TV reviews: Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing; Great British Menu; and Vladimir
‘Ullo Jon, gotta new reality show? After a splendid turn on Celebrity Traitors, Jonathan Ross returns to his TV birthplace with Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing (Channel 4, Monday-Tuesday).
The concept: 18 strangers are split into pairs and handcuffed to their supposed opposites. They can unlock at any time, but the duo who stay together the longest wins £100,000.
“Can a divided Britain settle its many differences?” asks Ross, in a blatant attempt to give the programme the cover of a social experiment.
Not sure about that, but here’s Jonathan running a Blind Date-style matching process for Jo, 39, from Manchester. Jo has a tattoo of a burger on her arm and runs a plus-size clothing company. She is paired with Reuben, 29, a fitness fanatic and “alpha male” from Portsmouth.
Next is Tilly, an Eliza Doolittle-ish, effing and jeffing London barmaid who is handcuffed to Anthony, a millionaire businessman and stickler for good manners. They get on famously, as we see from the opening scene. “We only met yesterday and we are stark b****** naked in the shower together,” says a giggling Tilly. Broken Britain, eh?
But the winner of this week's medal for services to the bleedin’ obvious is the casting producer who put together Ben the baronet and George, a proudly working-class former prison officer. Sir Ben has an ancestral home in Somerset, terriers named Nigel and Boris and a painting by Hitler on his wall. ”You upper classes are f****** barmy, ain’t ya?” says an appalled George.
In Manchester, Reuben and Jo had a nice chat over dinner, and Tilly took Anthony to Enfield to meet her family. Once the layers started to peel away, different stories emerged. Reuben, for instance, has a history of overeating; Tilly notices that Anthony, for all his apparent self-confidence, talks only about himself.
You can practically smell the potential for “growth” and all that malarkey. Not so with George and Ben, who get on like Tom and Jerry.
There have been similar shows before (Wife Swap, Rich Holiday, Poor Holiday). I'd like to think Ross the movie buff was more inspired by Midnight Run, the quietly magnificent comedy starring Robert De Niro as a bounty hunter and Charles Grodin as an accountant who stole from the mob.
Don’t expect that quality of pairing here, but Ross knows his television onions, so there’s hope yet for further matches. Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, anyone?
It was Scotland week on the Great British Menu (BBC2, Tuesday), and what a smorgasbord of culinary inventiveness was on show.
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The brief for this series, the 21st, is to create dishes that celebrate the British film industry. It is harder than you might think to link movies with food.
Which movie comes to mind, for instance, when faced with a leek and potato velouté with potato fondant crisps and Turkish simit bread? Why, Trainspotting of course.
How about hake served with Penang sauce, spring onions and scallops? Sold to whoever guessed Local Hero.
And doesn’t that charcoal potato dumpling filled with mushrooms positively shout “Alan Cumming”? Although if you had seen his opening monologue at the Baftas, a better fit might have been mince.
But who are we to judge? That job went to Adam Handling, the Dundee-born, Michelin-starred former Champion of Champions. Doing a fine job of keeping the contestants’ nerves at a low peep was fellow chef and presenter Andi Oliver.
Hannah Rose, who cooks on a superyacht cruising around the Mediterranean (somebody has to), was the sole woman competing. She was in the contest for a second time, while making their debuts were Jun Au, chef patron of Pomelo in Edinburgh, Orry Shand from Entier Ltd, and Rohan Wadke of Cameron House.
The first test - canapes - set a high bar. Handling asked for “fireworks”. He duly got them, with Jun taking first place for exciting flavours.
A similarly high bar was set for the vegan starter. Hannah acknowledged her tribute to Trainspotting was “essentially potato soup and bread,” but some soup, some bread. Hard to imagine Begbie hurling a bowl of that over a pub balcony.
Handling, however, wondered if it was too plain. Orry’s “extremely complicated” dumplings were fretted over, ditto the seasoning on Rohan’s dish. All four chefs were feeling the pressure, but remained supportive of each other. Offers of help were made and accepted, with the result that all the starters came in ahead of time. Oliver wondered if this good timekeeping was a Scottish thing.
No, said Handling. “I’ve never seen this many Scottish people be on time ever.” Cheeky.
Orry’s dumplings were a triumph, winning him the starter round, and it was on to the fish course. Jun’s presentation for Crazy Rich Asians was flowery and fabulous, while Hannah opted to keep things simple in her tribute to Tommy’s Honour, a biopic of golfing pioneer Tom Morris and his son. Both hailed from St Andrews, Hannah’s hometown. In a lovely touch, her dish had an edible scorecard.
Great British Menu may not be as hip as other food shows or have dominant personalities calling the shots. That, however, is a large part of its charm. Well worth swinging by, if only for the canapes, which would go very nicely with a certain football tournament this summer.
A drop-dead elegant English professor living in an adorable campus town with its own artisan bakery falls for an attractive younger colleague. Romance ensues, or does it?
New comedy Vladimir (Netflix, available now) could only be more tailored to its female target audience if it threw in a foot massage from Ryan Gosling.
The female-friendly vibe continues with the cast and crew. Starring Rachel Weisz, also an executive producer, Vladimir is adapted from the bestselling novel by Julia May Jonas, and lists among its makers the comedy powerhouse Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe, Motherland, Amandaland).
Weisz’s character has no name but will be instantly recognisable to many viewers as a MAW - middle-aged woman - who feels surplus to requirements. “It’s like my husband and my students, even my daughter, find my entire personhood useless,” she tells us in one of many asides delivered straight to the camera or in narration.
Her husband, John (Mad Men’s John Slattery), has brought more grief to their door by sleeping with his students. Bad for him, as he faces a disciplinary hearing, and toxic for his wife since she is blamed for not condemning him publicly.
Replacing this pair as the campus's golden couple are new lecturers Vladimir and Cynthia (Leo Woodall and Jessica Henwick). Vlad (Russian parents) is a hip young novelist, just like Weisz used to be before writer’s block descended. The two hit it off, and before you can say “intimacy coordinator”, they are becoming very chummy indeed - but only in her imagination.
Like the film After the Hunt with Julia Roberts, Vladimir looks at campus misconduct in the later #MeToo era. But it plays the goings-on as dark comedy rather than psychological drama. Consider its tongue firmly in its cheek, which works sometimes but on other occasions can be confusing.
Take the basic plot. Time was in novels, plays and films when only older male professors pursued younger students or colleagues. That now reads as sleazy, and rightly so. But a woman doing it, a woman played by Rachel Weisz, smart, sophisticated, funny, Oscar-winning Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener, The Favourite, Denial), that’s a different matter, right? In the words of the essay assignment, discuss.
There is more turning of the tables in a scene where Vlad comes around to use the pool. Both John and his wife turn avid spectators, admiring the younger man’s muscled beauty as if it were Michelangelo’s David himself diving into the deep end. Call it equal‑opportunities objectification or reverse sexism. Either way, more to discuss.
Firmly on the plus side, the supporting cast is excellent, with Woodall and Slattery particularly fine, and the whole thing rattles along in eight short episodes.
Less successful are the fantasy scenes, several of which have featured heavily in the pre-publicity for the series. Frankly, there are too many of them. When you’re more interested in the William Morris wallpaper, consider that a limit has been reached.
Equally problematic is Weisz’s character, who becomes harder to like when her interest in Vlad spirals into obsession. Not a good look on anyone. Even Ms Weisz, who otherwise emerges with an A minus from a generally B-grade effort.
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