Ladies and gentlemen, pray welcome The Forsytes (Channel 5, Monday), a period drama tailor-made for the Bridgerton and Downton crowds.
Shorn of the “saga” part, this new adaptation marks television’s third bite at the Galsworthy cherry after the 1967 and 2002 versions, and what a racy little number it is.
Opening in time-honoured fashion with a wedding, young Jolyon Forsyte (Danny Griffin), heir to the family fortune, is marrying the widow Frances (Tuppence Middleton), who brings with her a young daughter, June.
Looking on are Soames Forsyte (Joshua Orpin), Jolyon’s cousin and rival, and his father, James (Jack Davenport) - both convinced they could do a vastly better job of making the Forsytes even more obscenely rich. Meanwhile, overseeing every detail of the proceedings is the family matriarch, Ann Forsyte (Francesca Annis). Got all that?
It is left to Ann to slog her way through the introductions in an exposition-heavy first quarter before we jump ahead to ten years later and June’s 18th birthday. Though June is older, her parents, Jolyon and Frances, appear not to have aged a day. That’s what money does for you.
Of the pair, Jolyon is the most striking in appearance. He may look like a Bee Gee with his magnificently blow-dried hair, but his talents lie in drawing rather than singing, and in his youth, he toured Europe with a sketchbook.
Though settled now, a passion for art still burns in his breast. Perhaps that’s why he boxes topless, sweat glistening on his sun-dappled muscles as he takes his art-versus-commerce frustrations out on a punchbag.
If you were reminded of a certain period drama involving another shirtless, sweaty chap, that might have something to do with the duo behind The Forsytes, writer Debbie Horsfield and producer Damien Timmer, also helming Poldark.
Another member of the Poldark family putting in an appearance is Eleanor Tomlinson, Demelza as was. She plays Louisa, a seamstress in Soho and “the best kept secret in London” for her fashionable gowns.
When Louisa is asked to make a frock for the Forsyte girl’s coming-out ball, she comes over all peculiar on hearing the customer’s name. But what connection could there be between this former lady’s maid and the mighty Forsytes? You’ll have guessed it long before the hour is up, but that doesn’t spoil the soapy fun.
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If the racier scenes are there to keep the Bridgerton crowd happy, grandmama Ann and her son James seem designed to evoke Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess of Grantham. Try as they might, the pair’s waspish musings are no match for the late Maggie Smith’s blistering witticisms. Ann’s declaration that she “cannot abide breakfast without offal” is about as good as it gets.
By episode’s end, the London of the Forsytes is hoaching with secrets to be spilt over the next five weeks. It is nothing you haven’t seen before, the dialogue is occasionally clunky, and you may find the drama’s charms waning even as the credits roll on the first instalment.
Me? I’ll be back to see how Jolyon Forsyte’s blow-dry is holding up when the merry-go-round of intrigue picks up speed.
Lauren Lyle is rapidly making a name for herself in the standing room only arena of tartan noir. Not content with going after wrong ‘uns in Karen Pirie, she is now at the centre of The Ridge (BBC Scotland, Tuesday, BBC2 Thursday), a psychological thriller filmed in Scotland and New Zealand.
On closer examination the two roles are miles apart, geographically and in almost every other way, For a start, the heroine in The Ridge, Mia (Lyle) is not a copper but an anaesthetist, one who sleeps the sleep of the dead if the battery of alarms at her bedside is any guide.
Director Douglas MacKinnon (Line of Duty) starts as he means to on by getting Mia up and out the door at breakneck pace. She has places to be (the hospital), people to see (her surgeon pal) and an opioid habit to feed. What, you thought Mia was going to break the mould and be an ordinary, straightforward kind of gal? No chance.
With trouble on the horizon at work, Mia decides she will go to the wedding in New Zealand of her estranged sister, Cassy, after all. If nothing else it’s a change of scene. But when she finally lands on the other side of the world she learns Cassy has gone missing while climbing the hill of the title.
When Cassy is found dead it looks like a dreadful accident, but Mia is not convinced. Cassy knew the territory well, and as flashbacks to their childhood years suggest, the sisters were two of life’s survivors. Cassy would not have gone down without an almighty fight, and now Mia sees it as her responsibility to find out the truth.
Lyle is not out to win Mia any popularity contests. Even allowing for the shock and jet lag, the character is blunt to the point of rudeness with the locals in the tiny mountain town. It irks her how close everyone is, but then everything seems to enrage here. And she’s running out of opioids.
The Ridge rattles along at pace, keeping its secrets close for now. The New Zealand setting is spectacular, with MacKinnon’s direction lending it a strange, other worldly air. Lyle does a sterling job of steering her character away from cliches about addicts, and the general tone of the first episode is nicely understated given events.
A co-production between a host of partners here and in New Zealand, The Ridge is the kind of layered, sophisticated, out of the ordinary drama that BBC Scotland believes is the future in a multi-channel world. I hope they are right.
With so many viewing options it can be hard to keep up with new releases never mind revisiting old ones, but for some shows we’ll make an exception. Moonlighting (STV Player) is one of them.
In its Eighties heyday, Moonlighting was the equivalent of The Celebrity Traitors. No, scratch that - the story of the Blue Moon Detective Agency was bigger than the current faithfuls versus traitors caper. Starring Hollywood legend Cybill Shepherd and a newcomer named Bruce Willis, Moonlighting was Dallas, Dynasty and the Waltons combined.
Due to a tangle over rights, UK audiences haven’t been able to see the show since it ended in 1989. But now STV has swooped, as it did with Brookside and Byker Grove, and all 66 episodes of Moonlighting are now available on STV Player.
On air from 1985, Moonlighting had a huge impact on audiences and on the way television was made. All that fourth-wall-breaking, talk-direct-to-the-audience routine you see everywhere today? Moonlighting brought it to television (cinema got there first).
Moonlighting also borrowed from cinema in the fast, Howard Hawks’ style verbal interplay between main characters Maddie Hayes and David Addison (Shepherd and Willis) as agency proprietor and gumshoe. Okay, so maybe they weren’t up there with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but viewers loved their will-they-won’t-they relationship and the blend of comedy and drama.
Then there was the wonderfully slinky theme song by Al Jarreau, which will now take up residence in your head for the next few days. It has certainly been in mine since I watched the pilot again to see how well Moonlighting holds up after all this time.
A bad guy with a Walkman immediately dates the show. As does Maddie’s hairstyle, which was the much copied “Rachel” of its day. But that’s nothing compared to the moment Addison calls Maddie a “cold bitch” and she slaps him - both things you would not get away with in any workplace today.
Four years is a relatively short time for such a hit show, but with Moonlighting other events intervened to bring it to a close. Shepherd had twins, it was too expensive to make, there was a writers’ strike - take your pick. The main reason, however, was Willis’s move into the movies with Die Hard. There was no keeping him down on the television farm after that.
It’s hard to watch him now in Moonlighting, so young and full of energy, and know that dementia was lurking down the line. “We make a terrific team,” he says at the end of the pilot episode, trying to persuade Maddie not to sell. And they did, too.
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