EXHAUSTED. Between the playground fights, the detentions, and the endless staff meetings, I could sleep for Scotland. No, I haven’t taken a new job teaching or anything useful like that, but I have been watching the first episode of the new school drama Ackley Bridge (Channel 4, Wednesday, 8pm).
Formed from two Yorkshire comps, one largely Asian, the other white, Ackley Bridge College is meant to be a brave new experiment in breaking down barriers and boosting achievement among disadvantaged pupils. It is also bedlam with uniforms. Think Grange Hill rewritten by the writer of Shameless with added material from The Exorcist, it’s a long way from the Kansas of Waterloo Road, Dorothy. Still, the central characters, Missy and Nas, best pals growing apart now they are at the same school, are reason enough to tune in again. Once I’ve had a nap, that is.
Cardinal (BBC4, Saturday, 9pm) is prime napping territory. It is not boring, but being yet another maverick cop drama one could probably nod off, wake 10 minutes later with a drool-covered chin, and pick up the story again without too much bother. So I imagine, anyway.
Detective John Cardinal (Billy Campbell) works for the Algonquin Bay Police Department in Canada. Busted down the ranks for wayward behaviour, he is brought in from the cold when the body of a child is discovered. Cardinal seems like a straight up kind of guy, so why is there a Line of Duty-style investigation going on into his finances? Between the fur-lined parkas and the snow, Cardinal has all the vibe of a Scandi-noir with none of the pesky subtitles. Unless you’re watching it in Norway or Sweden, in which case it would be Candi-noir.
Lord Lucan: My Husband, the Truth (ITV, Monday, 9pm) was jaw-dropping television. It is getting on for half a century now since the titular peer battered the family nanny to death and tried to do the same to his wife, yet the crime has lost none of its power to horrify. This was a simple enough set up: an interview with Veronica, the wife, interspersed with dramatised scenes and previously unseen home movie footage. The latter was particularly fascinating; a glimpse into a world of wealth and outrageous privilege.
Veronica is an odd bod. Looking like an aged Katie Hopkins, she was in turns perceptive (she knew Lucan was trying to label her as mad to take their three children) and engagingly eccentric (“I think it’s an excellent bottom,” she says as a shot of her tush appears in an old home movie).
One was left feeling what an absolute waste of space Lucan was. Sorry, too, for his wife. But sorriest of all for the nanny, Mrs Sandra Rivett, who had only been in the job for nine weeks when Lucan struck. “I don’t forget about her,” said Veronica. As for the children, she has had no contact with them for 35 years. That is another story, one that will hopefully be told as well as this one.
Another story unfolding as I write was covered in Cosby: Fall of An American Icon (BBC2, Monday, 9pm). The American comedian, creator of The Cosby Show and a performer dubbed by many “America’s dad”, is currently on trial in the US, accused of sexual assault. One assumes this programme was cleared to air because much of the material is already in the public domain due to a previous civil case and press coverage.
The accounts of the alleged victims followed a familiar pattern: initially charmed by Cosby, they told of taking a pill and waking to find themselves in a nightmare. Another cautionary tale about the power of celebrity, it was a disturbing watch. Cosby has pleaded not guilty.
Do you dream of getting away from it all by buying a hotel and cooking and cleaning for a bunch of strangers? Me neither, but according to Alex Polizzi of Hotel Inspector fame, many people do, and in Our Dream Hotel (Channel 5, Tuesday, 9pm) she finds out how some of them got on.
Antony, Aine and their two children sold their house in Brighton and bought an old care home in Orkney to turn into a B&B. A local builder raised an eyebrow (“I’d have built a modern bungalow and be done with it”), but they persisted through the winter and finished the job.
It all turned out terribly well, with the only hiccups being a bit of damp and some low-level moaning from their teenage son. One could not help thinking if this had been Channel 4 instead of 5 there would have been far more chaos and upset. Then again, Antony and Aine used to be teachers so smashing down walls and installing damp courses as storms raged probably seemed a breeze.
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