Falling, Channel 4, Tuesday-Wednesday, four stars
Just like that, the television awards season has just ended, and a new qualifying period has begun. Early as it is, I’m nominating this new six-parter for “Most Romantic Scene in a Television Comedy or Drama Since Tim and Dawn Finally Got it On in The Office”.
The setting is an abbey kitchen where a priest, Father David (Paapa Essiedu), is talking to a nun about a visit he is organising. Sister Anna (Keeley Hawes) is making scrambled eggs for her guest when she brushes her hand against the hot pan. She moves to the sink, he catches her hand and runs it under the water. The scene lasts seconds, but the tension crackles for the rest of the hour.
Essiedu is the latest actor to take on the role of “hot priest”. It’s a part that comes along rarely, but the actors who hear the call - Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, Andrew Scott in Fleabag - have made their mark.
Not that you fancy Essiedu’s chances much with an on-the-nose opening scene featuring a bee landing on a flower. Later, there will be another metaphor about protecting the abbey’s vegetable patch from deer and other intruders. Do not be alarmed. I fancy the writer, Jack Thorne (Adolescence) is gleefully playing with our assumptions much as Sister Anna delights in teasing Father David, as when he asks to see her cabbages, and she bats back, “Only if you get me really drunk.”
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Sister Anna has a reputation for being “flighty”, but at the same time, she is deeply serious about her faith. She is not, she tells Father David, one of those “click of the fingers Christians” who see a problem and immediately think they can fix it. Though Sister Anna was a teenager when she took her vows, she knows life is more complex. So when she confesses to having “immoral thoughts”, we know the crisis is real.
Father David, a priest in an area of Bristol where they grow food banks and needle exchanges rather than cabbages, is another character who defies easy categorisation. There are hints of a troubled past, of a career that has not gone to plan. Like Sister Anna, it is complicated; he is complicated. But he has learned to proceed with caution, unlike Sister Anna, who cannot wait to get started on a new path, whatever it may be.
In the hands of anyone other than Thorne and his cast (which also includes Niamh Cusack and Jason Watkins), this tale could veer into the perilous realms of melodrama. But Thorne finds clever ways of taking the heat out of the situation. Father David and his deaf sister, for instance, communicate via sign language. Deep, raw emotions are discussed, but in near silence. The whole hour is beautifully restrained, despite what is going on, or rather because of it.
It is rare to come across a drama where you have no idea where it is going, but one episode in, Thorne’s tale holds out that promise. On second thoughts, that bee at the beginning may have been a wasp.
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