The Stage

TV review

Published Monday 24 November 2008 at 12:10 by Harry Venning

Clone really isn’t very funny at all. That it is accompanied by the uncritical and inexplicable guffaws of a canned laughter track doesn’t disguise the fact that it is a veritable humour free zone, but merely draws more attention to it.

So why do comedy producers persist in this most transparent, condescending and inept of deceptions? Would putting a laughter track to Tamburlaine turn it into Run For Your Wife? I don’t think so.

But I digress. Back, with a heavy heart, to Clone. An arrogant boffin clones what he and his military paymasters hope will be the ultimate fighting machine, but instead he delivers a soppy and over affectionate innocent. With the army intent on terminating both the boffin’s contract and his creation, the mismatched pair are forced to go on the run.

Now this is a really great idea, offering huge potential for comedy, satire, drama and pathos. But the execution is disappointing on almost every level. The comedy strives for surreal but settles for infantile, the excursions into sentimentality are embarrassing, and the acting nothing short of desperate. Younger Stage readers won’t recognise the reference, but it was Robert’s Robots without the subtlety.

Stuart McLoughlin plays the clone of the title as a cross between Jerry Lewis, Mr Bean and Bernie Winters, and I defy anyone to come up with a more irritating combination. Mark Gatiss’ sneering colonel is pantomime thin and carries all the menace of a paper cup. Most depressing of all is the participation of Jonathan Pryce, one of the country’s finest actors. Even he is made to look ordinary by the material. Unless, of course, it isn’t the real Pryce at all, but a clone.

It’s welcome to wig world, as Channel 4 unveils its portentous English civil war drama The Devil’s Whore. This being episode one, there was a whole raft of characters to remember, plus a historical context to take on board, not to forget character dynamics and plot to follow, so it was quite hard going. Indeed, such were the demands on my concentration that I’m not altogether sure if I liked it or not. Many of the scenes felt contrived and convoluted, the language was almost absurdly over elaborate and the performances appeared 80% posturing. John Simm as Sexby, for example, was so busy brooding that he forgot to do any acting. All of which often made The Devil’s Whore feel less like a TV drama and more like a stage production committed to film.

But it was also robust, bloody, bold and beautiful to look at, qualities which merit rewarding with another viewing. Also, I remember giving Peter Flannery’s previous drama Our Friends in the North a slagging off in these pages, and it developed into one of my all time favourite TV dramas.

The Devil’s Whore opened with a priest hung and quartered, a fate I would have happily consigned to John Sergeant last week when he kept his place in Strictly Come Dancing at the expense of Cherie Lunghi. I was rooting for Lunghi for several reasons, some of them dance based.

DETAILS

Clone - BBC3, Monday, November 17, 10pm

The Devil’s Whore - C4, Wednesday, November 19, 9pm

Strictly Come Dancing - BBC1, Saturday, November 15, 6.05pm