CLIVE MYRIE’S ITALIAN ROADTRIP BBC2, Nightly, 6.30PM
Black Ops BBC1, Friday, 9.30 pm
Andrew: The Problem Prince Channel 4, Monday, 9.00 pm
Ridley VM More, Sunday, 9.00 pm
As much as I like a decent travel show, and as much as I love Italy – because who wouldn’t? – we might be in danger of having too many Italian travel shows.
There are always repeats of old ones on (Francesco da Mosto, Gino di Campo…) anyway, but just in the last few months we’ve also had new ones from Stanley Tucci (elegant) and Danny Dyer (I didn’t watch – Danny Dyer was in it). So, as calm as Clive Myrie’s presence is, I’m not completely sure we needed Clive Myrie’s Italian Roadtrip just yet, and certainly not every night.
Still, though. It’s Italy after all, and there’s very little else on. So I watched as Myrie went off on another of those journeys that promise to show us the “unknown Italy”, starting in Matera, a city of old stone and natural caves (in which people lived until relatively recently). It was an unusually extended visit there, which was welcome and showcased both the strengths and weaknesses of the series itself: it’s certainly an interesting town which few of us have visited, but other recent shows have shown us the same places and same things there; and while Myrie’s unflappable journalistic skills are put to good use explaining the history of the place (from Italy’s “city of shame” in the 1950s to capital of culture 2019), it’s slightly crass that the town is introduced firstly as the site of a James Bond car chase.
All that aside, watching Myrie drive through scenic hills, try local foods, and get as excited by Godfather locations as we all would, is hardly unpleasant, and it’s certainly less frantic than some other shows – a bit closer to Tucci’s shows in pace, but heavier on the history than the food. And I suppose it’s hardly Myrie’s fault that other shows have covered this same ground – certainly, if you haven’t seen those, this is a perfectly decent travelogue about an irresistible country. But if TV is going to go there again it needs either to leave it for a while, or do something genuinely different with it.
Meanwhile, here comes another Friday night sitcom from the BBC, and one whose whole premise is based on its punning title: Black Ops follows Dom (Gbemisola Ikumelo) and Kay (Hammed Animashaun), two not-really-that-bothered black British Police Community Support Officers (the rank below the level at which you can arrest anyone) who we meet handing out goodies to the public, and carefully not arresting someone. Having had to argue their way past other (white) cops into their actual place of work, they are spotted by DS Clinton Blair (Ariyon Bakare), who wants them to go undercover into some local drugs gangs (despite their blatant unsuitability) and help root out the problems.
It could have worked as a kind of satire – certainly, given the premise and the steady stream of gags about racism, it seems to want to be at least a little bit pointed. But it’s far too soft and rushed for that, and most of the gags you can see coming a mile off: some of them, such as the officer saying “I just don’t see colour” while looking at an all-black gang of drug dealers, were done more subtly 20 years ago by The Simpsons, others are just too lazily sitcommy to ever raise a laugh.
And while we probably can’t blame the eye-rolling, face-pulling performers themselves – presumably they were just following directions – it’s far too muggy and hammy and downright silly to work. Really it feels like a show written for early teens, and if it wasn’t for the drug-dealing themes a post-school slot might have suited better.
You might perhaps have noticed a lot of coverage of the Royal family last weekend – coronations and cakes, mainly, quite a lot of grand pageantry, and a huge horse that wanted to walk sideways. If you weren’t terribly interested in all that, and had a suspicious interest in the nature of monarchy in the first place, well, Channel 4 were happy to be your fly in the TV ointment. So if you chose not to watch footage of the big day itself, in which Prince Andrew was very visible, you might instead have watched Andrew: The Problem Prince, a two-part investigation into the grimy history and questionable judgement of the previous generation’s “spare” royal.
Its structure was odd but effective. One timeline explored the man’s past, tracing a path from his early life of massive entitlement but no purpose (a dangerous mix) to his reckless adulthood of taking what he wanted without much feeling of responsibility. Meanwhile, another timeline gave us an insight into the build-up to his infamous Newsnight interview in 2019, in which he revealed to us all just how far removed from reality he really was.
The interview timeline, being so recent and so focused, is the more successful, helped immensely by the willing presence of Newsnight producer Sam McAlister and interviewer Emily Maitlis. What made him do the interview with so little appropriate preparation? We’ll never know – no doubt his upbringing left him unprepared for the kind of questions Maitlis (and society) asked. But, cleverly, the makers have also put that interview in context by digging up other older interviews, in which he has also said questionable things and reacted poorly to the questions. His go-to line, “I cannot think what possessed me” presumably sufficed at one point in his life; those days, despite the coronation’s medieval fanfares, appear to be long gone.
Adrian Dunbar is back as a cop in VM More’s import Ridley – but in case you think he’s being typecast, this is less like Line Of Duty and far more like the rural, Sunday-night staple Vera. Dunbar plays the title role, another detective with a tragic past, and the first episode saw him (slightly reluctantly) working a case involving a local farmer who’s been found dead, an investigation that soon leads to a terrible secret. And Ridley sings: note that.
First episodes of shows like this (which want to create a layered character in a feature-length show that can run indefinitely) often have a lot of ground to cover, introducing characters, backstories, and general tone, without seeming to try too hard. Ridley does that smoothly enough: there’s a respectful rivalry between Ridley and his boss, quite a warm friendship between Ridley and an old colleague, and, yes, a problem prisoner who has damaged Ridley in terrible ways.
It’s all quite sombre, and generally run-of-the-mill, but if it’s hardly gripping, it’s well enough acted and Dunbar always has good presence. He also, honestly, seems to have a decent voice, which might make his singing scenes less painful than they could have been. If I’m honest, though, their mood-killing cringe factor is high.
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