Compelling, sensitive and – best of all – it’s so different
Iapproach stripped-through-the-week thrillers with a heavy heart these days. What is it this time? Is it yet another small town where the secrets are big? Is it yet another missing/murdered child? Even though I’m still not talking to Channel 5, as I’ve yet to forgive it for Maxine, I did have a look at its offering this week, The House Across The Street, but lasted only one episode. There was a missing/murdered child. We didn’t see the town but the street, that was small, and the secrets? Big. And the violins, my God. No one should be subjected to so much violin on a soundtrack. Someone only had to open the fridge and the violins would strike up menacingly.
I gave up, switched to Channel 4’s Somewhere Boy, which I didn’t have high hopes for either. But this was carefully told, compelling, sensitive, cared more for character than plot, praise be, and more than any of that: it was different.
The premise was this: an 18-year-old boy, Danny (Lewis Gribben), has spent almost all his life in a rundown house in the remote countryside with his father (Rory Keenan). His father had told Danny that there are ‘monsters’ outside, ones who killed Danny’s mother when he was a baby, and to keep safe he must always stay inside. But now Danny has to leave and face the real world. I would like to tell you why but that would be a spoiler and I don’t want the spoiler police at my door, thank you. You can get ten years for spoilers, and I’ve no wish to be incarcerated myself.
Danny ends up living with his father’s sister, Sue (the brilliant Lisa McGrillis). You would expect her to be a wicked aunt, because aunts are always wicked on screen, but she isn’t. Instead, she is loving, compassionate, always offering toast. Danny looks the part. That is, as if he’s never stepped outside. His skin is so white it’s ghostly. Obviously, he finds this new world too bright, too brash, confusing. In his former life, Danny and his father entertained themselves watching old blackand-white films, so even colour TV is a shock. But this doesn’t dwell too much on that.
As I said, it’s more interested in the characters. Danny has to share a bedroom with his surly cousin, Aaron (Samuel Bottomley), who watches porn on his phone, acts like the boss but is, in his own way, desperate to fit in. His father had split from Sue and now doesn’t bother with him. Aaron calls Danny’s father ‘abusive’ but at least Danny was loved? This raises all kinds of interesting questions.
It does have a thriller aspect, particularly after Danny discovers who is responsible for his mother’s death, but it’s not overly preoccupied with that either. This is about Danny finding out who he is, where his sexuality is at, and also his place in the world. It’s threaded throughout with flashbacks and, as you know, I’m not a fan of flashbacks, but here they are necessary to show us why his father behaved as he did, how he maintained the illusion of ‘monsters’ and what happened during their last days together, which I’d love to speak about but can’t. And it’s all held together by Gribben’s terrific performance. He has Asperger’s and extreme dyslexia and wasn’t educated in mainstream schools so, as he said in an interview I read: ‘I know what it feels like to be an outsider.’
And that authenticity shone out. It’s four stars rather than five because some subplots were left hanging, which made me feel it has its eye on a second series, and I’m always annoyed by that. But there is only one thing you really need to know: it’s different.
Barely space for TraumaZone, which is foolish, as it’s seven hours long. On the other hand, it’s so huge in scope that even if I could fill the next ten pages I probably wouldn’t do it justice. It’s an account of the fall of the Soviet Union, put together by Adam Curtis, who was given accesses to every bit of footage the BBC has filmed in Russia since the 1960s. There is no commentary, just the occasional intertitle, so each hour-long episode is a montage of images, but assembled in a way that is chronological and tells the story.
It is sometimes devastating (the discovery and excavation of a mass grave dating from Stalin’s time), sometimes appallingly sad (a little beggar girl in Moscow or an old woman walking miles though snow for a bag of potatoes) and often surprisingly funny. A librarian shows a selection of banned books, including Debrett’s Book Of The Royal Wedding, by Hugo Vickers.
Or it’s Gorbachev’s ‘Intensification-90’ plan, which led to ludicrous situations including taxi drivers who were penalised for doing too many miles. There are attempted coups, protests, mothers weeping as their boys are sent to war.
It is cumulatively mesmerising and also incredibly informative. For the first time, I understood who the oligarchs are and how they came about. It’s all fascinating, even when it’s just footage from the state pen factory or state chocolate factory. And now I’m merely saying what’s in it. Your best bet? Go watch it yourself.