by Paul Bradley
The BBC publicity department might need a little retraining on tone and mood: the posed still they use for the new drama Waiting For The Out looks like a reject from a sitcom about a quirky young man. Honestly it made me assume that the series would be routine, predictable, and easy to dismiss. Which, it turns out, is quite wide of the mark: it’s much better written than that, with excellent performances and a thoughtful script from writer Dennis Kelly.
If the summary “a young man teaches philosophy in prison” doesn’t do it for you, just focus on the other human details. At the centre is Dan (played by Josh Finan, last seen in The Responder), a young man with his own issues: he has OCD, a family history of crime, and a desire to be a reliable father (unlike his own) that his own maturity and personality are not quite ready for. So to prison. As we join him, he is taking up a new job teaching philosophy and Greek myth to some cynical or uninterested prisoners – a handy way to show that he might have escaped his family’s prison legacy, but can’t quite leave it behind.
Not only are some of Dan’s insecurities worse than the prisoners’, but some of them are smarter and better-read than he is – in particular the aggressive Keith (Alex Ferns), who matches his knowledge of myth and philosophy with unerring street smarts. Meanwhile, outside the prison, Dan still struggles with his own desires and fears, constantly having to work on his relationships (colleagues, girlfriend, brother) and the legacy of his boorish father (Gerard Kearns).
Many times this looks as if it will turn into another obvious story, but so far at least it has sidestepped them beautifully; Dan doesn’t quite make good on a promise, the prisoners are a mixed lot who are hardly pleasant but don’t erupt into pointless fistfights. Everyone is believably flawed, and there’s a recurring question of what men are for if masculinity itself is a problem, while acknowledging that, sometimes, masculinity is indeed a problem. It’s a much more thoughtful and detailed show than its publicity suggested, and for that very reason certainly took me by surprise – an early 2026 gem, perhaps.
The Victorian Murder Club
Well, sometimes as a maker of TV programmes you hit a theme that is right at the centre of a lot of Venn diagrams. If you’re Lucy Worsley, you want history, stories about women, some original locations to visit, and if possible a crime mystery. And if that’s not enough for you, you can use a title and format that invokes a series of popular crime novels by another TV presenter. So I suspect ‘The Victorian Murder Club’ was a real eureka moment for her.
And, in fairness, it’s an interesting idea for a lot of viewers too: in this first series Worsley is revisiting the unsolved case of a Victorian serial killer who killed as many as five women 140-odd years ago, often dumping their remains along the Thames. If that timing sounds familiar, yes, it coincided with Jack the Ripper’s crimes – in fact, all the attention given to that killer is possibly the main reason why the so-called “Thames Torso Murderer” has been largely forgotten, despite being just as prolific and nasty.
He’s not been forgotten by Worsley, though, who has assembled a team of researchers (historians and authors, all female) to help her reopen the case and possibly even identify the killer. Actually in the first episode I wasn’t totally convinced the team added a whole lot, but it’s useful enough as a setting for bouncing ideas around. Most of the heavy lifting is still done by Worsley, and she clearly relishes visiting some of the relevant scenes and sharing theories with modern experts and retired detectives familiar with the area (our former State Pathologist Marie Cassidy even makes a significant appearance). The hype suggests Worsley has indeed identified the likely culprit, which of course is legally irrelevant now, but can still make for satisfying TV – so this is a slightly flawed cold case series, but one which could provide a few years of genuine fascination.
Neven’s English Food Tour
Does Neven Maguire live in the RTÉ studios? He’s always on, popping up from all over the place, usually in repeats. But he has a new series now, following his usual pattern of travelling somewhere new to learn about the cuisine and cooking methods there. This time, though, it’s a little less glamorous-sounding than, say, Italy or Spain; he’s just popped over to England for Neven’s English Food Tour. Wait…would the first episode, which took us around Newcastle, be all about pie and chips?
Well, of course not – though pies, in more refined from than we’re usually familiar with, are presented early on in episode one, being an important part of the food culture around Newcastle. This is otherwise the usual inoffensive lifestyle show you expect from Maguire, who’s clearly having a great time. There’s a sense, though, that RTÉ are a bit less interested this time around, starting with zippy opening credits that feel as if they were knocked up in one minute for an AI presentation. And is it my imagination, or is more time spent looking around than on preparing food this time? Mind you, looking at the lovely old stone buildings in that part of the world, that’s not necessarily a problem; and does anyone actually prepare the dishes we see in shows like these anyway?
Can You Keep A Secret?
BBC1’s new sitcom Can You Keep a Secret? comes with a premise that could, at least for a few episodes, deliver both laughs and poignancy: Dawn French and Mark Heap play West Country couple Debbie and William Fendon who dream up a scheme to draw down William’s life insurance – even though he doesn’t die.
Eventually they decide to keep the money, even though it will mean having to fake a funeral and hiding William in the loft for perpetuity. Add to this the fact that William has Parkinson’s, and you have something that could be quite unusual in mainstream sitcom.
And at times it is, mainly when having a go at a box-ticking, bean-counting, incurious medical profession. It even generates a snigger or two as we go through the early setup. But it soon becomes too familiar, in part because French and Heap are playing the same mildly eccentric characters we’ve seen them play too often before: they’re both very good at them, but we’ve been here too often. And the script is not terribly funny either, going for gags about wind when it should be going dark, and sometimes it just feels a little unpleasant. It’s well-played and far from the worst sitcom I’ve seen, but not one to return to.
