CHRISTMAS TV PREVIEW: Loving Miss Hatto, Doors Open etc.

This article was originally published in The Scotsman on Saturday 22nd December 2012.

LOVING MISS HATTO

Sunday, BBC1, 8:30pm

RESTLESS

Thursday and Friday, BBC1, 9pm

DOORS OPEN

Boxing Day, STV, 9pm

DOCTOR WHO

Christmas Day, BBC1, 5:15pm

CALL THE MIDWIFE

Christmas Day, BBC1, 7:30pm

DOWNTON ABBEY

Christmas Day, STV, 8:45pm

Paul Whitelaw

If history's taught us anything, it's that if you stick Alfred Molina in a cardigan and ask him to play a hapless, well-meaning man, the pathos he exudes will make a mountain weep. Support him with a script written by Victoria Wood, and, well, resistance is futile.

In LOVING MISS HATTO, Wood's captivating account of the biggest fraud in classical music history, Molina plays William Barrington-Coupe (aka 'Barrie'), an ambitious dreamer who fooled the world into believing that his terminally ill wife, Joyce Hatto, was one of the greatest living concert pianists. And all of this orchestrated from a semi-detached in Hertfordshire.

His ruse – achieved simply by passing off doctored recordings of other pianists as works by Hatto – was eventually exposed following Joyce's death in 2006, although he maintains to this day that she had no involvement in the scheme. Wood understandably opts for a different view - how could Joyce not have known what was going on? But although she depicts them as complicit, she never passes cruel judgement. Instead, she delivers a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of an ordinary couple who resorted to desperate measures in order to gain the recognition they felt they'd been denied.

Joyce was actually a promising concert pianist in her youth, with Barrie – despite his propensity for getting into what he called “muddles” - an idealistic and committed supporter of her fledgling career. But, for various reasons, fame never arrived – at least not until decades later when Barrie discovered the hoodwinking potential of the internet.

Wood frames this remarkable story as a touching love affair between two thwarted people with nothing to lose. Barrie, who's still alive, should be pleased with her depiction of him as a decent man who only broke the law out of love for his frustrated wife. And Wood's witty, poignant, thoughtful screenplay, together with charming performances from Molina and Francesca Annis - and Rory Kinnear and Maime McCoy as their younger selves - ensure that their scam never feels like anything more damaging than a romantic “muddle” that got out of hand.

Adapted by William Boyd from his own novel, RESTLESS is perhaps the most aptly titled thriller I've ever seen. It doesn't so much test one's patience as suffocate it. Curiously inert and stilted, it charts the interminable saga of a female Secret Service agent, both during World War Two and in the 'present' of the 1970s: so that's two stubbornly paced and flabbily plotted narratives running concurrently. It's supposed to be a compelling puzzle. It feels like an endless, boring game of Risk.

The problem may be that Boyd is so attached to his source material, he was loath to cut it (both episodes are feature-length). He also fails to invest his central character with an interesting inner life; he simply gives us no reason to care about her. It also doesn't help that her daughter – who plays a key role in the '70s segments – is played by Michelle Dockery, alias Lady Mary from Downton, an actress so stiff she makes the average corpse look like a whirling dervish on a hotplate.

The very definition of an insubstantial, middling bit of fluff, DOORS OPEN is an Ian Rankin adaptation which couldn't be further removed from the gritty world of Rebus if it was set in Atlantis. Produced by Stephen Fry and Sandi Toksvig – she also co-writes – it follows three friends as they undertake a benign art heist.

Millionaire Mike (Douglas Henshall) is doing it for memories of his ex-lover (Being Human's Lenora Crichlow, in a thankless role); Allan (Kenneth Collard) because the paintings are owned by the heartless bank he's just been sacked from; and Professor Gissing (Fry) believes he's liberating the ineffable soul of art from the clutches of commerce. Bathed in a vaguely knockabout, overbearing sheen, it tries desperately to pass itself off as an Edinburgh-set Hollywood romp. But it's the sort of thing you forget about even while you're watching.

Preview copies of this year's DOCTOR WHO Christmas special were unavailable at the time of writing, but as fans such as myself have come to expect little from these invariably underwhelming festive outings, maybe this year we'll be pleasantly surprised. I know, I know, forever the optimist.

If I'm being charitable, the cloying sentiment of CALL THE MIDWIFE is slightly more palatable in a festive setting. But only slightly. Inevitably, the Christmas Day edition of this mechanical period drama serves up the heavily symbolic spectacle of a baby being born in a lock-up, and shoves the midwives-as-angels angle further down our throats than ever before. Oh, and hapless Miranda is involved in a sub-plot involving the local nativity play. Of course she is.

If we're talking about sumptuous Sunday period dramas, then DOWNTON ABBEY obviously can't be beaten. But whereas Midwife is earnest, Downton is a frantic conga-line of ludicrously watchable toot. Previews weren't available, but we're promised a Christmas trip to Scotland during which, I dunno, Carson and a stag get stuck up a chimney. Probably, it doesn't matter. Merry Christmas, everyone! 

