Maxine is horrible. Place it top of your Don’t Watch list
Maxine Channel 5, Monday-Wednesday (for now, or ever in my lifetime) Our Dementia Choir Sings A gain BBC1, Monday
The TV schedules are awash with true-crime dramas, far too many to even list, but our appetite for true crime was ever thus, so there’s no point getting uppity about it. (The first pamphlets detailing ‘the most shocking and sensational murders’ go back to the mid-1400s when movable type was first invented.)
But I did feel uneasy about Maxine from the get-go. Really? The Soham murders? As entertainment? And I can now confirm: it’s pointless, unnecessary and horrible. Avoid. Steer clear. Put it straight to the top of your Mustn’t Watch list.
I don’t know what Channel 5 was thinking. It must never be allowed anywhere near this sort of project again.
I could have chosen not to watch, but I’ve felt uneasy about similar dramas in the past, such as Little Boy Blue or Damilola or Stephen or Anne or Four Lives. However, made with the involvement of parents, we were asked to stand with them, bear witness, understand what had been endured and, usually, acknowledge an injustice.
Perhaps, I thought, Maxine will be like that. It isn’t. Perhaps, I thought, it will reframe this terrible story. It doesn’t. I honestly can’t begin to imagine the distress this series must have caused the families involved.
In the summer of 2002, two ten-year-old girls from Soham in Cambridgeshire were murdered. (I worked in a newsroom at the time and saw grown men weep.) We know Ian Huntley (Scott Reid), the school caretaker, is guilty of killing them but, as we get under way here, the police do not.
Initially, he wasn’t even under suspicion as his girlfriend, Maxine Carr (Jemma Carlton), had supplied him with a false alibi. And also bleached their house. She’d been a teaching assistant in the girls’ class and would later be dubbed Britain’s Most Hated Woman. But even though this was sold as Maxine’s point of view, I still don’t understand why she colluded. I thought this might try to turn her into a victim, as gaslit by Huntley, yet while he’s a nasty piece of work, viciously possessive and controlling, she seemed fully able to stand up for herself.
She volunteered the false alibi. It was her idea (or so this says). Was it simply because she liked living in the caretakers’ cottage and wanted their wedding to go ahead? If this aimed to be about Maxine, for whatever reason, why no back story? We end up as unenlightened now as we were then.
It doesn’t show the murders on screen, thankfully, but right from the beginning, there are pruriently lingering shots of, say, the boot of his Ford Fiesta, or the bins where the girls’ burned clothes would eventually be found, as violins thrummed threateningly.
The family has been excised, and we never see the girls, but is this ‘sensitive and respectful’, particularly as no approval has been granted? Wouldn’t approval be the ‘sensitive and respectful’ route? And without the victims, what do we have? Huntley and Carr centre stage, that’s what.
I remember, from the time, that Huntley had a ton of previous convictions, but that’s barely even alluded to here. True, we do see ‘Ian Huntley is a rapist’ graffitied on a nightclub wall, but otherwise, almost nothing.
Yet he’d been accused many times of sexually assaulting underage girls with the cases never coming to court. If this had focused on what happens to young girls when young girls aren’t believed, it might actually have had something to say.
One last thing: Reid and Carlton are actually incredibly good, so I feel bad for them. But not as bad as I feel for the families.
Families were not excluded from Our
Dementia Choir Sings Again. On the contrary, it’s families that do the caring for many dementia sufferers and, as we saw, it’s exhausting and stressful, but also accomplished with so much love. As much as this is about a choir, it’s also about that love, and honouring it. Four years ago, Vicky McClure, who is brilliant – always caring, never patronising – made a documentary series about forming a dementia choir in Nottingham and the difference that singing can make to dementia patients. To see their faces light up was pure joy.
Now they’re back to record a single, at Abbey Road, no less. We catch up with some choir members, such as Mick, diagnosed at the hideously young age of 51, who has deteriorated substantially. It’s a shock. He can’t remember lyrics any more and just wants to do jigsaw puzzles all day, every day.
His wife, Karen, is his primary carer but also has to work full-time out of financial necessity. Yet if Mick had brain cancer, say, they would get help. McClure is furious, as we all should be.
This is beautifully judged. Tender without being sentimental, angry when necessary, and honest about the challenges without ever losing hope.
Dementia sufferers can still lead good lives. It could also be funny. One was asked if he was nervous about the recording. ‘No,’ he replied, happily. ‘We never get nervous because none of us ever has a f***ing clue what’s going on.’ Wonderful.