Louis Theroux

As we all know, Christmas was originally established so that shops could sell more things.  This is back when there were shops, though.  Historical times when there was an economy and EU membership.  By calling their wares presents and saying everyone had to give something to all the people they knew, once-mighty shops vacuumed up our cash (also consigned to the past, thankfully, which will make switching to the euro easier when we re-join the EU) while we skipped home with unnecessary trinkets to wrap, hide under tree branches, and then distribute to relatives before a turkey dinner and some TV, or an argument.  This traditional meaning has of course been forgotten now, partly because things were better in the olden days (especially WWII), but also because there’s a new meaning in town: the birth of baby Jesus.  Even though his mum was a virgin, this infant founded a religion that millions follow to this very day.  Some of my favourite followers are the members of the Westboro Baptist Church.  What this waffle means to say is that I always think of them at Christmas (even though they dismiss the festival as being too paganistic).  So, while holed up at my parents’, a tier 4 refugee airlifted out of London lest I miss any of the above rejoicing, I cracked out my laptop, logged onto the BBC iPlayer, and reminded myself of the documentaries Louis Theroux had made about them.

For those slow on the uptake, let me just confirm that Louis Theroux is the boxset we’ll be discussing in this week’s blog.  And those quick on the uptake will be pointing out to me that he is in fact a man rather than a boxset.  While his programmes over the years have taken such monikers as Altered States or When Louis Met, the editors and I (actually just me) have decided to treat his whole oeuvre as one boxset here.  The fact is: it’s my blog and I can make up whatever rules I want.  But, more importantly, this really is the best way to tackle a career coming up for thirty years of quality output.

We’ll start with his Weird Weekends, first broadcast when I was a wee lad of twelve and already watching things I shouldn’t have been.  Young Louis himself is a bit of a gangly smirker, embedding himself in fringe communities focused on either extreme views or extreme ways of life or some combination of both.  What unites all he comes across is their unshakeable conviction that they have found the ultimate life hack.  Whether a career making money in porn, or navigating marriage up-spicing with swinging parties, his subjects wax lyrical about the benefits of their lifestyle choices.  What helps matters is that most of his weird weekenders are Americans (from that wild land that, to British people, is where telly comes from) all too eager to show off their certainty.  Unto them, however, Louis casts no judgment.  While the whites of his eyes might betray some consternation, his questioning simply offers a length of rope by which they all ultimately unravel themselves.  Instead of jumping in once they have finished speaking, Louis pauses.  His garrulous new pals can’t help but fill the gap, eventually talking themselves almost out of their own flag-waving beliefs.  It’s glorious content you can find on Netflix and, even though it looks like it was filmed on tracing paper when compared to their modern gloss, it’s still utterly compelling.

We then move into When Louis Met territory, a small number of episodes that get under the skin of a variety of prominent Brits who can only really be described as naff.  Some are treasures like Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee or Chris Eubank, and others pose more sinister figures, like Anne Widdecombe and Max Clifford.  Most notorious of all is telly paedo Jimmy Savile and you can’t help but imagine a kiddie porn dungeon behind every unopened door in his home.  For me, though, a highlight is the haranguing of the Hamiltons, as Christine’s self-care wine servings offer great lubrication to the antics that abound.

Both the above have occasionally been reviewed as exploitative and, as a viewer, you can’t help but recoil at others embarrassing themselves.  That said, participation is clearly voluntary, and we must each earn our fifteen minutes of fame as best we can.  Look at me: writing the 180^th entry in an unpopular blog.

Between 2003 and the present day, Louis sporadically treats us to one of his BBC Two specials.  More global in subject matter (though still always best in the USA), broader themes are investigated, but still in characteristically extreme circumstances.  Law and (dis)order figure heavily, with the mind-blowing double on the Miami Mega Jail haunting my memory.  Linked to this are explorations of addictive behaviour.  The City Addicted To Crystal Meth remains truly shocking, with Theroux’s calm presence drawing out gasp-inducing frankness from addicts.  His same style in Talking To Anorexia similarly sees him hide his own discomfort in order to provide fragile girls with a platform through which to process their irreconcilable behaviour.  Tragedy looms large and Theroux will return to subjects to track their progress only to find that things haven’t turned out as planned, Twilight Of The Porn Stars being a particular example.

