LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL BBC1, Friday, 9pm
For a few minutes of the opening episode of Leonard And Hungry Paul, I genuinely thought BBC had made a scheduling mistake: surely this was a gentle family soap, voiced by Julie Roberts no less, that should have lived on children’s TV?
I’m happy to say I was wrong: it’s not that kind of show, although it’s certainly an odd little beast to categorise, a quiet comedy of nothing much, set in Ireland (and based on Ronan Hession’s books) but screening on BBC Friday nights and populated mainly by non-Irish actors, and it’s neither particularly funny nor dramatic.
And yet, wait: it’s got more heart than most shows, and there’s a lulling kind of comfort in watching its two title characters go softly about their lives. There’s Leonard (Alex Lawther, last seen in Alien: Earth), a children’s writer who lives mostly inside his own head and gets talked over a lot, and Hungry Paul (Laurie Kynaston), a lover of boardgames who’s uncomfortable around other people. (Yes, it’s a story about introverts just surviving in the world, and while their world is not as horrifically noisy and unpleasant as the real world, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so seen by a TV show…)
The plot, unhurried as it is, kicked off with the death of Leonard’s mother, then quickly introduced a (first ever?) love interest when Shelley (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) joined the office. Through this, and the games nights he shares with Paul, we meet a number of other characters, some odd, some daft, some likeable. Despite yourself, and despite it being, let’s be honest, a wee bit too heavy on the whimsy, you find yourself rooting for them – and even the Irishness is irrelevant.
All the same, there are faults, mainly in some less subtle scenes (Leonard’s first date), and characters (like the awful boss played by Paul Reid). In another show they might not even have seemed out of place, but Lawther’s performance is so sweet and soulful that he makes most of the other performances feel too big and broad. But overall it has a good heart, and anything that magnifies the voices of non-shouty friendships is welcome.
THE IRIS AFFAIR Sky Atlantic, Thursday, 9pm
No, The Iris Affair is not an in-depth exposé of the domestic lives of NI politicians: in fact it’s another far-flung action thriller, albeit a shade dafter and more caperish than Atomic, which it has followed in the schedules. Here, in a plot that nods to old pursuits like The 39 Steps, we meet the flaky maths genius Iris (Niamh Algar), who is in Sardinia on the run from the henchmen of raging capitalist Cameron (Tom Hollander), from whom she has stolen a coded notebook. What’s so special about the book? Well, it holds the password to the most powerful AI brain in existence, which Cameron is growing in an underground lair in the Slovenia, and which goes by the name of Charlie Big Potatoes (“well, it’s not small potatoes”, Cameron explains).
Is it serious? Not at all. It’s full of unanswered questions, like how Iris lives so well with no job, or becomes internationally undetectable by just putting on some glasses. But it’s also often colourful (in every way), and prances nimbly enough through the cities, mountains, and coasts of Europe. Algar is coolly suitable as a woman just about as calculating as Mr Big Potatoes itself, and Hollander is an old hand at playing sadistic villains, and the plot is, if hardly convincing, at least unpredictable and sometimes fun.
THE RIDGE BBC1, Thursday, 9pm
For comparison, consider BBC’s new thriller The Ridge, which in tone is a lot more serious, but which in practice is just about unwatchable. It stars Lauren Lyle as a Scottish anaesthetist called Mia, who leaves behind some domestic issues to travel to New Zealand for her sister Cassy’s wedding, but on arrival discovers that Cassy has died in a fall while hiking a local mountain ridge. But Mia, knowing Cassy was a gifted climber, does not believe it was an accident, and sets about investigating what really happened.
The plot here is perfectly viable, and there’s certainly enough secret-unearthing potential in it to keep us interested. But there are problems elsewhere: there’s an uninvolving medical issue at home, and Mia is an unappealing heroine, dour and rude to just about everyone without any interesting complications. But even if you could overlook those issues for the sake of the story, it looks terrible: it appears to have been filmed by a first-timer who learned everything they know by watching the jerky, zooming, whooshing photography of youth TV a decade ago, and honestly it’s almost impossible to watch.
DAISY MAY & CHARLIE COOPER’S NIGHTWATCH BBC2, Sunday, 9.30pm
And filling up the TV Halloween listings, there were a few investigations into the season and the mythology around it. Mind you, they weren’t all equally serious or useful. Daisy May & Charlie Cooper’s Nightwatch sends the brother and sister from This Country into various haunted spots around the UK to see what experiences they have. The pair are doing this mainly because they’ve always had an interest in ghosts and disturbances (I wouldn’t mind doing the same thing myself: come and have a haunt if you think you’re ghostly enough), and the first episode shut them in an old gallows cell in a long-closed prison in Gloucester.
What do we get from it? Not much: mainly just tatty memoires of the execrable Most Haunted with Derek Acorah, with Daisy May occasionally shouting in (probably) exaggerated fright when she sees something that scares her but inevitably turns out to be innocent. So as an investigation it’s half-hearted and as useless as you’d expect. It’s more about simply watching them having real conversations on camera, and that banter – apparently they’d not seen each other for a while – at least shows a real bond between them, even if it’s not really that funny. Fans of the pair will probably enjoy it, but otherwise it’s all a bit pointless.
OÍCHE SHAMHNA: AN ANCIENT MYSTERY RTE1, Sunday, 7.30pm
RTE’s Irish-language documentary Oíche Shamhna: An Ancient Mystery was less about hauntings and more about history, and far more worthwhile for it. It’s an exploration of the origins of Halloween, using a mix of archaeology, folklore and mythology to take us right back to the old Irish festival of Samhain and possibly beyond (and along the way I couldn’t help but smile at the dismissal of the gaudy American festival as Hollywoodish profit-seeking) There is evidence showing that it might also have roots in France, and there’s a fascinating 2,000-year-old bronze calendar showing clear cultural links between the two ancient countries. Interestingly that’s in Lyon, a city originally named after Lugh, a Celtic god said to have been conceived on Tory island: the kind of enticing titbit that this show is good for, and which makes you think an expanded series following up on all those historical links would be fascinating.
