A LOVELY bit of hype surrounded The Outlaws, BBC1, Monday. Who would have imagined Hollywood legend Christopher Walken would turn up, not only in a British sitcom but playing the role of a grandfather miscreant, (“a lying, thieving, selfish old bastard,” as his daughter describes him to his granddaughter), serving time on the chain gang that is a community payback programme in Bristol.
But the content certainly lived up to the advance publicity. Stephen Merchant’s sitcom began as such; the jokes flowed effortlessly as we discovered the backstory to each of the offenders. So far, so good. Merchant even had the sense to acknowledge that his characters all seemed like archetypes.
And it was fun to enjoy the sparring between the right-wing struggling businessman John and the “lefty militant Myrna.” (He refers to her at one point as “a coloured person.” She responds: “A person of colour.”
He comes back with: “I’ll give you £1000 if you can explain the difference.” Yet, she wins more contests than she loses.
Then the joke content dropped off but, perhaps surprisingly, the evolution from sitcom to drama as we learned of the pressures which took the chain gangers into the programme didn’t dissolve the appreciation.
Clever writing held us to the end, although there were serious questions surrounding the decision by Oxford Uni candidate Rani – “the studious Asian girl” – to come to the aid of her hopeful lover (and reluctant criminal) Christian while driving her dad’s van with signage that will lead the bad guys right to her. Yet, Merchant has sold us a winner.
The Long Call, STV, Monday, has taken some time, but it’s finally happened. No, we’re not talking about the world’s leaders reaching an absolute agreement on a date for realising carbon neutral emissions, but it’s still seismic.
It was illegal to be homosexual in England until 1967, and in Scotland until 1980. But now we’ve moved yet another step forward in the direction of social acceptance with the arrival of this new whodunnit.
Devon-based Detective Inspector Matthew Venn is gay.
And he is also happily married. And he’s played by actor Ben Aldridge, who came out as gay last year.
Of course, positive social discrimination is to be commended, but we couldn’t care less about the sexual predilection of the protagonist if the crime story doesn’t hang together.
This one certainly did, but then it’s been based on the books of Ann Cleeves, whose novels have been translated into successful series’ such as Shetland and Vera.
Peter Sellers: A State of Comic Ecstasy, BBC4, Tuesday. Right from the start this documentary looked fascinating; it focused on the comic legend’s lack of natural personality, a man reliant upon creating characters.
Britt Ekland, his former wife, was quick to cast that particular shadow on the performer who was more than decidedly odd.
Sellers moved through a range of partners, without really connecting. He was always searching.
Always seeking happiness, yet the concept seemed to elude him. And if he were unhappy, which was so often the case, he took it upon himself to render others into the same condition.
As he revealed his immense capacity for voices, propelling him from television in The Goons in 1959 to films such as Dr Strangelove, we learned his most powerful voice was that of a disturbed, paranoid arrogant bully who was entirely convinced of his own genius.
We discovered an infatuated neurotic, who fell for Sophia Loren and Nanette Newman. (She once gave him a book of poems; in return, he bought her an E-Type Jaguar.) It was a sad but powerful biography.
Yet, for those who enjoy a larger framing device it doesn’t come to close to Roger Lewis’s biography.
Coca-Cola’s 100 Billion Bottle Problem: Panorama, BBC1 Monday. After watching this film, it will be hard to place a Coke bottle to the lips again. It was a Halloween nightmare screened early.
The company tries to position itself as eco-friendly by marking recycling on the label. But what of the areas where there isn’t a suitable recycling plant?
European countries lead the drive to recycle the single use plastics that are wrecking our seas and filling landfill sites but it’s a Sisyphean battle.
Some African states offer incentives for locals to collect bottles but children who spend their days on toxic rubbish tips earn as little as $1 for a ten-hour shift, where the bottles are dumped alongside disposable nappies and rotten food.
Coke has a recycling plant in Kampala. But it rarely runs at capacity because there aren’t enough waste pickers, and little incentive to encourage more.
But are we so much better? Here, the Scottish government plans to introduce a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles next year.
But in England, this has been delayed to 2024. Watch this
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