From the off, I knew King and Conqueror (BBC1, Sunday-Monday) was going to be trouble. There was a lot of furious shouting, pushing and grabbing, but what on earth was going on? It could have been a medieval battle in full flow, or the yellow sticker hour at M&S. Couldn’t make out a ruddy thing.
Sure enough, the complaints about gloominess and mumbled dialogue flooded in. King and Conqueror had pushed its luck by opening with the Battle of Hastings in black and white. Normal colour service eventually kicked in, for all the difference it made. Everything and everyone in this Icelandic co-production came with a thick coating of mud, hence the gloominess.
Some of us were already having trouble finding our way. The Battle of Hastings was not on the syllabus at my school. Ditto the entire history of Scotland. Now, if it had been a drama set in Depression era America or pre-revolutionary Russia, we would have been off to the races. But 1066? All Greek to me.
Mercifully, there were captions to explain what was going on. England was emerging from a decade of civil war, and three earls had agreed to make Edward king. In France, meanwhile, there was much feuding among the nobles over land.
Character-wise, we met an English bloke called Harold (played by Happy Valley’s James Norton, we like him) and William of Normandy (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Jaime Lannister/Game of Thrones fame).
Once the Game of Thrones link surfaced, everything suddenly made sense. There was nothing to be afraid of here; we were back in the land of warring families, cod-Shakespearean dialogue, and scheming women wafting around candlelit castles while the menfolk go off to kill each other. Easy-peasy. Seen it all before on Sky Atlantic. But when were the dragons arriving?
There will be none of that nonsense, for this is proper BBC drama. Some concessions have been made to modern audiences, including characters dropping the F bomb and saying things like, “I’m not getting into this with you”. In true streamer style, there were cliffhangers, pretty good ones, to end each episode and keep the punters coming back. There’s also violence of the don’t watch while eating kind. Bitten off nose, anyone?
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By far the greatest pull will be Harold and William’s “face-offs” down the years, with all roads leading to the final reckoning at the Battle of Hastings.
Besides the Norton v Coster-Waldau factor, King and Conqueror boasts a quality cast including Eddie Marsan as a spaced out Edward, and Juliet Stevenson as his Lady Macbeth mother. She at least enunciates so well you don’t need subtitles.
Still missing the dragons, though.
Horror story of the week, though it was not billed as such, was The Jury: Murder Trial (Channel 4, Tuesday-Friday).
Promising idea: recreate a real trial and have a jury of punters sit in judgment. It had its flaws, not least the fact that ordinary jurors are chosen at random, while the telly ones are selected to make good TV. But as a way of seeing how groups behave under pressure, it was fascinating and disturbing.
“Sophie” was accused of murdering her boyfriend. She said he was strangling her, and she acted in self-defence. The prosecution claimed she was violent towards him and that she failed to call an ambulance quickly enough.
Back and forth the evidence went, the minds of some jurors changing accordingly. No spoilers as to how it turned out, but as one woman said, she would not like to be tried by a jury.
Decades on, the message had lost none of its power to shock: “Mayday, mayday. We’re abandoning the radio room. We can’t talk any more. We’re on fire.”
The communication came from the Piper Alpha platform, 120 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, on 6 July, 1988. What would become the world’s deadliest offshore oil and gas disaster was beginning. When it was over, 167 men would be dead.
The story of that dreadful night was told in a powerful three-part documentary, Disaster at Sea: the Piper Alpha Story (BBC Scotland, Sunday, BBC2, Monday).
The first part opened with evidence being given to the Cullen inquiry by some of the 61 survivors. Actors played the parts, their sombre, matter-of-fact tones in stark contrast to the scenes they were describing.
From there, we took a step back to when the black gold first started to flow. It was a time of shiny new Amex cards, one local recalled, and “the occasional Stetson in Union Street”.
Interviews with the families added more layers to the portraits of working-class men providing for their families at a time when Scottish industry was otherwise rotting under Thatcherism.
A moment by moment account of the night took shape. It was clear that whatever training had taken place did not survive contact with reality. Jumping off a 10-foot platform into a swimming pool turned out to be useless to the man who had to leap 175 feet into a sea of flames.
Among the contributors was Jane Franchi, then a reporter for BBC Scotland, whose recollections were as pin-sharp today as her reporting was back then.
We heard from a lawyer who acted for Occidental Petroleum, the American operators of the platform. The firm settled with the families on condition that they took no further action. There is still anger about that, and the decision not to bring criminal charges. “Absolute disgrace,” said one son.
Cullen made 106 safety recommendations, all adopted by the industry. Now 37 years on, there has been no repetition of that night - something to remember when you next hear some blowhard mocking “elf and safety”.
Fair to say I wasn’t first in the queue for Richard Osman’s comfy crime novel, now a movie (The Thursday Murder Club, Netflix).
I feared the tale of murder investigating pensioners would be insufferably twee, like some Waitrose reboot of Last of the Summer Wine.
I gave in eventually and bought a copy, and what a sunbeam it turned out to be. The world of Coopers Chase retirement village, where a group of pensioners pass the time on Thursday afternoons by investigating old murder cases, became a relaxing place to visit after a stressy day.
But would this vibe transfer well to the small screen? It did, with bells on. Christopher Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter movies, has managed the same trick here of making everything just as you imagined it.
The casting was similarly spot on, with Helen Mirren as the M-like head of the “TMC”, Pierce Brosnan as union firebrand “Red Ron”, Ben Kingsley as gentle Ibrahim, a psychiatrist by trade, and Celia Imrie - couldn’t leave her out - as Joyce, former nurse and a woman of substance.
Columbus wasted no time setting up the simple story of a greedy property developer (played by David Tennant) who wants to turf residents out of their luxury homes. (One of those up in arms about the plans is a character called Tony Curran who, strangely enough, shares a name with the Scottish actor and star of Mayflies and Red Road.)
Anyway, feelings are running high about the land grab, so much so the TMC was able to swap cold cases for a real live hot one.
The acting style veered towards the robust at times, especially when Pierce Brosnan and David Tennant were around, but it’s all part of the fun. There is more to it, however, than a gentle comedy with gags about statins and hearing aids. The film, like the book, is of the view that old age is not for the faint-hearted. There is genuine sadness at times and a sense of loss, whether it’s a spouse lost to dementia, or someone mourning the busy, connected life they used to have.
The Thursday Murder Club had an old-school movie premiere last week and a brief run in a limited number of cinemas. For my money, this is one to watch on the small screen, with a kettle and fancy biscuits nearby, or maybe one of those tins of G&T that Elizabeth and Joyce neck in such a ladylike way on the bus home to Coopers Chase.
As for Coopers Chase, if anything, it is even more fabulous than the book makes out. There’s some seriously stylish lamp action going on there. (Another advantage to watching at home is you can pause the action and drink in the detail).
Consider my place booked.
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