Olivia Colman was superb in the finale of Broadchurch, while The Politician's Husband got off to a clunky start
*Broadchurch* (ITV1) | ITVplayer
*The Politician's Husband* (BBC2) | iPlayer
*Super Sunday* (Sky Sports 1)
*The Wright Way* (BBC1) | iPlayer
Given that Chris Chibnall's story was about the murder of a child, it was always unlikely that *Broadchurch* would end on a cheery note. But even so, the concluding episode was a serious downer with an irredeemably bleak message: don't trust anyone, especially those closest to you.
Poor DS Miller. It wasn't enough that her husband was a bit dull, in a bald new-mannish sort of way; he also turned out to be a homicidal paedophile. Try explaining that to the neighbours. Miller believed in community, family and her marriage. She wanted to think the best of people, and all along the very worst was taking refuge under her nose, in her bed.
What made it all that much more painful, of course, was the fact that throughout eight episodes Olivia Colman, who played Miller, had turned in one of the great naturalistic performances of recent times. It was as if the authenticity of her personality radiated out of the TV like some electromagnetic phenomenon. You couldn't help but be warmed by her sparky idiosyncrasies and fundamental decency.
Never more so than when she was kicking her husband around the floor of the interview room, like some old-style copper from a bent nick in the 70s. It was just one of several procedural liberties taken in this superior whodunnit. I'm not sure, for example, that the dead boy's father would be allowed into the cells to shout at his son's killer. Nor am I convinced that in the midst of a murder inquiry the detective in charge would convene a meeting with his number two on a beach, for no other apparent reason than it looked rather fetching in the orange glow of a low sun.
But these were minor quibbles. Overall Broadchurch worked a treat because it had a sense of place and people, a well-constructed murder mystery, and in Colman and David Tennant, as her professionally cynical boss DI Alec Hardy, two extremely watchable leads.
Hardy suspected everyone, which made sense, because everyone was under suspicion. The vicar, the plumber, the candlestick maker, all of them were in the frame. OK, there wasn't a candlestick maker as such, but there was a deeply creepy psychic – and they do tend to like a candle – who was disappointingly exonerated of any wrongdoing.
It was a sign of Hardy's desperation that he turned to the psychic for help in a murder investigation which seemed to be run more as an existential challenge than a process of evidence gathering. But then he wasn't an operational strategist in the way of, say, Scott & Bailey's Gill Murray. And no doubt he was hobbled by the Dorset constabulary's apparent exclusion from a national criminal identity database – how else to explain why two main suspects were able to conceal their criminal pasts of child abuse and murder?
Instead Hardy's detective work mostly relied on being surly to everyone he encountered and seeing what came of it. The answer was nothing much. The killer effectively confessed of his own volition and was never part of the investigation. In truth Hardy wasn't there for his brilliant tactical mind. He was there, in the tradition of maverick detectives, to be the broken hero – abrasive manner, dodgy heart, failed marriage, career in decline, and hopelessly unshaven.
With all that going against him, Hardy needed to played by an actor with a lot of charm, and Tennant has charm to burn. He could have played the child killer and you would end up feeling that you'd like to buy him dinner. For two months he and Colman lit up the Jurassic coast and Monday evenings. Perhaps that's why they had to meet on the beach – no office could contain their heat. In any case the least surprising aspect of the finale was the announcement soon afterwards that there would be a second series.
Some years ago, when he became Dr Who, I wondered in print if Tennant hadn't backed his talent into a celebrity cul-de-sac. Which shows what I know about such things. Last week he also starred in *The Politician's Husband*, written by Paula Milne almost 20 years after she wrote The Politician's Wife, a deliciously vindictive revenge drama.
With that pedigree and a cast that included the excellent Emily Watson, the forecast was fireworks, but the first episode was oddly subdued and clunkily predictable in set-up. Tennant's thrusting government minister was gulled by his party colleague and best friend (Ed Stoppard) into making a doomed leadership bid. But it was clear from the off that Stoppard's smarmy smug operator was not a man on whom you'd turn your back while he was in possession of a carving knife.
The next twist was Tennant's political betrayal by his own wife, Watson, also a minister. Again there was something dully inevitable about this plot turn that not even Tennant – boasting a flat English accent that was half-London, half-Birmingham (perhaps that's how people sound in Milton Keynes) – could appear convincingly surprised.
The lack of tension was made more conspicuous by Watson, who was so understated as to make Yvette Cooper seem a boiling cauldron of charisma. After the grand guignol of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, it all seemed rather dull.
If there is one place on television that understands the genre of overblown theatricality it's *Super Sunday* on Sky Sports, a channel that prides itself on turning any drama into a crisis. Last Sunday you'd have thought that the pound had collapsed, terrorists had attacked Buckingham Palace and Abu Qatada had signed up for Strictly Come Dancing judging by the reaction of Jamie Redknapp and Graeme Souness to Luis Suárez, the Liverpool forward, biting Branislav Ivanovic, the Chelsea defender.
Not since Churchill died have our screens witnessed such solemn expressions. As each man competed to herald Suárez's dental strike as the end of civilisation as we knew it, the Sky anchorman duly ramped up the outrage with a series of questions on the theme of "how bad was that?" Very bad, it turned out, the worst thing ever until the new worst thing comes along, which you will almost certainly be able to see live and in HD on Sky Sports.
Somewhere out there in this mad world, where Uruguayans bite Serbians and we are all travelling to hell in a handcart, there are presumably many people who find sitcoms like *The Wright Way* funny. It's hard to believe, but we have little choice, because the alternative explanation for the existence of Ben Elton's ranty new show is that the BBC knew it was a mirthless dog and still commissioned it on the strength of Elton's name. Either way, you have to laugh, or else you'd cry. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.
