Blue Lights,
BBC1, Monday, 9pm
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge)
BBC1, Friday, 9.30pm
Perfect Pub Walks
More4, Wednesday, 9pm
The Hack, VM1
Thursday, 9pm
Wayward
Netflix
Police shows on telly often get more attention than they really deserve – cough*Line Of Duty*cough – but it’s only now, in its third season, that the less noisy Blue Lights seems to be getting some love. I’m not sure if that’s odd or predictable, because the second season ceded some grit to a slightly softer range of relationship issues within the police station. For all that, though, it remained unusually enjoyable, so it’s good to see it return this year.
It opens here with a quick indication that we are still in sure hands: Stevie and Grace (Martin McCann and Siân Brooke, marginally the most central pair in the show) on patrol and sharing Stevie’s fresh buns. Then the main plot kicks off, this time linking back to season one’s most shocking events: the gangs in Belfast are now using an exclusive delivery app for cocaine, and working more closely with their malicious Dublin counterparts. That not only introduces new villains, but a whole new secretive police investigation, led by Michael Smiley, on which our familiar day-to-day “peelers” unwittingly intrude. Cue tensions inside and outside the station – but with time for a party or two as well.
It seems to indicate a desire to move away from the personal relationships (there’s even a comment from Stevie about how many there are in the station) and back towards the harder edge of crime on the streets. But it’s subtly done so far, still doing justice to the characters we already know, and to the shifts of tone between danger and humour (sometimes in the same scene). If the Belfast setting doesn’t already give it a distinct enough feel, happily the raw Belfast slang certainly does. I’m not sure how long it can run without becoming just another cop show, but this series at least is a solid and welcome return.

Blue Lights returns to BBC1, Mondays at 9pm.
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge)
It’s a more satisfying return that that of Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge, who has popped up again in How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge), in which the veteran broadcaster bravely explores the mental health crisis; in fact he says it’s “the UK’s first documentary about mental health.” He epically covers all bases, of course – his own situation, some vox pops with passersby (who are frustratingly too cheerful for his ends), and with former broadcasting colleagues like Simon (Tim Key).
If it’s always cheering to see Partridge return, it can sometimes be a bit underwhelming in the actual viewing: a little bit overdone here, a touch self-conscious there, and not always as funny as it could be. That was very much the case with the first episode, which was well-acted and well-observed and dotted with little throwaway jokes (a slight Trumpian mispronunciation of “statistics”, even the brackets around his name in the title, as if he’s privately unsure if we remember him), but flatter than you would hope. It only really came alive in some poisonous roleplay between Partridge and Simon, which generated a sharpness and tension that you hope will be more of a feature in future episodes.
I could even imagine Partridge taking up Perfect Pub Walks for the next series – you know, a walk in the country is good for mental health, and having a celebrity walking partner would allow for some interesting conversations just as the show’s localised nature would elicit some unbiased Partridge observations. He’ll have to wait, though, since this year Alexander Armstong is leading the way (taking over from Bill Bailey), opening with a walk through Bronte country with James May.
Perfect Pub Walks
In some ways it’s the barest of shows, pitched somewhere between Gone Fishing and Winter Walks: unhurried and unflashy, every day’s wander ending with a cool beer in an old pub. But there is gentle conversation, some stone-skimming, and some prose and poetry as Armstrong gets to know his guest. May was a slightly (but pleasantly) awkward one, claiming to be a sensitive old sort but reluctant to show too much of that side of things (aside from a common and sweet misunderstanding of a Philip Larkin quote from The Arundel Tombs). But the banter was generally easy and the countryside enticing, which is everything you really want a show like this to be: a bucolic chat show that leaves us wanting to get out for a promenade and a pint.
The Hack
Almost two years ago (already!), Mr Bates Vs The Post Office was the kind of series every channel hopes for: a moving drama in its own right, which also ignited public conversation and brought to light a genuine scandal. The Hack, which has just launched on VM1, is clearly trying to pull off the same trick; and if you didn’t twig that already, it even has Toby Jones, who played Mr Bates in the former show, in it. He’s not the centre this time though – that role goes to David Tennant as jaded investigative journalist Nick Davies, the reporter who spent years piecing together the News Of The World phone hacking story which is the central scandal of this series.
If you’re in any doubt about how serious the story was, well, in real life it killed off the News Of The World in 2011. So there’s a significant real story at the heart of this, and a detailed look at the tiny steps involved in the investigation; it’s also well-acted, with Tennant hugely committed to his role, perhaps because in real life the paper hacked his phone as well. So there is plenty here to hold your interest. It’s baffling, then, that they decided to add in so many other ingredients almost guaranteed to take your eye off the story; it’s odd enough when Tennant addresses the audience directly, but when Tube ads and posters in the background begin to come to life as well, it makes it very hard to focus.
Wayward
Wayward is one of those Netflix dramas that you suspect move fast to keep our attentions away from its problems. It comes from comedian Mae Martin, who wrote it and stars in it as Alex (a police officer with unspecified problems in his past) who moves back with his pregnant partner Laura (Sarah Gadon) to Laura’s hometown, Tall Pines. Soon he begins to see that it’s not quite as pleasant or friendly as it seems, and that at the heart of it is an academy for “troubled teens”, which might be a cult, run by the ubiquitously sinister Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette).
Like the teens in its plot, the show has some issues that make it a little hard to get a handle on. Martin is likeable but somewhat bland, while Laura’s feelings are unclear all the way through; and the teens are not entirely sympathetic themselves, so the show lacks a clear emotional centre. All that said, though, it moves quickly, and is smart enough to include some dramatic ambivalence: is Evelyn just evil, or can she actually help some of these teens? So it remains watchable without being affecting at all; and if there’s to be a season two, it really needs to retain the excellent Collette to give it any kind of substance.
Finally, just a quick word to acknowledge the recent death of Manchán Magan: a gentle presence and an interesting voice on screen and in books, who remained a kind of boyish wonder and equanimity even in recent weeks as his illness became critical. A real loss.
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