![]() ![]() It’s an eight-parter – I’ve watched the next two and it just gets better – so will see me through until bonfire night, with promises of a huge German pharma-conspiracy.Ĭhannel 4’s new four-part drama National Treasure has been dogged slightly by being labelled as An Important Drama for most of the past month. There are layers upon the twists, an early Escher doodle and a lot to come. There was also cop Robert Glenister, suffering the kind of panic attacks that might have unseated Thor, wandering for solace into the arms of Lesley Sharp, a surprising but fine casting decision: she’s wonderful, but is she a true, kind Quaker or a Blue Meanie? “But I want kids,” she shouts to his retreating back: the boyfriend may have been nondescript but his sperm were apparently people. What is it about players who honed themselves on 80s comedy proving so adept at serious-chops High Acting?Ĭhiefly through Indira Varma, who plays a stroppy cop just dumped by her partner. It’s too early to say whether it might be another Happy Valley, but it might take a bronze. ![]() But this thundered its way on with speed into a tight police procedural with knotty twists: and also the humanity of the best cop dramas. This was the first sign of promise: too many other dramas have ramped, with slo-mo retro, the killings of women. It was sudden and it was gruesome but it was over, didn’t linger. At least they won’t have seen all the cast playing other coppers in other weirdly similar cop shows.Paranoid began nastily on ITV: there was a stabbing of a female doctor in a safe play park. Goodness only knows what our American chums will make of it on Netflix. Paranoid could be gripping, and yet somehow isn’t. Later she ruined it by announcing to the office, “I’m 38! My arse is starting to sag!” The most authentic scene, in which an actor was for once given some recognisable meat to chew on, found Varma reacting to the news of the abrupt end of her relationship. Here they hasten to introduce themselves with eager-to-please speed-dating dialogue. ![]() When a drama hastens to make itself look busy, busy, busy, characters have no time to settle in. By the end of the first episode the principal suspect has thrown himself to his death - or been thrown to it by someone else - and another body has turned up in a German swimming pool, while someone is skulking in the bushes, sending cryptic messages, and pretending to be a detective. The plot canters along in the contemporary kinetic vein, pausing only to put up signposts pointing towards clanging dramatic ironies ("the English countryside is like a fairytale!" trills a foreign detective). His only problem is he can't spell the word "weird", which is a problem as we are frequently reminded the whole case answers to that description. Only their boss (Neil Stuke being very much Neil Stuke) seems so far to lack skeletons in the closet. Junior sidekick Alec (Dino Fetscher), who seems too goody-two-shoes to be true, has a fishy back story involving his mother and an iffy psychologist (Michael Maloney) involved in the case. Nina (Indira Varma) is insufferably gobby but vulnerable after she’s ditched by her boyfriend. The resident detectives have all got their own issues. Not so damaged old-school copper Bobby Day (Robert Glenister), who finds himself lured by her to a Quaker meeting to soothe his evidently nervous disposition. The audience can already feel itself backing off warily. Her witness statement is strangely particular, her manner oddly calm. Here she plays Lucy Cannonbury, who witnesses a horrific murder in a playground where, though childless, she regularly goes to read. One of the leads is Lesley Sharp, the reliably intriguing actress who is practically a member of the Red house band. In one sense it’s got Red written all over it. ![]() Their latest, modishly, is an international collaboration: Paranoid, a new eight-parter set somewhere quiet and northern, was made in conjunction with Studio Canal and is destined for Netflix. ![]()
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