by Paul Bradley
American TV dramas, over the last few years, have turned rather too often to rich people being all catty and killy with each other – usually with Nicole Kidman whispering behind or before the camera. Now BBC is climbing aboard the same train with Wild Cherry, a lifeless sliver of gloss set in the affluent Richford Lake, whose population appears to be 50 per cent chilly women, 30 per cent their daughters, 10 per cent hair, and 10 per cent everybody else. Most significantly here so far, we have Lorna (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter Grace (Imogen Faires), who live in the wealthy part of town, and Juliet (Eve Best) and her teenage daughter Allegra (Amelia May), who live in the really wealthy part of town.
The action kicks off when, among all the socialising and blank faces, they’re all made aware by the local school of an inappropriate video made by (and starring) Allegra and Grace. Also in the mix here is an influencer party, and an app for rating girls by their attractiveness…no doubt all issues in real life, and no doubt likely to cause the kind of concerns shown here, although in real life there would be facial expressions.
Because, as timely as the issues here might be, this is almost laughably uninvolving. There are some excellent actors here, so it appears to be a problem with the vision the makers had in the first place: too enamoured of those American “rich people problems” shows, but also lacking in sympathetic characters, and with more budget for hairdos than for the script. And it has a weird, stultified look: like a daytime ad for shampoo – you know those ads where a dozen women are all weirdly tangled up together in very posed poses, just as you’d find at any hairwashing event in real life – all filmed through a sickly yellow gauze.
Prisoner 951
BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is easier to take seriously: Prisoner 951 is based on the true story of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s controversial imprisonment in Iran for six years for allegedly plotting to topple the Iranian government (a bizarre charge of which she was innocent). Here, Nazanin is played by Narges Rashidi and her husband Richard by Joseph Fiennes, looking at times like a younger, longer, gaunter Chris de Burgh.
The first episode, in which she was arrested/abducted/detained for reasons the Iranian authorities were reluctant to share, was a maddening, moving story of brutality and frustration in the face of slow diplomacy and a world that really does not care.
It’s emotional stuff, helped by two strong central performances: Rashidi is immensely dignified, and Fiennes, who can sometimes be quite mannered, low-key as a gentle husband increasingly driven to anger. Even apart, their relationship feels strong, which is important as both the Iranian and British state sides are a bit opaque here, for different reasons (one closed and threatening, one open but seemingly simpering). It did give a scene or two too many to reinforcing their predicament with similar conversations, but never to the point of boredom; and by the end there’s real emotion, and a sense of absolute horror at what an innocent family had to endure. One of the stronger BBC Sunday nighters in a long time.
Summerwater
On the other hand, Channel 4’s new drama Summerwater (doesn’t it sound just a bit like a July kidney infection) is unlikely to generate either tension or laughs. It’s based on a novel by Sara Moss, and it’s terribly serious, telling the story of several groups holidaying at the Scottish park of the title: they all expect a serene getaway from their everyday stresses, but the isolation doesn’t help the way they expect. When the weather turns bad, tensions begin to rise among the guests, until a fire breaks out that kicks off the police investigation we then follow.
A bit like a police investigation, I suppose, each episode follows a different person’s version of events, which can be intriguing, but risks being confusing and uneven over six episodes: it doesn’t even like to let us know who even died in the fire. There is a decent situation in here, with isolation, suspicion, and claustrophobia all in the mix, not to mention familiar actors like Shirley Henderson and Dougray Scott; but it feels a bit flatfooted and self-consciously moody, with muttering people staring off at the rain-greyed scenery too much of the time. Henderson, in fairness, brings some emotion with a character suffering from early dementia, but for the most part it’s just not that intersting.
Daddy Issues
The second, possibly unnecessary, season of Daddy Issues, also seems a bit flatter than the first. Gemma and Malcolm (Aimee Lou Wood and David Morrissey) are the father and daughter who’ve now been joined by baby Sadie – but also by Davida (Jill Halfpenny), Gemma’s formerly estranged mother. Davida says she wants to help, but really doesn’t, and most of the early energy this time around involves efforts to get rid of her so Gemma and Malcolm can get back to their previous lives.
All of which is fine, and the central pair are still likeable company. The problem is with the secondary characters, who too often fall crassly on the wrong side of caricature; Davida, for instance, is just too unpleasant to deserve a place here, while others like Malcolm’s would-be suave landlord belong in a different, more innately silly, sitcom. It makes for a patchier experience than before, although presumably as it goes the father and daughter double act will return to the foreground.
Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks
BBC2’s Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks was a decent look at the private JMW Turner, an artist whose work is widely known but whose life is not. As well as his public works, it seems he also left behind 37,000 other drawings and sketches, of subjects variously epic and intimate, and the film attempted to find the man and his inspiration through those works – and, of course, through talking heads of varying value: artist Tracey Emin, actor Timothy Spall (who played Turner in the 2014 biopic Mr Turner), and Ronnie Wood, the former Rolling Stone so obsessed with Turner that he bought the house he died in, even an insightful Chris Packham talking about Turner’s potential neurodiversity.
The result, despite the routine format and a growing sense that an hour is just not enough, is more enlightening than expected. It does brief justice to Turner’s mother’s mental issues, and indeed his own problems, and it reveals unfamiliar works that should be better known: the horrendous Slave Ship, for example, and the murkily terrifying (and unfinished) Death on a Pale Horse, not to mention a vast quantity of images clearly never meant to be made public.
It’s strong work, and this film might just send you back to the known works and to the Mike Leigh film of Turner’s life.
