The Look of Morons

Every now and then, a television programme comes along that questions your morals and  challenges your accepted approach to life and society. A programme that confronts the values and conventions that you have long recognised as normative principles and beliefs, holds up a mirror to your convictions and forces you to ask yourself if your personal ethos can ever be fundamentally ‘right’.

That programme is Harry Hill’s Alien Fun Capsule.

Meanwhile, on Channel 4, there’s a pile of poo called Three Wives One Husband, and it’s all about loonies.

Probably the funniest show in the West End at the moment, ‘The Book of Mormon’ satirises, not only the Mormon faith but, by and large, any religion that blindly follows rulebook that compels it’s followers to adopt a belief system that places them in denial of any progressive human development, causing them to be set apart from society due to a dogmatic set of principles that give them a baseless and, largely, illusory perception of how best to live in this world whilst preparing for a journey to another place after death. What ‘Mormon’ does, however, is allow people of faith to laugh at the concept of a strange and oppressive dogma, whilst maintaining, from their point of view that, ‘it’s not actually like that, but it’s funny that some people think it is.’

What ‘Three Wives One Husband’ does, on the other hand, is get right up close to the creed and say, ‘this is what it’s actually like, run for your life!’

In it we meet Enoch Foster, husband to Catrina and Lilian and father to their 16 children. They live in a remote fundamentalist Mormon community called Rockland Ranch in Utah set up about 35 years ago and accept polygamy as legitimate method of populating the community with as many new members as the available number of wombs will feasibly allow. Indeed, Enoch, who prides himself on his fertility, stamina, athleticism and ability to remember names, has recently started courting a 25-year old Nanny (which is probably the only occupation available to unattached females in Utah) called Lydia Rose. He sees her as the ideal addition to the Foster clan based upon her experience with children, her full set of white teeth and her firm yet supple body which could, in all probability, squeeze out another seven or eight new Fosters before she’s 45. You can tell he likes her, because he’s already blasted a hole in the rock face where he will build her own dwelling. I haven’t seen this much romance since Fred and Wilma got together. The courtship involves plenty of family time with him, the children and, more especially, the existing Mrs Foster’s with whom she spends a lot of time smiling, holding hands and being told how wonderful she is. Actually, it’s mainly Catrina who does Lydia Rose’s ego-massaging being, as she is, the oldest of the harem and the one who is the most battle-weary from all the Enoch-action. Wife number 2, Lilian, was more in need of attention as she had recently given birth to their latest addition, a girl called either Listerine or Amphetamine (I couldn’t hear above noise in the delivery room caused by nine of the other children, first wife Catrina and Lydia Rose, who Enoch had invited along on a date). Lilian smiled bravely as she spoke of the threat she perceived Lydia Rose presented to her own personal Enoch-time. She had good reason to feel this way as, just over the garden fence, live the Morrison’s.

Abel Morrison seems a personable chap. As a postal worker he leaves the community every morning to work in the real world but returns at night to Rockland where his training as a mailman enables him to remember at which of his three residences he last delivered. Although he exceeds Enoch’s wife collection to the tune of one, he trails him in in terms of fruitfulness by about five. I say ‘about five’ because it’s difficult to pin down the exact number of sprogs in the Foster household, research has yielded answers between 13 and 17 but all agree that Abe’s head count of Junior Morrison’s number a paltry 11. However, third wife Marina is about to produce number 12 so they may, one day, catch up with the Fosters. Unless, of course, Enoch knocks-up his nanny.

Marina, however, is not exactly blooming. Heavy with child, she seems less than ecstatic to receive Abe’s rotational visit. He’s popped in for a quick cuddle before going out on date-night with Mrs. Morrison #1, Susie, whom he describes a ‘sassy’. Marina feels about as sassy as a hippopotamus with haemorrhoids as she stands with stomach distended, boobs aching and a look in her eyes that suggests that she didn’t sign up for this when she took the well-worn track down the aisle into Abe’s arms. She tries to voice her insecurities to Abe but she couldn’t really have picked a worse time because their table is booked for seven-thirty and sassy Susie is outside smiling sweetly. Poor Abe, he’s enough on his plate with the impending Christmas rush that will inevitably put the Utah postal service under immense pressure, without his third wife getting all hormonal because she’s 8 months pregnant and baby-sitting his 11 other kids while he takes his second wife out for a romantic meal for two before spending the night in her bed. Still, broads, huh? Whadaya gotta do?  

In the end, it’s hard to know where you actually stand with all this. Although the polygamy sounds intrinsically wrong, it’s not the only thing that this community is about. They teach love and equality and respect for religion and each other’s views and opinions, the trouble being that love appears to be expressed in a spectacularly irreligious fashion and equality often means equal quantity, rather than equal quality. The first episode ended with Enoch left in limbo by Lydia Rose who was taking time out to decide if she could handle the challenges that come with being a third wife. One look over the garden fence at Marina Morrison may have told her all she needed to know.

Episode two will be shown on Thursday.

This review also appears on  https://tellysgonewrong.blogspot.co.uk/

Howay our Vera, man.

