MAN with beard meets woman in pink in a bar. They bump bones in an alley outside. The next day he comes home to find his two children are missing and pink dress is the detective assigned to the case. As Harry Hill would say, what are the chances of that happening?
Morecambe, where The Bay (STV, Wednesday, 9pm) is set, is a small place (population 39,000 since you ask), but really? If a place can beat those sorts of odds it could be worth heading there to buy a lottery ticket. Then again, you might get hit by an asteroid or trampled in a stampede of unicorns.
Either the writers have a corker of a tale to tell or everyone is going to look rather silly by the end of this six parter. By close of play the odds were slightly in favour of the former, if only because Scots actress Morven Christie was the woman in pink. She was in The A Word, the drama about living with a child who has autism, which was excellent. Then again, she was also in The Replacement, aka Baby Jane Goes on Maternity Leave, which turned out to be bonkers on stilts.
By my reckoning, this is the fourth detective Christie has played. Perhaps it’s the sheer ubiquity of crime dramas around, but carry on like this and she is a shoo-in if anyone ever dares to bring back Prime Suspect without La Mirren.
To ring the changes this time, Dumbartonshire-born Christie’s character, DS Lisa Armstrong, had blonde hair and a pitch perfect English northern accent.
Party animal by night, no nonsense copper and mum of two teenagers by day, she is one of life’s multitaskers, but even she appeared stressed over how she was going to get out of this one. How could she be the family liaison officer in a case where she had a liaison in a alleyway with a member of the family?
Soon enough, Armstrong, displaying more front than Morecambe, had to ask one night stand Sean (Jonas Armstrong) where he was when the children went missing. Not only that, but her boss tells her to track down the CCTV from the pubs Sean visited. Why didn’t she think of that first, and what were the chances of the boss asking her to do that task? Again, unrealistically silly, but we keep the faith for now because that’s what we do.
Pose (BBC2, Thursday, 9pm), above, opened with a shot of a glitterball. Glorious. It is 1987, New York City, and the joint is jumping in a Bonfire of the Vanities way.
The focus here is not men in suits, though there is a Wall Street element, but people of all genders and sexualities, mostly wearing fabulous dresses. Pose is set in the underground club world of “balls”, where all the folk who don’t get invited to such things, are welcomed.
With its soapy, soppy stories (small town kid gets thrown out by family for being gay, goes to New York seeking stardom, etc), its dancing, and its poptastic soundtrack (from Chaka Khan to Whitney), Pose is Fame meets Dynasty with added sequins.
Well, you need something to distract you from the awful dialogue that riddles the script, with characters forever talking about it being their time, their dream. Why not “Let’s do the show right here?” The quality of the acting is variable, too.
A lot to forgive, but Pose has enough spirit and style to keep you coming back, if for no other reason than to find out what happens with the family man character who tells a transgender prostitute he visits that he works for Donald Trump. New York in the Eighties. What a town.
It was cheerio and thanks for all the fish-related plotlines in Shetland (BBC1, 9pm) this week. No run of this crime drama is ever laugh a minute, but this series, focussing on people trafficking, has been particularly hard going. Having ended the penultimate episode with the horrific sight of bodies floating ashore, it was time to wrap things up and find poor Zezi before her kidnappers killed her.
Perez (Douglas Henshall) was in full judge and jury mode, rounding up the bad guys and looking very, very, disappointed in them as only he can do.
As usual, he also had to apologise to all the innocent folk he had slandered, including Alice, who had been sweet on him up to the point he accused her of being involved in the modern slavery business. Wee things like that can really put a kink in a relationship.
Duncan, Perez’s co-parent, was narked at him, too, this time for suggesting he had knowingly rented a property to the traffickers. Oh Jimmy, you don’t say much, but when you do…
Duncan forgave him, Alice did not, leaving the two men in each other’s company again. Sometimes the oddest couples just work.
You’ll have had your tea and your Yes/No: Inside the Indyref (BBC Scotland, Tuesday, 10pm). Fascinating to the end, we can only hope we see its likes again on the channel.
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