TV review

Published Monday 22 September 2008 at 11:45 by Harry Venning

Beware of cads carrying strawberries.

BBC drama’s latest plundering of the Penguin Classics catalogue is Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, starring starlet du jour and forthcoming Bond girl Gemma Arterton in the title role.

All the ingredients are present and correct for an engrossing Sunday night serial - great story, strong script, beautiful settings and wonderful performances from a predominantly unknown cast. Arterton is very good as Tess, fragile and feisty by turns, with confident support from Hans Matheson as her strawberry-wielding seducer cousin Alec.

Episode one offered only fleeting glimpses of Alec’s rival and English literature’s greatest twit, Angel Clare, but Eddie Redmayne has already managed to invest the role with the appropriate level of drippiness.

One mystery remains - how come Tess inhabits a Wessex permanently bathed in sunshine? Either they moved to location to Greece and dressed the set, or they filmed the entire series over the two decent days we had last summer.

Filing clerks Danny (Ralf Little) and Shay (Carl Rice) share a long cherished dream to run their own record company. Danny’s gran dies, leaving him £10,000, and before she is cold in her grave they have set up Shady Music. Their first job is to recruit talent to the label and what better way than to hold a Battle of the Bands night?

All this occurs within the first ten minutes of Massive, cutting to the chase with commendable brevity. Nothing kills a new sitcom quicker than a wade through exposition in episode one.

And to its credit, Massive succeeds in keeping up a cracking pace for its full 30 minutes. We see the pair bicker over their musical tastes, strut around in their new capacity as entrepreneurs, rent rat-infested offices and stop at bus stops to ask Jim Morrison lookalikes if they can sing.

It’s all very entertaining and good-natured, with several good moments. Little and Rice work well with each other, and Johnny Vegas is on hand to lend comic support as Shay’s kleptomaniac dad. Actually, I think I may have seen a bit too much of Vegas lately, which is ironic since he’s clearly lost a lot of weight.

Two decent new sitcoms in one week! Will wonders never cease? No Heroics is a very British take on the superhero genre, largely set in a pub called The Fortress, where the city’s caped crusaders gather after a hard day’s crime fighting. The pub, however, has two rules that it strictly enforces - no use of special powers or wearing of costumes on the premises.

This would appear to defeat the whole object of the sitcom exercise, but the show is actually enhanced by its self-imposed limitations, directing it towards more character-based comedy. Off-duty the superheroes wear business suits and ties, and actively engage in a canteen culture of sexism, homophobia, preening and bullying, inviting comparison with City bankers at their macho worst. The format makes for quite edgy and uncomfortable comedy, but still offers the opportunity for broader, more slapstick silliness when the heroes leave the confines of the pub and enter the outside world.

I think No Heroics is very promising indeed and would possibly have enjoyed it even more if I had spotted the many superhero in-jokes that my comic book-obsessed friends assure me are peppered throughout the show.

DETAILS

Tess of the D’Urbervilles - BBC1, Sunday, September 14, 9pm

Massive - BBC3, Monday, September 15, 10pm

No Heroics - ITV2, Thursday, September 18, 10.30pm