Scotsman TV Preview: Downton Abbey, Parade's End, Strictly Come Dancing

This article was originally published in The Scotsman on 15 September 2012.

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/tv-and-radio

DOWNTON ABBEY

Sunday, STV, 9pm

PARADE'S END

Friday, BBC2, 9pm

STRICTLY COME DANCING

Today, BBC1, 6:30pm

Paul Whitelaw

A lavish harlequinade of withering gazes, arched eyebrows and stoic suffering: yes, DOWNTON ABBEY is back, and thankfully it seems to have calmed down following last year's hyperactive series, which at times felt more like a series of disjointed trailers for an upcoming episode interspersed with blaring commercial breaks every five minutes. The latter are still an unwelcome intrusion, but it's good to have it back on form.

In case you'd forgotten where we were, the first few scenes are helpfully devoted to nothing but clunky exposition, leading up to the return of Lady Sybil and her fierce republican husband (cue awkward discussions of “the Irish problem” over dinner), the much publicised arrival of Shirley Maclaine as Lady Grantham's mother (cue laboured bouts of American modernism vs English traditionalism), and the wedding of Lady Mary and Matthew (cue the expected drama on the eve of their nuptials). And most dramatically of all, Lord Grantham is shocked to learn that he may run the risk of losing dear old Downton altogether.

Despite the fact that you can always hear the gears shifting in Julian Fellowes' writing, I can't deny that, at his best, he's a fine purveyor of world-class soap opera. It's corn on a grand scale, but it's expertly tuned and entertaining corn at that.

The cerebral yin to Downton's full-bosomed yang, PARADE'S END, which concludes this week, is almost stubbornly anti-populist in its appeal. Indeed, this handsome Edwardian period drama mirrors precisely the compelling, frustrating, enigmatic allure of its central character, Christopher Tietjans, who for the past five weeks has made an esoteric virtue of keeping his entire world at arm's length.

Immaculately portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch – his oval jaw set in stone, although increasingly prone to wobbles as the story progressed – Christopher's damned loyalty to his strict, self-flagellating moral code takes a further battering in the final episode, which mostly finds him mired in the insanity of the Western Front trenches.

Created by Ford Madox Ford for a series of highly-regarded early 20^th century novels, “the last decent man in England” is certainly more complex than any character found in Downton, and highlights, not only the fundamental difference between the two programmes, but also the inherent, possibly deliberate flaw of Tom Stoppard's otherwise impressive adaptation: Downton Abbey wants to loved, and will jab all your buttons to ensure that it is, whereas Parade's End has no interest in giving you an easy, comfortable, emotional ride.

And that's why, although I enjoyed it, I never felt particularly moved by this sprawling epic. I admired its stellar performances, its dry, eccentric wit and Susanna White's assured direction, but I never really got under the skin of the central love triangle between Christopher, his entertainingly maddening wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall, a haughty swan, superb throughout) and moist-eyed, lovestruck plot device Valentine (Adelaide Clemens, doing her best with an underwritten role).

I suspect that Stoppard was more interested in the material for its reams of layered character study and socio-politcal satire, than as an unconventional romantic drama. It's certainly obvious that Madox Ford's novels, which many deemed unfilmable, don't lend themselves easily to adaptation, and Stoppard should be commended for transforming them into five hours of captivating, if at times inscrutable, TV drama.

And I'm glad that the BBC has taken a leaf from co-producers HBO's book and produced something that demands concentration and actively repels the casual viewer. It's encouraging that we have a landscape where populist period fare such as Downton can comfortably coexist with the relatively challenging and idiosyncratic likes of Parade's End. And while it wasn't an unqualified success – the stasis of Christopher and Sylvia's relationship, for instance, led to repetitive reinstatements of their central dynamic every week – it was undeniably smart, startling and ambitious. And we need more of that, always.

Also, special mention should go to Stephen Graham, who, despite being lumbered with a ridiculous stick-on beard that made him look like a Blackadder Dickens, pulled off a faultless Edinburgh accent while proving himself yet again as one of TV's most versatile actors. And speaking of Blackadder, the penultimate episode, with the great Roger Allam coming to the fore to essentially portray a blimpish General Melchett substitute, was one of the most effective and darkly humorous “war is hell” statements I've seen on TV in quite some time.

Finally, STRICTLY COME DANCING returns tonight for another ratings-grabbing series of flotsam and fluff.

Personally, I've never been a fan. It's not something I object to – it's utterly harmless – but it's just one of those cultural happenings that unfolds every year in my peripheral vision, like football and chart music and the latest globule of scandalous idiocy that habitually dribbles from the mouth of some celebrity I couldn't care less about. Not even the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of Russell Grant being fired from a cannon could rouse my interest last year, which means that I'm either suffering from a clinical case of ennui, or that the mere idea of the roly-poly astrologer hurtling through the air in a shower of glitter is entertainment enough for me. Either way, it's back, and there if you want it.