Imagine being a writer facing a production company and pitching a new series to them. It must be nerve racking as you say, ‘Well…it’s about a detective.’ The simultaneous eye-rolling must make you feel as if you’re watching some old zombie film. ‘Wait, wait. Not an ORDINARY detective, this one has a bit of a gimmick.’ Now you’ve got them interested. You then go on to explain that the main character wears a beret and smokes cannabis; or drives an impossibly old car; or is a conjoined twin; or exists only in the imagination of a recently beached dolphin, anything, in fact, to give the tired old format a bit of a twist.

‘Are they in any way ‘maverick’?’ you are asked.

‘Yes. They have their own way of doing things.’

‘Great,’ they say, ‘put six scripts in the post and I’ll get straight on to ITV1 and tell them to stop worrying about their 8pm Sunday slot.’

Vera (ITV Sunday 8pm) has none of the above gimmicks, but she does have a quirky hat and a raincoat that she wears at all times and the series is lent an element of novelty by featuring a ‘National Treasure’ actress who operates in a reasonably picturesque, and largely under exposed part of the country. Stephen Fry tried it a few years ago in Norfolk with ‘Kingdom’ but found that trying to make a cross between P G Wodehouse and Rumpole of the Bailey whilst giving all his friends some work during their summer holidays in Burnham Market didn’t make for great television. (Didn’t stop ITV lapping it up for a couple of years, but that’s advertising revenue for you.)

The main advantage of setting a crime drama on the rugged coastline of Northumberland is that it gives the characters a lot of opportunity to stare out at the sea. And Vera does a hell of a lot of staring out at the sea. She gazes wistfully, she contemplates thoughtfully and she watches reflectively as waves crash off the rocks and batter the shoreline with relentless force. As she stares she is, no doubt, wondering if her career with the Northumberland & City Police is necessarily going in the right direction. No matter where she goes, up and down this picturesque but often brutal county, there is murder and conspiracy at every turn. You’d think she would be looking to settle down a bit now. There are no end of bowls clubs, W.I. meetings and art classes being run for elderly spinsters in the north-east. Surely, Vera doesn’t want to be uncovering one cadaver after another, week in week out, and then spending the next few days hearing the tissue of lies that the unfortunate deceased’s family and friends have woven in order to give themselves a water tight alibi, does she? The sea, however, simply keeps crashing against the shore and offers no immediate answer so Vera blinks, shakes her head, and gets on with today’s business in hand, namely, explaining the suspicious death of Gemma Wyatt, apparently washed up on the rocks of a remote and inaccessible island just off the coast.

Brenda Blethyn gives one of those solid ‘I’m going to be a National Treasure if I live much longer so you may as well sit down and watch’ performances as DCI Vera Stanhope, a slightly dishevelled lady who rarely finds time to change her clothing during an episode and approaches every murder investigation sensitively yet slightly detached, as if she’s officiating at the funeral of her grandson’s pet rabbit. She heads up a team of detectives with Geordie accents ranging from the authentic to the barely credible, with one or two bordering on extras from Citizen Khan. Her modus operandi is to question witnesses as if she’s making those matter-of-fact, yet slightly intrusive observations that the check-out lady makes when she spots a new brand of fabric conditioner in your shopping. Thus she gathers information that the rest of the Northumberland & City Police force regard as irrelevant but which, you can be certain, will eventually lead to a trail of clues that will enable her to eliminate everybody but the murderer.

Vera’s latest interrogations reveal a web of intrigue around the visitors and inhabitants of the small, wild-life island of Ternstone, the Galapagos of the North-East, as one suspect after the other presents her with a motive and an opportunity to have done the deadly deed. Turns out that nearly everyone has done something that they would rather not tell anybody about so Vera inadvertently solves half a dozen other mysteries before she lands upon the solution to the main puzzle, which she inevitably does whilst staring wistfully seawards, eating fish and chips out of the paper.

As in all the best and hammiest cop dramas, she ends up with the perpetrator nicely seated before her as she reveals exactly why and how the murder was carried out. There are a few details on which she is slightly sketchy but the killer helpfully fills in these blanks for her. I’m sure if Vera had said, ‘tell you what, pet, would you mind slipping these handcuffs on and driving yourself down to the station?’ the murderer would have done so, pausing only to sign a written confession.

There’s another three of these two-hour mysteries to come which will, no doubt, lead us into another series of “Midsomer Murders” or “Morse circa 1964” or “Inspector ‘Del Boy’ Frost”. None of them are much good, but they’re all about two million times better than Murder in Paradise. 

Irreplaceable

Well, that was…something.

I glanced at my watch at five to ten on Tuesday night, approximately 55 minutes into the final hour of ‘The Replacement’, and found myself wondering how the hell they were going to tie up the tangled mess of loose ends that was lying around all over the place in the remaining five minutes. The answer was, very quickly indeed.