*Broadchurch* (ITV1) | ITVplayer
*The Politician's Husband* (BBC2) | iPlayer
*Super Sunday* (Sky Sports 1)
*The Wright Way* (BBC1) | iPlayer
Given that Chris Chibnall's story was about the murder of a child, it was always unlikely that *Broadchurch* would end on a cheery note. But even so, the concluding episode was a serious downer with an irredeemably bleak message: don't trust anyone, especially those closest to you.
Poor DS Miller. It wasn't enough that her husband was a bit dull, in a bald new-mannish sort of way; he also turned out to be a homicidal paedophile. Try explaining that to the neighbours. Miller believed in community, family and her marriage. She wanted to think the best of people, and all along the very worst was taking refuge under her nose, in her bed.
What made it all that much more painful, of course, was the fact that throughout eight episodes Olivia Colman, who played Miller, had turned in one of the great naturalistic performances of recent times. It was as if the authenticity of her personality radiated out of the TV like some electromagnetic phenomenon. You couldn't help but be warmed by her sparky idiosyncrasies and fundamental decency.
Never more so than when she was kicking her husband around the floor of the interview room, like some old-style copper from a bent nick in the 70s. It was just one of several procedural liberties taken in this superior whodunnit. I'm not sure, for example, that the dead boy's father would be allowed into the cells to shout at his son's killer. Nor am I convinced that in the midst of a murder inquiry the detective in charge would convene a meeting with his number two on a beach, for no other apparent reason than it looked rather fetching in the orange glow of a low sun.
But these were minor quibbles. Overall Broadchurch worked a treat because it had a sense of place and people, a well-constructed murder mystery, and in Colman and David Tennant, as her professionally cynical boss DI Alec Hardy, two extremely watchable leads.
Hardy suspected everyone, which made sense, because everyone was under suspicion. The vicar, the plumber, the candlestick maker, all of them were in the frame. OK, there wasn't a candlestick maker as such, but there was a deeply creepy psychic – and they do tend to like a candle – who was disappointingly exonerated of any wrongdoing.
It was a sign of Hardy's desperation that he turned to the psychic for help in a murder investigation which seemed to be run more as an existential challenge than a process of evidence gathering. But then he wasn't an operational strategist in the way of, say, Scott & Bailey's Gill Murray. And no doubt he was hobbled by the Dorset constabulary's apparent exclusion from a national criminal identity database – how else to explain why two main suspects were able to conceal their criminal pasts of child abuse and murder?
Instead Hardy's detective work mostly relied on being surly to everyone he encountered and seeing what came of it. The answer was nothing much. The killer effectively confessed of his own volition and was never part of the investigation. In truth Hardy wasn't there for his brilliant tactical mind. He was there, in the tradition of maverick detectives, to be the broken hero – abrasive manner, dodgy heart, failed marriage, career in decline, and hopelessly unshaven.
With all that going against him, Hardy needed to played by an actor with a lot of charm, and Tennant has charm to burn. He could have played the child killer and you would end up feeling that you'd like to buy him dinner. For two months he and Colman lit up the Jurassic coast and Monday evenings. Perhaps that's why they had to meet on the beach – no office could contain their heat. In any case the least surprising aspect of the finale was the announcement soon afterwards that there would be a second series.
Some years ago, when he became Dr Who, I wondered in print if Tennant hadn't backed his talent into a celebrity cul-de-sac. Which shows what I know about such things. Last week he also starred in *The Politician's Husband*, written by Paula Milne almost 20 years after she wrote The Politician's Wife, a deliciously vindictive revenge drama.
With that pedigree and a cast that included the excellent Emily Watson, the forecast was fireworks, but the first episode was oddly subdued and clunkily predictable in set-up. Tennant's thrusting government minister was gulled by his party colleague and best friend (Ed Stoppard) into making a doomed leadership bid. But it was clear from the off that Stoppard's smarmy smug operator was not a man on whom you'd turn your back while he was in possession of a carving knife.
The next twist was Tennant's political betrayal by his own wife, Watson, also a minister. Again there was something dully inevitable about this plot turn that not even Tennant – boasting a flat English accent that was half-London, half-Birmingham (perhaps that's how people sound in Milton Keynes) – could appear convincingly surprised.
The lack of tension was made more conspicuous by Watson, who was so understated as to make Yvette Cooper seem a boiling cauldron of charisma. After the grand guignol of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, it all seemed rather dull.
If there is one place on television that understands the genre of overblown theatricality it's *Super Sunday* on Sky Sports, a channel that prides itself on turning any drama into a crisis. Last Sunday you'd have thought that the pound had collapsed, terrorists had attacked Buckingham Palace and Abu Qatada had signed up for Strictly Come Dancing judging by the reaction of Jamie Redknapp and Graeme Souness to Luis Suárez, the Liverpool forward, biting Branislav Ivanovic, the Chelsea defender.
Not since Churchill died have our screens witnessed such solemn expressions. As each man competed to herald Suárez's dental strike as the end of civilisation as we knew it, the Sky anchorman duly ramped up the outrage with a series of questions on the theme of "how bad was that?" Very bad, it turned out, the worst thing ever until the new worst thing comes along, which you will almost certainly be able to see live and in HD on Sky Sports.
Somewhere out there in this mad world, where Uruguayans bite Serbians and we are all travelling to hell in a handcart, there are presumably many people who find sitcoms like *The Wright Way* funny. It's hard to believe, but we have little choice, because the alternative explanation for the existence of Ben Elton's ranty new show is that the BBC knew it was a mirthless dog and still commissioned it on the strength of Elton's name. Either way, you have to laugh, or else you'd cry. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.