I would also commend our man’s bravery.  In America’s Most Dangerous Pets, he unearths a pre-Tiger King Joe Exotic and remains calm in the face of some harrowing animal encounters.  But 2007’s visit to The Most Hated Family In America stands out as the best example of Theroux’s willingness to stick his head in the lion’s mouth.  We’re back the Westboro Baptist Church of my introduction, a bible-inspired hate group who achieved notoriety by picketing the funerals of dead soldiers with offensive (and poorly illustrated) signs blaming all of America’s problems on sodomy.  Louis is hosted by the charismatic Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of the church’s founder and committed member, happy to shout down his ludicrous questions about whether she has to be so nasty to everyone.  With Theroux, we stand by while she runs her household of eleven kids with maternal tenderness, making sure they are clear about who will burn in eternal hellfire (everybody else) and who won’t (them and them alone).

In 2011, Louis returns to the Phelps in America’s Most Hated Family In Crisis, quizzing them about departed members who have come to reject the group’s ministry but also noticing that their infamy has attracted new converts.  This brings me to the highlight of this year’s festive period for me: uncovering a third documentary in this series.  Surviving America’s Most Hated Family interviews, among others, Shirley’s own estranged daughter, Megan Phelps-Roper.  In earlier documentaries, she embodies the unwavering conviction that characterises Theroux’s subjects.  To see such a sensible young lady calmly spout vitriol offers an insight into human potential that scripted drama often fails to approximate.  But, as she details in her book that I happened to be reading at the same time, Unfollow, she began to uncover inconsistencies in the doctrine the church promoted.  The arguments on Twitter that had so thrilled her started to persuade her.  Now, here she is, talking to Louis Theroux and the whole world about treating fellow humans with compassion and kindness, rather than shouting at them while they bury their dead, holding aloft illustrations of stickmen penetrating each other.

Conversely, Louis of later years does start to take exception to his subjects’ beliefs, almost speeding up the process whereby they formally unravelled themselves independently and prodding them more impatiently to agree that, yes, they’re being a bit silly and should probably stop it.  A father in his fifties, should we worry that Theroux is becoming the more conservative older gent so many of us are sadly destined to turn into?  Probably not, as he does concede where convinced, and he ultimately comes from a place of compassion and understanding.  There appears a genuine worry for the wellbeing of those involved.  In my eyes, he can do no wrong.  I’ve devoured his compelling podcast series, Grounded, and am fairly certain we will one day be the best of pals.  And with that, he enters into the folklore of Just One More Episode, alongside 179 of my most important boxsets.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

I’ve found another sitcom workplace where I think I’d really fit in.  This time, it’s within the NYPD.  Let’s be clear: I’d be no good at solving crimes.  I would also be unwilling to undertake any duties that put me at risk in any way whatsoever.  Similarly, I couldn’t work in New York as it’s either too hot or too cold (and UK citizens currently can’t go there).  But, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has now joined the ranks of charming comedy shows where I tune in to feel like one of the gang.  I’ve imagined myself really fitting in with the personalities of Parks & Recreation.  I’ve considered where my place would be among the Scranton bods of The Office US (as well as knowing full well which one’s me in The Office…).  Now I can spend time wondering how my own sense of humour would enrich the pleasant chuckling that the activities of this very special police squad create.

Naturally, I am intentionally late to this party.  Having seen countless ads on e4 for the UK broadcast of this programme, I put it in the same category as Hollyoaks: TV shows whose existence I can ignore.  This decision was compounded by my televisual aversion to the emergency services.  However, I was frequently asked if I had seen Brooklyn Nine-Nine, with most people prompted by my own excessive office-based consumption of yoghurt – a trait I share with Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews).  Well, with lockdown coming up to its one-year anniversary, we’ve all got through more TV than we ever thought possible.  I’m not sure what happens when you complete Netflix, but let’s start a rumour that you get a telegram from the Queen (The Crown’s Olivia Colman of course).  So, to offset some of the heavier drama boxsets I was wading through (The Fall, The Staircase etc), Brooklyn Nine-Nine seemed like a welcome addition to my rotations.

At first, I’ll admit to seeing nothing special.  It was about crime, but not in a serious way.  Nobody died, jeopardy was only there to serve as plot device against which comedy could play out, the characters were loud and excessive in their behaviour.  Before I got to know them inside out, the humour struck me as obvious and I began to come to terms with the fact this might well be a true background show: something that plays in the background while I cook under the extractor fan, unable really to hear or see it.  Sure, a couple of episodes would get a bit of focus during my weekly bath, but Brooklyn’s fictional 99^th precinct hadn’t yet earned a special place in my heart.  I did however unearth my favourite character early on: Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti).  There’s something about a woman who won’t let anything or anyone stop her doing exactly as she pleases that just makes for wonderful entertainment.  Her rudeness to all her colleagues is a constant source of inspiration.

