – there are four episodes – as I do seem to have developed a fondness for Collins. Meanwhile, if you’re ever in Duneen, do stop at the police station as Mrs Meany is sure to feed you a ton of sandwiches. Ham.
On to the dark side of ITV and Jeremy Kyle Show: Death On Daytime, which has caused a sensation, but honestly? It ran for 14 years and you never thought: how is bear-baiting poor and vulnerable people in any way acceptable? We’re all complicit, in a way.
The Jeremy Kyle Show was finally axed after the suicide of Steve Dymond, who insisted he’d been faithful to his fiancee but ‘failed’ a lie detector test. Never mind that such tests are notoriously unreliable, so long as it gave Kyle licence to shout ‘You’re disgusting!’ in someone’s face. Dymond’s last voicemail messages to his fiancee were unbelievably distressing.
We heard from participants whose lives had been ruined, one way or another, and also workers on the show (played by actors), who described how guests were pumped up, manipulated, were ‘objects he [Kyle] could exploit’ and how the show, generally, ‘took people’s self, crushed it, then sent them on their way’.
As I said, I think we all knew, deep down, but it was still shocking. Drug addicts were told there was one bed available for rehab so they would have to win it by being ‘the worst’, even though beds were available for all of them.
You did worry that this was exploitative itself. Did we need to see the bereaved crying at gravesides?
But I hope it puts paid to this type of television and here’s a warning: some years hence we’ll be looking at Love Island and wondering: how could we have been complicit in that?