What is the point of the Next On… trailers that have become a standard feature at the end of TV drama series? Surely, the programme you’ve just watched should be enticement enough.
Take the BBC’s two-part adaptation of Sebastian Faulk’s bestseller Birdsong. Were there really viewers out there still wavering, having sat through its heady mix of war, peace, love, adultery, sex, tunnelling, disembowelment, claustrophobia and boating for 90 minutes? If, by then, you weren’t fully engrossed in Birdsong’s tragic tale of lost love and wartime horrors, all I can say is that Celebrity Big Brother needs you.
Set in 1910 and 1916, Birdsong moves between two starkly contrasting but equally dramatic worlds. The opening scene finds Lieutenant Stephen Wraysford (Eddie Redmayne) in the trenches of Northern France, staring blankly across No Man’s Land, inured to the dangers around him, dead in all but body.
The drama suddenly travels back six years to the socially suffocating home of industrialist Rene (Laurent Lafitte) and his wife Isabelle (Clemence Poesy), who are playing hosts to a youthful Wraysford during a business trip.
Before you can say Entente Cordiale, Wraysford and Isabelle have thrown off social convention and most of their clothes to embark upon a passionate affair which, it is fair to assume, will not end happily.
Meanwhile, back on the Somme, Wraysford is charged with accompanying miners underground as they tunnel beneath, and sometimes into, the enemy. This adds a whole new dimension to the terrors of trench warfare, and far away from the cosy cliches endemic in the genre.
Intelligent script, great performances and meticulously crafted, it is one First World War drama worth going over the top about.
After the emotional pummelling delivered by Birdsong, it is hard to get worked up about We’ll Take Manhattan, BBC4’s feature length drama about how David Bailey revolutionised fashion photography and Jean Shrimpton stood in front of him as he did it.
Aneurin Barnard starred as the young Bailey, cocksure in every meaning of the word, who grabbed Vogue magazine by its finely tailored lapels and shook it into the 1960s, courtesy of a very radical New York photoshoot. Accompanying him was his model, muse and mistress Shrimpton (Karen Gillen), and Vogue’s fuddy-duddy fashion editor Lady Clare Rendlesham (Helen McCrory), fighting a doomed if valiant rearguard action against Bailey’s oikey egalitarianism.
Although We’ll Take Manhattan looked great, I never really cared for or about the protagonists.
Barnard’s performance threatened to mutate into Michael Caine on occasion, but he captured Bailey’s arrogance and it had a bit of vigour to it. Poor Gillen had little to do but look pretty and pout. With no chemistry between the purported lovers, it left McCrory free to steal every scene.
“The Shrimp, how appropriate,” she sneers at the departing model, delivering the film’s best line, “Pink, wet and needing dressing.”
Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy is big, bold, bright and beautiful to behold, with a cast of very weird and wonderful characters in surreal and psychedelic settings. My favourite is the fluorescent yellow undercover policeman with a talking wound on his arm.
I laughed several times, but don’t feel any pressing need to watch it again. However, I suspect the young people will like it.
Birdsong
BBC1, Sunday, January 22, 9pm
We’ll Take Manhattan
BBC4, Thursday, January 26, 9pm
Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy
Harry Venning
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