Over time, though, I learned that all our main players have such strong characterisation that the humour’s beauty clearly comes from knowing them well.  Disturbingly, perhaps, there was also a bit of me in all of them.  My lifelong geek side means I see Amy Santiago as a kindred spirit.  My emotionless intellectual snobbery turns Captain Raymond Holt into a hero.  Charles Boyle is all of my insecurities wrapped up in one tiny little man.  I won’t go through them all, but they’re so much more than background artists designed to offer perspective on our central figure: Jake Peralta, played by Andy Samberg.  He is the only one I am not, but he still makes me laugh with his childishness: a great face for silliness.  As series progress, the vibe becomes less about Peralta’s tension with fish-out-of-water new boss Holt, and more about the unit’s ability to support each other through good and bad times.

If that doesn’t sound hilarious, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is also taking on a number of social issues in a matter-of-fact way.  Racism, homophobia and sexism all come under the microscope.  We tread a narrow tightrope between signalling worthiness and, in fact, reflecting the world around us.  A stereotype or stock character is a very rare occurrence throughout the show’s universe.  And it is this, coupled with the cast’s irresistibility, that saw Brooklyn Nine-Nine succeed in commanding my attention.  Somehow, it’s elevated itself well above a background show.  Each instalment of its six series on Netflix (and a seventh out there that aired this year) deserves your full attention.

Inside The World’s Toughest Prisons

Hi everyone and welcome to my insurance post.  Due to unforeseen apathy on my part, I’ve not managed to finish watching anything new in time to uncover a sexy boxset this week.  I’ve had lots of recommendations, and am halfway through a few things myself, but since riding high as an early adopter of Industry (you’re welcome) I’m having to raid my annals (not a euphemism) for something I consumed a while back and didn’t deem worthy of a post at the time.  Christmas might be on the way (or cancelled) but this week we’re swerving the single-use festivities in favour of going Inside The World’s Toughest Prisons.  Will loyal fans of the blog dismiss this as a show too obscure to warrant reading about, or will it turn out, as I suspect from this Netflix documentary’s appearance in the UK top ten when new episodes appeared earlier this year, that I’ll have a post worthy of rivalling some of my most-read musings (the top three in order: Love Island, Naked Attraction, Bo’ Selecta!)?

By now we’re familiar with my theory that prisons offer great narrative tension to any drama.  It elevated all the nonsensically earnest dialogue of Prison Break.  It created a sample population of wronged women among whom the lady fluff of Orange Is The New Black deftly metamorphosed into acerbic social commentary.  It even gave some much-needed edge to Archie Andrews in Riverdale.  But what of real-life prisons, I hear you ask.  And what about prisons abroad, I also hear you follow up with in order to help me segue effortlessly into our focus this week.  Well, Inside The World’s Toughest Prisons tells you all about them.  We’ve all seen headlines bemoaning the UK’s soft-touch criminal justice system, and of course Brexit will now allow those clamouring hardliners to enjoy sufficient sovereignty to purge individuals from society in whatever manner they see fit.  We have also heard tell of the horrors of third-world jails where many a Westerner has come a cropper for accidentally stumbling over a border after losing little packets of drugs up their bottoms.  How long must we wait to look inside them (the prisons, not the bottoms)?!

Finally, then, in 2016, Channel 5 were brave enough to send a film crew to four such hellholes, pushing ahead of them as a shield plucky journalist Paul Connolly who, under the documentary’s premise, would actually become an inmate at these institutions in order to get behind the bars and under the skin of what’s really going on.  From continent to continent, the findings are disturbingly similar: overcrowding, drug addiction, corruption, unsanitary conditions and violence.  A natural response is to swear off a life a crime, but luckily I hadn’t been planning one.  Two years later, Netflix launched a second series, bringing in the energy of Raphael Rowe for hosting duties, whizzing him round the world on a punishing sequence of gap years across a total of three further seasons.  Maybe Connolly didn’t fancy any more toughness, but it didn’t matter as Rowe outqualified him, having spent a decade imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit.  Don’t worry if you don’t remember this bit as he’ll remind you at the start of every episode.

Bringing in real prison toughness, Rowe is all too eager to get among things.  Like his predecessor, he commits to the process of becoming a prisoner, undergoing humiliating strip searches on arrival.  As series progress, you start to twig that the guards aren’t that bothered about this and it’s in fact the production team insisting on a naked cavity search.  Rowe can’t pop his trousers off quick enough.  Once inside, we can have a proper look around.  It’s an extreme version of poverty porn.  In Paraguay, men rifle through rubbish or inject drugs in the open air.  In Belize, they trade in performative Christian faith against privileges.  In Papua New Guinea, the constant threat of violence is palpable.  But it’s not all doom and gloom, as we’re also granted access to some of the world’s least tough prisons and although this makes a lie of the show’s titles, it’s just as interesting to see how Germany focuses on therapy or Norway on preparation for normal life in order to prevent recidivism.

