Monday, February 23, 2015
PHOn any channel, Indian Summers would be a hit
The national broadcaster, on the other hand, chose to give us the grubby Casual Vacancy which would have been much more at home at Channel 4. What was happening here?
On any channel, Indian Summers would be a hit. For one, it looks so incredibly lush; filmed as it is on location in Malaysia, which is said to look more colonial now than India.
The opening sequences, apart from a visual slice of CGI, were particularly evocative as the well-heeled civil servants of the Raj escaped the heat of India for the foothills of the Himalayas.
Once there, they encountered the indomitable Cynthia, played by Julie Walters, who gave a typically effervescent performance as the hostess. She specialised in providing roast beef, gin and rather discreet accommodation (mostly in that order) for anything dissolute. Indeed, it was pretty much anything goes in Simla, as long as you were able to stand for the loyal toast at the appointed time. Many couldn’t. Not least the young man who arrived to visit his prospering uncle, only to find him fast asleep dreaming of his splendid pension. The nephew would later discover the temptations of the Raj himself. He took his first rickshaw ride with an excitable woman who threw off her fetching blue dress into a hedgerow in an apparent hot flush. Very careless.
What was even more pleasing to see was the legacy which we were preparing to pass on to the Indians. The joy of filing. There was paper everywhere. Reams of it, tied up with pretty string, and stacked in folders.
Perhaps the Viceroy thought that no one would bother with insurrection because they would not be able to find the small print, in the document “What to do when the British leave”. Indian Summers has all the makings of a long-running Downton-esque Sunday night drama, with many intersecting stories and drunken antics to keep us occupied for weeks to come. Personally I will not be satisfied with this period drama until someone sits on a verandah, in jodhpurs, in a planter chair, sipping a gin and tonic as a willing Indian servant wafts a fan dutifully. Long live the Raj!
I’d like to say that Walford was looking especially lush and verdant, too, in EastEnders (BBC1, Monday). However, the only lush appeared to be Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt) who seemed to have fathered most of Albert Square.
PHWolf Hall (BBC2, Wednesday) has surprisingly turned colloquial
My god, there were Beales everywhere. Are they all his? No wonder one of them finally got picked off. It is simply not right that the BBC has allowed these people to breed so much. Can’t some of them be sent to Spain, the home of forgotten soap characters?
The producers of EastEnders appear to have given up on the long-held suggestion that the soap is “realistic”. Given that none of these residents would now live in a gentrified Walford might explain this.
Even Wilmott-Brown would struggle. When Ian was sat on a fruit and veg cart and dragging it around the Square it was like a scene from My Fair Lady rather than 21st century London. Indeed, if anyone actually speaks as they do in this soap they should be referred for immediate assessment, to Henry Higgins. He would be most delighted with these specimens.
It was pleasing, however, to see that mostly shouting has now been accompanied by mostly door slamming. The chief culprit was Max Branning (Jake Wood) who must run a business on the side, in door hanging.
My favourite plotline, however, involved an apparently dead Nick Cotton, who might well be atrophying in a darkened room while Dot utters soothing passages from the Bible. Of course, the best way to revive him would be for Max Branning to slam the front door.
Two dramas are speeding towards their respective conclusions. Wolf Hall (BBC2, Wednesday) has surprisingly turned colloquial. Did I hear the sovereign referring to Thomas Cromwell as “Crom”? “Sure, Hank. Wassup?”
Henry then invited him down to “the weald”, which I took to be a poker school in Surrey. This now feels like a very truncated drama, with the scheming to bring about the demise of Anne Boleyn now confined to one episode.
It occupies one whole book of Hilary Mantel’s bestselling Tudor series. Still let’s not quibble too much. Better to have it, than not, as Thomas More would like to have said.
Finally, Broadchurch (ITV, Monday) appears to be moving inexorably towards an inconclusive ending. I defy anyone to write the plot of the Sandbanks “back story” on the back of a fag packet, if you can find one.
David Tennant’s Hardy was clarity himself last week: “If so and so knew this, did what’s his face know that, and if so, who knew what?” Meanwhile, news reaches us that Ofcom have launched an investigation into the presence of a mobile signal on a British beach. That really will draw in the tourists. Who killed Danny Latimer? Well, I’m certainly not prepared to rule out Max Branning at this stage.
If it does go to another series, with a case in the Court of Appeal, I look forward to a judges’ bench of Meera Syal, Jennifer Saunders and Jo Brand.
Stephenson's rocket
What could possibly go wrong? A JK Rowling story, the BBC and the US cable channel, HBO. The Casual Vacancy (BBC1, Sunday) should have been a classic drama, only it was anything but. Unless of course you like bad language, smut, drug taking and its paraphernalia, along with blatant political comments. Some do.
Make a “scuzzy” political drama if you must, but don’t bleat on about funding for social services. Just what you want on a Sunday night: a good cast wasted.
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Kara Scott
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