Reviewed: The Traitors US; Dolly: the World's Most Famous Sheep; and I Will Find You
How are you? That question goes out to all the World Cup widows and widowers, the befuddled soap fans who don’t know if it is New York or New Year, and the poor pets whose slumbers have been interrupted by 2am kick-offs. All of us cast out to the television wilderness while football craziness takes over.
It makes you weep for the poor souls of the past, the ones who suffered under a three-channel tyranny. How did they pass the television-free time without the likes of Netflix and iPlayer to turn to?
Happily, there is a contest going on among streamers to see who can bring in the most subscribers before the World Cup ends. Goodies have been assembled, some of them even free, like Schitt’s Creek on iPlayer.
If you haven’t seen what some regard as the funniest sitcom of recent years, you are in for a treat. The much-missed Catherine O’Hara stars alongside Eugene Levy as the heads of a once-rich family now fallen on hard times in the backwater town of the title. Slick, funny, moving and smart, it’s a dream of a sitcom.
So what else is out there? First, we have a certain shy and unassuming individual by the name of Alan Cumming. Now freed of serious dramatic duties after the end of Channel 4’s Tip Toe, Pitlochry’s finest is back with a new series of The Traitors US (BBC Three/iPlayer).
The American version is a sort of halfway house between the UK’s Celebrity Traitors and the civilian competition. In The Traitors US, you will find the creme de la creme of reality television (now there’s an oxymoron), including Real Housewives, figure skaters, Survivors, Love Islanders, Dancers with the Stars, and the odd slumming-it actor and agony aunt.
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Essentially, it’s the same, but just with more. More screaming, more surgery, more backstabbing, more Cumming, just more. Take the big arrival. In the UK version, the players tip up in daylight like so many super-keen holidaymakers. The Americans rocked up to Ardross Castle near Inverness in darkness, fiery torches showing the way. There was even a shot of a howling wolf. Either that or it was some local’s Husky acting the part for a small fee.
Cumming is in his element. If you think Claudia’s outfits are pricey, get a load of his wardrobe. For the opening episode, he was swathed head to toe in tartan and Highland dress accoutrements, looking every inch a son of yore, if sons of yore had their initials picked out in diamente.
The first mission was the now infamous graveyard task, where players are placed in open caskets and one “murdered”. This was where Paloma Faith came a cropper in Celebrity Traitors. It was just as shocking the second time around. There is also the addition of a secret traitor, which is going down as badly with the American traitors as the UK ones.
Is it better than the UK Traitors? It’s certainly louder and more intense. The screaming when the Traitors met in the turret must have been heard in Edinburgh. You do miss the subtlety of the UK show, but at times the Americans are far funnier, if only because so many lose the plot as the pressure mounts.
I somewhat reluctantly ventured towards the latest Harlan Coben caper, I Will Find You. (Netflix). Reluctantly, because I used to be a number one fan of Coben’s thrillers before they started to feel too samey. Lately, the television dramas have gone the same way.
I Will Find You, however, has certain irresistible qualities, starting with its cast. Sam Worthington (Avatar) stars as a father accused of a dreadful crime, with Britt Lower (brilliant in Severance) as his sister-in-law, Rachel.
It begins with a vision of a happy family frolicking in the sunlight. Uh-oh, you might think, and you would be right. Cut to a prison cell and Worthington in an orange jumpsuit.
“My name is David Burroughs,” he says in voiceover. “I’m currently serving the fifth year of a life sentence for killing my little boy. The thing is, I didn’t do it.”
It’s an intriguing set-up, made slightly questionable by the odd, very odd, detail, such as Burroughs serving his time where the warden is a relative.
Despite appearances, Burroughs has something going for him. He’s a lawyer and knows his way around an investigation. So when he is presented with new information about his case, something which will prove his innocence, he seizes on it. Helping him to clear his name is Rachel, a once high-flying reporter with some atonement of her own to do.
Much of the opening episodes are concerned with getting Burroughs into a position where he can help himself, which sounds dull, but showrunner Robby Hull (Veronica Mars, Gossip Girl) makes light work of it. As it turns out, Burroughs is up against forces inside and outside prison that would rather he never saw the light of day again.
I am halfway through the eight episodes, and so far it is so very watchable. Who knows: it might even lure away one of the football crowd.
“She was like the Naomi Campbell of the sheep world,” said one scientist involved in the creation of Dolly the sheep. What Ms Campbell would make of that comparison is not known. But the quote, taken from the documentary Dolly: The World’s Most Famous Sheep (Channel 4, Monday), illustrates how tricky it is to make science accessible. Go too far in one direction and you are accused of dumbing down; too far the other way and the general audience switches off (especially at 10pm).
Katie Chapman’s film began at the populist end of the spectrum by wheeling out Jurassic Park, the Spice Girls and Paul Gascoigne to illustrate the year 1996, when the story began.
“The world was riding a science high,” said the narrator. “Boundaries were being pushed and new ideas tested. And in a sleepy village near Edinburgh, an excited scientific team were herding the paparazzi into their very own sheep pen.”
Paparazzi? Sleepy village? It was not a promising start. But if you could get past the first ten minutes, and some later interludes, Chapman’s film was a decent primer on all things Dolly, including her name (since she was created from mammary cells they named her after the country music legend).
We heard from key players at the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics, the firm set up to commercialise the Institute’s work, and from journalists chasing the story.
Slowly, the layers of information built up, so that by the halfway point of an hour-long film, the average viewer had a decent chance of understanding the basics of Dolly.
How long the facts would be retained, who knows. I seem to recall at the time Dolly being held up as the impossible made possible, and not fully understanding how or why she had changed the world.
Chapman’s film went some way to filling those gaps. But just when the fog started to lift, along came an anecdote to illustrate how the world went crazy for Dolly. In the fortnight after the story appeared, the institute fielded 2,000 calls, one of them from a US late-night talk show inquiring about Dolly’s availability.
People phoned the Institute directly to ask if their sick child could be helped. Others wanted a beloved dog cloned. As for the eejits who tried to steal Dolly, they were met with a barn full of Dolly lookalikes and gave up. All such lighter moments were ushered in with (wholly unnecessary) “comedy music”.
By the end, the story returned to its scientific roots and was the better for it. Whether by accident or design, I finally understood why Dolly deserved to be the world’s most famous sheep. Her creation opened the door to the rejuvenation of cells. This, in turn, is being used to treat dementia, restore sight, and perform other wonders.
“The legacy of Dolly,” said embryologist Karen Walker of PPL (she of the Naomi Campbell comparison), “is that there will always be hope.”
For that, Dolly, we salute you.
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