Whether Rowe really gets locked in overnight doesn’t really matter.  He absorbs enough exposure to draw conclusions that recognise the complexity of punishing criminal behaviour.  As a classic Brit abroad, his refusal ever to learn the native language (even a few more words of Spanish would help him in his South and Central American jaunts that dominate his schedule) poses no threat to his discussions with helpful inmates.  His questions are asked with childlike wonder, as if a slightly babyish voice and naïve frown can transcend Quechua.  Hats, and trousers, off to him though: he’s rarely fazed.  His greatest moment of worry seems to come in Lesotho where inmates suggest they might make a prison wife of him.  While it’s unlikely any wicked ways would have been had while the camera crew and production team watch on, Rowe has never moved as fast as he does when evading their friendly clutches.

Having had our nosey around, we feel safe in the knowledge we’ll never have to be confined to any of these places in real life.  It’s hard to feel optimistic about the UK as it self-destructs out of the EU, but at least there’s probably central heating in most of our prisons.  For now.  This show’s strength, therefore, comes from its ability to make our own lives seem less appalling, if only by comparison.  As we trip in and out of lockdowns, spending more time indoors than we ever thought possible, we may count our blessings that this isn’t in fact a day made up of 23 hours of isolation, but a great time to catch up on all sorts of Netflix documentaries.

The Last Dance

These days, retail is something that happens online while we’re sequestered indoors, leaving the UK’s shopping streets barren and foreboding (like our future outside the EU).  Back in retail’s nineties heyday, our greatest weekend treat was being taken to the Bentalls shopping centre in Kingston for a good old browse.  Of all the pointless branches on its many glistening floors, the enormous Warner Bros Studio Store lives on in my memory as the most extravagant of them all.  A whole shop dedicated solely to merchandise with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck on it.  Looking for a leather jacket with the Tasmanian Devil on it?  They had it in three colours of course.  Among the shiny trinkets and branded apparel, whole displays dedicated to Space Jam loomed large.  My eleven-year-old self wondered what be this mysterious film?  The animated characters I knew, but my Surrey childhood meant that Michael Jordan was an unknown entity to me.  Fast forward twenty-four years to this summer and I still hadn’t seen Space Jam, but everyone at my gym was gushing on about a new Netflix documentary on a basketball dream team with a banging soundtrack.  Not being one for team ball sports, I waited patiently until conversation turned so we could speak about something else.  Months later, I saw that The Last Dance had an IMDb rating of 9.2 and decided I had to watch it, if only to guarantee to myself that I could consume a high-quality boxset after devouring Industry.

I admit that I initially felt some regret at my decision.  Not only was this clearly all about sport, but it was about some very specific things to do with that sport.  Luckily, these were glamorous American sports from abroad, not the endlessly ubiquitous soccer that constitutes half of all “news” in the UK (the other half being articles about why immigrants have ruined your life).  Basketball was even a sport I had seen in real life during a 2012 trip to New York when a beloved pal got us tickets to see the Knicks at Madison Square Gardens.  The oversize foam finger was just one of many highlights, with the speed of play, the high scores and the party atmosphere all making for a very entertaining spot of spectating.  But The Last Dance is all about the Chicago Bulls’ mid-nineties team and their ability to win successive NBA championships.  Our main narrative plays out around the 1998 season with our Bulls going for their sixth title (and second run of hattricks), but each of the ten episodes whizzes back and forth in time to fill in the backgrounds on different players’ careers, the team’s earlier fortunes and their overall approach to the championships they had previously won.  It’s a kind of lottery of early nineties years, but there’s a helpful graphic of a timeline by which to orientate yourself.

Instead of whiplash, though, I was gradually and irresistibly drawn in until I was powerless against a characteristic compulsion to get to the end.  What bolstered the intrigue?  Firstly, the multiple first-hand accounts from key players and onlookers involved at the time, told as pieces to camera with the frankness and the perspective only twentysomething years of intervening life can give you.  Secondly, the footage from the actual time, when a camera crew had unprecedented access to the Bulls’ legendary team, offered further unique insight, as if the whole programme was planned as a follow-up almost a quarter of a century later.  What’s more, for the non-sports fan, you’re excused the commitment of sitting through seasons and seasons of matches and simply shown montage after montage of breath-taking steals, assists, scores and slam dunks.  There’s no other valid response but to be impressed.

