WONDER if ghosts are on the minimum wage? After all, whenever they appear in dramas they have to put in a heck of a shift to get noticed. All that door slamming, mirror shattering, monkeying with electronic devices, only for some dopey mortal to blithely dismiss the strange goings-on as “just one of those things”. No wonder the little devils get mad and turn poltergeist on us.
In new Friday night ghost story Requiem (BBC1, Friday, 9pm) the supernatural forces hit the ground running. Within the first ten minutes they had forced an old boy to launch himself off a roof and a mother to take her own life. The link between the two events was Tilly (Lydia Wilson), a young cellist with pink-blonde hair who was about to move from London to New York in search of further fame. But then the tragedy with her mother happens.
Tilly, respectful as she is of the effort someone or something is putting in to mess with her life, promptly gives up all thoughts of the US and turns detective. By the end of episode one she was in Wales and up to her oxters in questions such as who is the missing child her mother was so interested in, how does she know where a secret trap-door is in a house she has supposedly never visited and, most importantly of all, where will she find a hairdresser in Wales who can do her roots? Chilling.
Ever since Chris Packham’s painfully honest film about the impact Asperger’s has on his life I’ve wanted to wrap him in cotton wool and put him in an airing cupboard, safe from the world. You too? But the wildlife presenter and photographer is not for hibernating, as we saw in Chris Packham: In Search of the Lost Girl (BBC2, Sunday, 9pm). Twenty years ago, Packham went to Sumatra to make a documentary about the imperilled rainforests and the people who live in them. While there he photographed a group of hunter-gatherers. One face in particular had haunted him since, that of a six-year-old girl, her fate becoming linked in his mind with that of the planet. If she was still around and thriving there was hope for this dear green place. But if not …
In an hour’s film, Packham, channelling his inner Attenborough, did more to highlight the pernicious effect palm oil is having on the planet (in half of all products in the world’s supermarkets, folks) than any number of worthy articles or speeches.
But this, in the end, was a human interest story, one to send the heart soaring and crashing. Packham has no filter: when he feels something, you know it, when he wants to say something, he does. The secret of his success is that he cannot keep secrets. Terrific television.
Kiri (Channel 4, Wednesday, 9pm) ended as it began, with more questions than answers. Some viewers might have felt Jack Thorne’s determination to deal one last twist led to an unconvincing outcome to this otherwise outstanding piece, but his refusal to tie the case up neatly was the right, brave, decision. As in life, so in drama.
If Kiri doesn’t clean up in the next awards season I’ll do a Paddy Ashdown and eat my hat (not such a chore since it’s a Carmen Miranda number). Ditto Inside No 9 (BBC2), which continues to make every other TV comedy look like Play School to its Plato.
This week, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton took us inside the world of awards juries. Even though they were beastly to the TV critic on the panel (“I’m the loneliest woman in the world”) they are forgiven. This time.
Between the constant rain and streams of jargon, Altered Carbon (Netflix) looked calculated to annoy the memory stick out of anyone over the age of 30 who was not a fan of Blade Runner. Yet at heart this money-no-object adaptation of Richard K Morgan’s science fictioner was just another tale of a gumshoe and a gal trying to solve a murder, and leading duo Joel Kinnaman and Martha Higareda, while no Bogie and Bacall, make a moreish pairing.
The gang was back in Two Doors Down (BBC2). Despite a few worrying signs that the writers are now living on Planet Comedy rather than the real world (no matter how drunk, would you really send a Burns supper through the post?), the cast assembled here can pretty much pull anything off.
Elaine C Smith and Doon Mackichan are still the Bette and Joan of the piece, but keep an eye on the wee quiet man, Colin, played by Jonathan Watson. No sooner had Beth’s man Eric boasted that Scotland is one of the most welcoming countries in the world for foreigners than Colin chipped in: “That’s true, Eric, very few get attacked for no reason”. Wha’s like us indeed.
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