It seemed for a while that Paula (Vicky McClure) had not only won the psychological battle she had waged with her erstwhile superior, Ellen (Morven Christie), but also the physical struggle as she drugged and imprisoned her after stealing her child. Paula had successfully networked her way into just about every aspect of Ellen’s life but her story was now beginning to unravel as she was exposed as being a little unhinged. In fairness, in real life, most co-workers would have taken one look at those eyes and made a mental note of where the company baseball bat was kept, so why David, her boss and Ian, Ellen’s psychiatrist husband, afforded her so much credibility is beyond me. The fact that they’re both men, allied to the amount of shapely leg on show at all times, explained their blindness to all things ‘loopy’ on the Paula front I suppose. They should have taken a harder look at her husband Kieran (Navin Chowdhry), who permanently wore the expression of a recently neutered bloodhound, if they wanted an insight into day-to-day living with Ms Reece, he looked about as content as the cellmate who had just trodden on ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser’s airfix model but despite, or maybe because of this, he seemed unwilling to share Ellen’s suspicions that his wife was capable of murder. Sustained crockery smashing? Yes. Murder? No. Well, not on a Tuesday.

The last half an hour suddenly started to get a little congested with plot twists. Ian’s Mum, Ellen’s mother-in-law (keep up), who had been a somewhat peripheral and hostile figure until now, suddenly professed to be all over Paula’s neurosis and offered to use her psychiatric powers to drive a stake through her heart as she slept in her coffin. David did a swift about-turn on his professional opinion of Paula’s credibility after he noticed that she failed to cast a shadow, and Kieran simply ran away as fast as he could, throwing his wedding ring over his shoulder and screaming that she could keep the house and the car.   

So, with about eight minutes of the series left, the beleaguered Ellen still had to wake from a drug induced coma, smash her way out of a locked car, locate her kidnapped child and convince the authorities that her recent restraining order was all an administrative cock-up. Blimey, throw in a bomb tied to the engine of a speeding school bus with no brakes and you might give her something to worry about. Those RIBA exams must have been a doddle.

As expected, all roads led back to the building that Ellen had originally designed and the Benny Hill chase sequence ended up back in the most suspicious library outside a Cluedo box. The real pity about this series was that, as good and as watchable as it was, as well written and well acted as it was, as gripping and as tense as it was, it ended with a uniformed policeman slapping handcuffs on the villain at the scene of the crime in as tired and as clichéd a conclusion as any two-bob cop drama could produce.

It wasn’t quite the end. We still had to have a little montage of Ellen, fully bonded with her immaculately behaved child, judging the final of the world ‘humble-pie’ eating contest as one character after another paraded before her with huge gobfulls of the stuff, offering her jobs and complimenting her on her maternal genius. Only Ian, her now estranged spouse, got the bum’s rush as he was politely told to ‘do one’ at the door. Serves him right, too. After all, if he’s going to take the word of a goggle-eyed, power dressing, vampiress over that of the devoted, if emotionally charged, mother of his firstborn, he isn’t much of a husband, and much less of a highly paid shrink. 

Office Relations

'The Replacement' weirded its way onto our screens a couple of weeks ago, with an ordinary, everyday tale of jealousy and murder in the world of Glasgow’s urban architectural landscape. We’re two episodes in (out of three) and I think it’s best you jump on i-player to get up to speed before next Tuesday or you’ll hear about the climax from that bloke at work who talks too loud.

Basically, high-flying architect, Ellen, has fallen pregnant just after securing her firm a multi-million pound contract and has to hire a competent interim to take on the project whilst she is experiencing the delights of motherhood, a role for which she realises she has less enthusiasm for than she initially hoped. Paula, played by Vicky McClure, who looks like a CGI version of Emma Thompson circa 1993, proves an able replacement and is soon fully enmeshed, not only in the job role, but most of what Ellen had formerly considered her private life. McClure creates a genuinely menacing character and must surely be the scariest interim employee since that week Hannibal Lecter ran the HR Department. 

Ellen (Morven Christie) must then deal with the equivalent of that uncomfortable feeling that you get when somebody inadvertently spits on your face when they’re talking to you. You keep smiling and nodding in agreement as if nothing’s happened, when all the time you just want to shove your head into the nearest bowl of Dettol. Paula continues to invade her space, both physically and metaphorically, driving Ellen closer and closer to a state of neurosis as she battles against her natural hormones as well as a social circle that becomes increasingly inclusive of the very person who is causing her anxiety.

Following the apparent suicide of another work colleague, Ellen trails her suspect to various locations, doggedly determined to show us how remarkably easy it is to park in Glasgow at any time of day or night. She takes it upon herself to investigate her replacement’s involvement in the circumstances surrounding the death and so begins a trail of events that lead to a tension-filled confrontation between the two central characters. She’s a brave woman given that Paula appears to have the potential to emit laser beams from her eyes and I fully expect the final episode to commence with the charred remains of Ellen, still holding a wine glass, smoldering away in the chair opposite.

The Replacement is well written and well acted in the mould of a surprising number of recent BBC dramas and, barring any unexpectedly dumb-ass plot twists, should prove gripping viewing next week.