Of course, nobody thought to capture the nineties in HD, but the skills still shine through, and there’s some very strong nostalgia at play here.  It seems news readers were always filmed in very close frame, with lead images of their stories’ subjects selected solely for the extent to which they could be deemed unflattering.  Everybody chewed a great deal of gum (though this could be carrying on till now – I have no frame of reference) chomping away on great gobfuls.  Surely there were some bitten cheeks as the players careered up and down the court.  There’s a huge internet trend for people in their thirties to comment and post endlessly about how their lives and indeed the world peaked in the nineties.  The Last Dance corroborates this as I wistfully realised I had missed out on everything at the time.

The tension builds around the epic struggle to win that sixth championship, with my ignorance keeping me genuinely in the dark about what the outcome would be.  Even more captivating, though, is the incredible charismatic personality of Michael Jordan himself, outshone only by his sporting determination, work ethic and competitive spirit.  The Last Dance covers the team effort, but everything comes back to this one-man superstar whose global influence in a world before social media must have come with pressure beyond our imagining, and that’s before you factor in traumatic personal tragedy.  As we arrive at our poignant closing episode, the sense of time passing, of lost youths and changing lives, becomes almost unbearable and you wish that everything could just stand still.  Life is terrifying highs and dizzying lows, so how must it feel if your greatest peaks are in a bygone decade?  It’s moments like this that make you glad never to have achieved anything, as at least then you can write an irreverent weekly blog about other people’s successes and the documentaries that Netflix has made about them.

Industry

Thank goodness for this boxset.  I don’t know when the BBC and HBO got together for this co-funder, nor when they filmed it as there are plenty of scenes involving people coming within fewer than two metres of each other, and I don’t even really know when it was on or who told me about it (a manager said I might like it and, as if unregistered at the time, I suddenly obeyed this recommendation at an unconnected juncture a few weeks later).  There’s no way of knowing any of these things, least of all me checking for myself, but it doesn’t matter.  The important thing is that I came across a new show that gripped me and wouldn’t let me go until I had consumed every last drop.  And now I’m telling yous lot about it: Industry.  This is a big deal: I’m putting it up there with Succession and Watchmen, even though a number of friends I’ve insisted watch it aren’t quite convinced.

Firstly, it’s set in the world of work.  And not just any old job.  We’re talking finance.  This means we get to look inside offices that are full of people.  As we end a year spent mostly working alone in underpants, seeing desks and business attire and strained professional relationships has taken on an almost pornographic quality.  We’ll come back to the porn side later, as there’s plenty of stimulation in the swish City of London office of Pierpoint already.  Some of these people have six screens (including a Bloomberg one, known affectionately as a Bloomie) and I couldn’t even count the phones: there are headsets and then funny retro ones on coils hanging directly from the desk with little switches on the back.  It’s all a feast for the eyes and this is before we even get onto the drama.

Pierpoint is a swanky fictional (sure) investment bank, long the preserve of privileged white men and a hotbed of questionable financial ethics and even more questionable employee behaviour.  Our intro into this world is a new intake of grads, hungry to earn those big money dollars straight out the gates of university.  But first, they must survive the upcoming reduction in force (RIF) day to secure permanent contracts – pow, we have tension right from the start.  Our grads’ chances are subject to numerous unfair factors, from the desk they end up on, to their line manager’s temperament, their clients’ intentions, their own backgrounds and whether they fit in with the vision of itself Pierpoint is trying to create.  It’s not life or death (well…) but nobody is safe.

You might find yourself struggling with the lack of likeability all the characters display.  Our main focus, Harper Stern, has proven challenging for many.  She’s unpredictable, makes seemingly bad choices that result in self-sabotage and can be unnecessarily unpleasant to those around her.  But she’s blazing a trail, has ambition and won’t let her past overcome her.  There’s doubt about her college credentials from the off (as stuttered by a creepy HR man) and she’s a woman of colour in a world not known for embracing diversity beyond tokenism.  In fact, fellow grad Gus Sackey (not that she is fond of him) seems endlessly amused by how little Pierpoint knows what to do with him.  More than once, his eyebrow is askance at the drones around him.

Back to Harper, though, as we invariably always must go, and her story arc sees her caught in office tension between her desk lead, Eric Tao, and her line manager, Daria.  Should she align herself with the rogue trader who is a law unto himself or the conscientious rising star, carefully plotting an ascendance that will coincide with a redressing of Pierpoint’s gender balance and subsequent treatment of women?  Over on the FX desk, meanwhile, we’ve got Yasmin, whose approach to ingratiating herself with the menfolk is to go on constant coffee/salad/smoothie runs at the expense of proving her investment chops.  From an inordinately wealthy background herself, she instead flexes female strength via humiliating and escalating power play with Robert.  Despite his cocksure manner, he too suffers from the other Pierpointers’ snobbery when it comes to his more working-class background.  His dark suit is ridiculed, but he soon finds a way in with the oldest-school Clement Cowan.

