This week, John Byrne looks at a one-off drama about the 2005 London bombings, a new drama/black comedy about a reality TV show, a post-apocalyptic boom-fest from Michael Bays, and Colin Farrell getting killed - or not - on True Detective.
Reviewed: A Song for Jenny (Sunday, BBC One); The Last Ship (Sunday, Sky 1); UnREAL (Tuesday, Lifetime); True Detective (Monday, Sky Atlantic)
Quality, self-produced Sunday night drama has long been a staple of UK TV, so the missus and myself sat down to watch A Song for Jenny (Sunday, BBC One) with high expectations. We weren't disappointed.
Adapted by Donegal playwright Frank McGuinness from the book by Julie Nicholson about her response to and experience of the death of her daughter, Jenny, at Edgware Road tube station in the 7/7 London bombings, it was obviously going to be a stark contrast to fluffier Sunday viewing such as Mr Selfridge or Downton Abbey. It proved to be a pretty harrowing tale, with Emily Watson outstanding in the lead role.
She played Julie Nicholson, whose happy family is devastated by the killing of her daughter Jenny, a 25-year-old on her way to work who just happened to be in the deadliest place at the worst possible time.
Shying away from any depiction of the bomb blast, on a London Underground train, or of what was left of Jenny after the suicide bomber struck, A Song for Jenny focused almost entirely on a mother's fear, panic, desperation and devastation as Jenny's awful fate gradually revealed itself.
Watson put everything into her role and it was quite upsetting to watch her going through the various stages of a grim journey no parent should have to face. Brilliant, moving and desperately sad, A Song for Jenny was a draining experience but one of the best dramas I've seen in some time.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, which is often an effortless move on TV. The Last Ship (Sunday, Sky 1) is back for a second season and fans can expect more of the same, a typically dumb boom-fest from director Michael Bays. This show is about as formulaic as it gets, and while that's generally not a problem – loads of TV viewers love to watch shows that resolve an issue in an hour, week after week – there's a Team America feel to this show that makes it almost unwatchable. I lasted about ten minutes, and will not be back.
Much more fun was UnREAL (Tuesday, Lifetime - but available in advance on Sky+), a new US drama/black comedy set behind the scenes at a fictitious reality show called Everlasting. It's clearly based on The Bachelor, ABC's long-running dating series where one guy gets to pick 'n' choose from a group of girls, but that's neither here nor there.
Telly has a long line of behind-the-scenes shows, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Drop the Dead Donkey, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom immediately spring to mind – so recent claims that there's been 'nothing like this before on TV' is just hyperbolic nonsense. But the show itself shows great promise as the pilot was hugely entertaining, so let's move beyond the glib cheer-leading.
Shiri Appleby (Roswell, Life Unexpected) stars as Rachel Goldberg, a producer on Everlasting, who is brought back to the show by executive producer Quinn King (Constance Zimmer, Entourage and House of Cards) despite Rachel suffering an embarrassing and very public breakdown during the previous season.
Rachel's job is to manipulate her relationships with and among the show's contestants to create the kind of sensational footage that will generate exterior interest in Everlasting. It's cynical in the extreme, which is pretty much where we are in this wonderful world of instant celebrity, fame and infamy.
Whether it becomes truly satirical rather than merely cynical will only be determined as UnREAL progresses, but if the writers can go a little deeper and delve into the mindset of those on both sides of the camera - especially the far-from-naïve TV folk - this could become much more than a gilded guilty pleasure.
Finally, True Detective (Monday, Sky Atlantic), a show that demands to be taken and treated seriously. Now three episodes into its latest run, it's pretty clear that it's suffering from Second Season Syndrome. After a stunning and much-praised debut last year that had Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey constantly nailing it in joint lead roles, there was always the possibility that the dense drama would disappoint this time around.
The new cast - including Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch as the three tainted cops at the centre of events - is fine, but the story and execution so far leaves a lot to be desired. The languid pace I can take, but when you get a mix of David Lynch-like moments mixed with the cop-out, non-killing of Farrell's Detective Ray Velcoro, the remote control by my side starts calling out my name, urging a change of channel. It can spot a spoofer at 50 pixels.
When the largely repulsive Velcoro was shot in murder victim Caspere's house at the close of last week's episode, I wondered if we would be seeing him only in flashback from now on. That cop was well and truly corpsed, especially after the second shot, point-blank to the chest. Only Superman gets up from something like that.
What we got in episode three was a surreal opening scene where Velcoro, sporting an open chest wound, was in an apparently purgatorial bar chatting with his deceased father while an Elvis impersonator rambled through The Rose, that old Bette Midler hit. Then Velcoro wakes up in Caspere's, sore but not even wounded, as the bullets fired at him were mere blanks. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
That's the kind of thing you wouldn't see even on shows as cheesy as Castle, so to throw Lynchian scenes on top to make it all seem, like, y'know, mysterious and weird and stuff is just begging for ridicule. Later on there was the even more Lynch-like visit by McAdams' Detective Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) and Kitsch's Paul Woodrugh to the gaudily opulent, messed-up mansion belonging to the mayor of Vinci, which at least offered a mildly amusing distraction.
To top it all, Vince Vaughn's cardboard gangster Frank Semyon, whose world is rapidly shrinking since Caspere's murder, went all Frank Booth in Blue Velvet as he took a pair of pliers to a set of silver teeth. He should have headed to the writers' room instead.
True Detective's honeymoon period is well and truly over. A rapid improvement in quality is now an imperative if this sophomore season is to be redeemed, because I want to love this show just like I did last year.
John Byrne