In time, the dysfunctionality of the grads only serves to emphasise the more deeply ingrained dysfunctionality of their superiors, eventually sucking everyone into a vortex of sexy skulduggery.  Claims that the drama is far-fetched don’t wash with me – if it’s someone’s real job to spend their days trading money that’s so derivative it doesn’t exist via impenetrable jargon and their nights indulging in excessive alcohol and drug consumption to entertain evil clients, then surely it’s easy enough to buy the storylines of Industry.  Having spent my first working year in financial headhunting, it confirms the whole banking sector as a glorious near miss for me.

Now, we wanted to circle back to porn, didn’t we?  Hold tight, everyone, because Industry is incredibly graphic.  If sexual misconduct is going down, then we really do see it all.  We see more or less all of our young leads too.  This adds that Game Of Thrones jeopardy of being surprised by a boob or willy at any point, lending grittiness to a London that is already smeared with dirt as it is.  Sure, we often end up seeing about twelve more thrusts that we needed to in order to establish what’s afoot, and, if like me, you get distracted whenever a line is snorted by wondering if it’s CGI or if the actor really did woof some talcum powder, but it’s all part of the fun.  Who said work had to be boring?  You just have to work in the right industry.

The Fall

Yes, I’ve fallen.  Into The Fall.  There was a sudden urge in me for something gritty and British.  Something grittish.  On Netflix’s autoplay function, the clip of this show answered my specifications perfectly: dashboard-shot footage of an approach to a crime scene, greyness everywhere, probably some drizzle, Gillian Anderson looking a bit grumpy.  Right, I thought, this is going to be the perfect blend of Line Of Duty and Happy Valley – everyone says it’s supposed to be very good.

The grip came very early on and I was soon anxious to get through as much of the three series as quickly as I could.  But what were we dealing with?  First of all, there was a location that was pretty new for me.  The Fall plays out in Northern Ireland and, more specifically, Belfast.  Now, I appreciate that even me saying that this programme fulfilled my need for something British can be interpreted as political – the whole place has been hotly contested as either Irish or part of the UK since way before my conception in the mid-eighties.  The Troubles were rarely out of the news in my childhood, and we even revisited them at A-Level when someone thought we should look at the cold cold poetry of Seamus Heaney, but there’s been a peace process for ages now.  Some would say for too long, so it’s a good job people voted for Brexit and we can all hurry back in time at the earliest opportunity.  It’s not like the year has already been a bit of a state.  Nevertheless, as the murders played out, I found myself deciding I really ought to visit Belfast at some point.

Aye, murder.  Here we are again, fuelling another British obsession: the details of how young women are murdered.  They’re not prostitutes this time, but successful career brunettes, targeted carefully by our killer, haunted and taunted until dispatched by slow strangulation.  This part of the story, dominating the first series, is taut with tension, from police not believing claims of home invasion, to the sleight of hand used to home in on the next victim.  The Northern Irish police force are refusing to acknowledge that a string of murders could be linked, flying in our Gillian as London-based Stella Gibson to investigate how previous operations have failed to yield results.

Anderson is enjoying something of a renaissance as a very British actor, even though she’s proper American.  Her X Files days still plague my nightmares (not her, but that ghost going down the stairs in the opening credits), but she’s given us pure joy in Sex Education and is currently on Thatcher duties in the latest lavish season of The Crown (the Diana years).  The Netflix blurb described her character as an ice queen, but there’s more to Gibson than perfect hair and some nice flowy blouses.  She stands up to the men around her.  She owns her sexuality.  She’s focused on her career.  We know she’s sensitive because, you know, she has a dream journal and that, but she’s a captivating hero and we urge her to succeed.  She even sleeps at work and, by season three, this seems to be taking its toll, as her voice establishes a distracting rasp.

Uncomfortably, she finds herself drawn to the killer as much as he to her.  The obsession tests the bounds not just of her professionalism, but also affects his murderous ambitions.  I don’t want to spoil who our main suspect is, so I’ll just now start to talk about Jamie Dornan as part of a completely unrelated matter.  He remains inscrutable throughout.  While his torso is for spurious reasons shown in varying states of undress at any excuse, working out why he is the way he is remains a mystery, its illumination only really beginning as we build to the final series’ climax.  As Paul Spector, he’s a loving dad (to his daughter at least) but a neglectful husband.  He alternates between leading on and spurning poor wee Katie Benedetto.  He stands up to yet is cowed by the likes of James Tyler.  It’s fitting that we never know whether we can believe him, even when he gives a firm yes in police interviews (never a yeah).

But, once the chase of Gibson’s cat to his mouse is more or less over, things slow down and settle a bit, such that the lack of momentum drove me to distraction.  In this lull, I started and finished The Staircase before forcing myself to return to the story.  I’m glad I did but, looking back at the sum of its parts, there are elements to its sprawlingly ambitious web of narratives that I wish we’d returned to or gained more closure on.  Corruption in the police force from series one fades away.  Supporting officers in the investigation get a bit of interesting characterisation before relegation to the background.  Our focus grows tighter and more claustrophobic culminating quite literally in Spector-on-Gibson action.

Join me, then, in taking a fall into The Fall.  If your second lockdown isn’t harrowing enough, this will surely contain enough gruesome themes to keep you in the house.  Just make sure you pop out if you find your bra laid out on the bed.

The Staircase

Deep in a second lockdown, the last thing you need while trying to account for lost income and no gyms (thanks, Bozza) is a tense and paranoia-inducing documentary about murder, guilt, loss and the flaws in any justice system.  I know this now.  But I didn’t when I decided the time had finally come for me to consume Netflix’s well-known thirteen-part series: The Staircase.  Previously, it had proven easy enough to ignore in the algorithm, particularly with such distractions as the second series of The End Of The F***ing World, a Wales-based attempt at I’m A Celebrity (works quite well, actually) and, thank goodness, despite its dilution by social distancing, Strictly Come Dancing.  Don’t even ask me about season four of The Crown – that will just have to wait (plus it’s not like my enjoyment is at risk from spoilers).  But no, podcast after podcast had conspired to reference The Staircase in heated discussion, bringing out my worst fear: boxset omission.  Here I am carefully curating all my viewing so I can chime in with any conversation, and yet I had missed what sounded like a bit of a classic.  Not that I can interrupt people while podcasting.  I’ve tried that before and they can’t actually hear you so there’s no point.

Potentially a poor man’s Making A Murderer, The Staircase looks like it’s going to offer you the same sort of did-he-didn’t-he, blow-by-blow account of an American crime as examined through the American justice system.  Indeed, both shows err on the side of the subject’s pleas of innocence, highlighting how courthouses are vulnerable to corruption, bias and unfairness, but while the Steven Amery case focuses on a low-income family whose only wealth is in the form of dilapidated cars, the clan at the centre of our story, by the look of their North Carolina mansion, seem to be drenched in riches.

But, they do have an awkwardly poky staircase, and it’s this part of the interior that forms the point of dispute driving the whole series’ narrative.  At the bottom of it, the body of Kathleen Peterson is found in 2001, covered in blood.  Is her tragic death an accidental fall, or the result of murder by her husband, Michael Peterson?  Either way, it’s his frantic calls to 911 that open our story.  It’s a chilling beginning and one seemingly designed to arouse suspicion immediately.  As the trial proceeds and we learn more about the Petersons’ happy family home, containing well turned-out children from previous marriages as well as some adopted daughters, we can only look on as the state brings a case against Michael and appears willing to play every trick to clinch a conviction.  We’re going back twenty years, so attitudes towards sexuality highlight an excess of narrow-mindedness.  Juror response research even yields free admissions that experts with Chinese accents aren’t easy to trust.  The odds stack up against Michael who, out on bail, potters about his large home drinking cans of Diet Coke while his legal team strategise.  He brings to mind an early-season Caitlyn Jenner in Keeping Up With The Kardashians, bemused by the goings on of the young people in the home but ultimately happy in some jogging bottoms.

It’s hard to discuss much more about the case without spoiling the plot.  I was hoping for references to an owl theory that had played out centrally in the podcast discussions that had driven me to the programme, but, unless I blacked out at very specific moments, I totally missed this.  Instead, over the course of many years, we watch a middle-aged man grow very old and suffer, eliciting natural sympathy no matter the verdict.  This is contrasted with the burning hatred that Kathleen’s surviving sisters have for him, which grows only stronger with time, giving some indication of the impetus behind his prosecution.  There’s uneasy viewing throughout, from graphic depictions of Kathleen after her fall to deeply skin-crawling testimonies in the courtroom.

As we progress, you develop a sense of melancholy from all the waste.  All the time, money, energy and emotion that goes into something like this, only for it never truly to be over, highlights the human damage and hopelessness such a case leaves in its wake.  Nothing can bring Kathleen back and nothing can make clear what really happened.  Our perspective is only ever really that of the accused, so sympathies naturally develop there, but nobody really wins.

The episodes each pivot around a singular development in the case, but we could potentially have zipped through some of them a bit more quickly to tighten up the documentary’s intensity.  The shaky footage from the early 2000s is hardly going to stress out your HD telly, but this is more of an unputdownable story than a visual feast by any stretch of the imagination.  In addition, the camerawork improves as the episodes shift focus nearer to the present day, particularly in the three final editions added by Netflix.  You’ll come away feeling uneasy, knowing what a blow poke is and questioning who gets to decide guilt and innocence, but at least you’ll be about thirteen hours closer to the end of a lockdown.

Mock The Week

I’ve just done a quick check, and I don’t think we’ve done a panel show before.  Unless you count University Challenge as a panel show, and you shouldn’t, because it’s not one.  It’s actually a quiz.  It differs from panel shows because people are actually trying to give the right answers to difficult questions.  Though panel shows are also quizzes of sorts, it’s more important to give a hilarious answer instead of a correct one.  And the questions are easier.

The reason I’ve not talked about one here before, though, is because I don’t really watch them.  Like chat shows, they seem to be a bit of a waste of time.  Chat shows are just people plugging their new book with rehearsed anecdotes while a former comedian swoons over them – I can get this sort of content from podcasts without having to use my eyeballs.  In my millennial office life (and by office, I mean working from home) nobody ever makes an appointment to view a panel show.  Lots of them are broadcast on Friday nights when we’re all at after-work drinks (not me), and now we’re not allowed to do that anymore, we’re too deep in season two of The Boys (no thanks) or the end of Schitt’s Creek (already completed it) to tune in.  In short, panel shows aren’t the kind of boxsets you can show off to your friends with.

When I still lived at home, Have I Got News For You was a firm family favourite.  Little did we know we were choosing our future PM based on who was the most discombobulated panellist (well, I didn’t vote for him, but it was f***ing one of yas – dezguztan!).  My parents still relish how the show’s humour makes a farce of British politics, but for me the subject matter is already too much of a farce to be funny anymore.  I once spent a whole train journey to Cornwall for work (shout out Eden Project) watching Never Mind The Buzzcocks on my phone and laughing so loudly that fellow passengers worried for my sanity.  But will we ever get Simon Amstell back?  I may save this for a future edition, as is my plan with Celebrity Juice, so we’ll try and focus on the show in hand.

The reason I’m picking Mock The Week is that I’ve come to admit begrudgingly it’s actually rather good.  Of an evening, around 10pm, as I disconnect the telly from Netflix or Amazon Prime or Sky Boxsets, I’m hit with a brief glimpse into live terrestrial telly.  The channel is never set to BBC1 or ITV, as my life is too worth living ever to sit through either station’s ten o’clock news – I am not going to bed angry.  Invariably, it’s BBC2, which means, on a certain night of the week I have thus far not ascertained, Mock The Week is in full swing.  Whether it’s a repeat, or a more recent edition with fun-ruining plastic dividers and social distancing, I will typically lose between ten and twenty minutes of delicious sleep because I’ve become distracted by the hilarity on screen.  But it’s worth it.

The idea is to laugh at things that have happened in the last seven days.  That’s where the name comes from.  Mocking the week.  Got it?  Good.  And we all know we could do with a laugh these days.  Given my fractional viewing, I’m not too sure of the rest of the format.  Dara Ó Briain ably chairs proceedings, a characterful man who combines erudition with, my personal favourite, plenty of silliness.  He once called me a c**t at a live show in response to my answer to his question regarding what job I do.  So I consider him a close personal friend.

The two teams of three that make up the rest of the panel are a revolving retinue of comedians, all taking part willingly in the weekly mockery.  More recent episodes have seen a great big shift upwards in the diversity of backgrounds here and if this doesn’t excite you then please stop reading now.  I’m up for banning white men from all TV and politics for the next five years (especially me) and seeing how we get on.  What’s the worst that can happen?  Sadly, this would cost me some of my favourites: Ed Gamble and his dry delivery, James Acaster and his perpetual face of confusion (let’s all agree to watch his Netflix specials please) and Tom Allen, taking a break from slagging off cakes but in a charming way on Bake Off: Extra Slice.

Sometimes our panellists sit around, sometimes there’s a microphone on a stand that they have to dash towards from little raised platforms and it’s fun wondering if they’ll bump into each other.  Sometimes you wonder how people can be so quick-witted, sometimes you wonder if they’ve had time to prepare their best lines.  Either way, there are plenty of chuckles to go round for everyone and, of course, nobody cares who actually wins.  I couldn’t even tell you if scores are kept – that’s just how little research I do for these posts.  And so, Mock The Week, let us salute you as a pandemic hero – you’re making me want to watch you in spite of myself.