Reviewed this week are: EastEnders RTÉ1 and BBC1, all week, Family ITV, Monday The Deal Channel 4, Sunday, Dáil coverage Tuesday Would You Believe: An Irish Wedding RTÉ1, Thursday
For most women, sleeping with their brother would probably be the standout moment of their day, week, month, life. It would be the talk of generations to follow. In Monday night's EastEnders, Sharon Watts slept with her brother, Dennis. Such were subsequent events that it might hardly have merited mention in her diary.
Her father, "Dirty Den" Watts, is back, 14 years after being shot, drowned and mashed in a canal weir. Send an EastEnders character to Scotland, of course, and you'll never see them again.
There is much catching up to do. Life in Albert Square is played out to the taut rhythm of nightly revelations. As a random example: Dirty Den has returned because the man who had him not-quite-murdered all those years ago is himself dead, having been shot by Dennis, the son Dirty Den didn't know he had. Please feel free to read that sentence again, should you require it.
Dennis (Nigel Harman) is a boulder off the old block. Even in a place where smiles only ever come wrapped in sarcasm or menace, he is a miserable one. His face always contains a splash of bruising. His teeth are welded shut so that through curled lips he hisses rather than talks. Sharon (Letitia Dean) is actually his adopted half-sister, if that makes any difference. She has been tarnished since long before he took a shine to her. She wears skirts so mini you might mistake them for a smudge on the screen. Sharon once lost a husband because she slept with his brother, so she has a certain amount of experience at this type of thing. Still, as she lay in the bed, post-coitus, she sported a demeanour you might normally expect of a woman just lifted from a bath of spiders.
All of which was but a prelude to the main event that was her father's return from the grave. EastEnders gets away with this level of absurdity because it surpasses it with conviction. Its scripts are muscular, the acting spot on. Characters bear the scars of past plots. It remembers grudges and hoards storylines for later use. On Tuesday night, as Dirty Den crept around in the dark in his old pub, The Vic, allowing character and viewer to browse through the memories, the programme went a full three minutes without dialogue. EastEnders succeeds because it knows how to draw steadily from the well of its history. It lets its ghosts roam, something which comes in very handy when you bring one back from the dead.
In Family, former EastEnder Martin Kemp gives the impression of a man poured clean from a mould. His hair seems plastic, his face awaits instruction from his brain. The script tries to give him a little bit of history but it won't stick. But then, nothing in Family sticks. The Cutlers are a London mob, brimming with straight-faced mockney accents. "Here's a pony," they say. "Take a monkey."
In its opening episode, the gang's patriarch, Ted (David Calder), welcomed back prodigal son Dave (Jamie Foreman), who breezed in with new trouble just as the old trouble had blown over. Ted's other son, Joey (Kemp), is watching it all through glassy eyes and glassier skin. They live in leafy Southwark, a family of middle-class suburban gangsters coping with domesticity and the law; with one foot in respectability and the other leaving behind a bloody footprint. Given that this is the era of The Sopranos, you might have expected a few years of decontamination before someone wandered on to this territory again.
Family is sterile. It has none of the bloody humour traditional in the British gangster genre or the drama to replace it. It uses a sub-Godfather theme so cheap it suggests pastiche, yet it is nothing of the sort. With the exception of Dave, its characters come as hollow vessels, their pasts of no concern. If it carries on like this, their futures will be of no concern either.
Its opening scene contained a gang robbing a restaurant while wearing Tony Blair masks. On the screen, there is always a gang of thieves whose main objective is to get the loot but who are unable to resist some light political satire while they're at it. A humble pair of tights just isn't good enough any more.
Neither were they the only Blairs in a restaurant on show this week. The Deal was a drama based on actual events that may not have actually happened. Its title and some of its script was built upon conjecture, itself piled upon that popular political conspiracy theory that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown struck an early arrangement that the latter would take the leadership of the party at some point during a second term of government. Ultimately, this film, directed by Stephen Frears and written by Peter Morgan, was skilful in its agnosticism. It treated "the deal" as a mechanism by which Brown, convinced his destiny was to be leader of the Labour party, could come to terms with letting that opportunity slip. And it treated it brilliantly.
David Morrissey played Brown as sullen and dedicated, his neck pulling at his chin, his hands tugging at his hair. It was, however, a performance based upon more than fine mimicry. In Morgan's script Brown was a man of ambition, but without the vision or personality of Blair, whom he under- estimated as an outsider to whom the Labour Party would never succumb. Brown's self-belief appeared to have muddied his radar, so that when Blair crept under it his reaction was one of retractile shock.
As Blair, Michael Sheen began as doe-eyed and enthusiastic, offering handshakes with such eagerness that he almost topples over, but slowly developed into a character of cold ambition. As Brown dutifully penned tributes to John Smith (Frank Kelly), Blair seized his moment. Sheen's charisma, however, was several shades lighter than is the real Blair's, and neither actor nor scriptwriter could fully demonstrate quite how Blair blossomed into such a towering political figure. Meanwhile, Paul Rhys crept in between the two with a marvellous portrayal of Peter Mandelson; mysterious and calculating, a man who scripted his conversations. "That man smells of vanilla!" exclaimed Charlie Whelan (Dexter Fletcher), when you might have guessed it would be brimstone.
We know the ending. It was written large all over the news this week and when Blair received a seven-minute standing ovation for a speech as brilliant in its delivery as it was hollow in its substance, the BBC sought out Brown and caught the moment they wanted. Hunched and apparently unenthusiastic, he was looking away as if wishing the applause to stop. At least, that is what we now read into it. A narrative has been imposed upon them by press and now by drama. True story or not, The Deal made it truth.
The film recognised and exploited the potential of the House of Commons as a wonderful set. Prime Minister's Question Time is a great television event, with the two leaders pushed forward from their seats and the long, shallow room emphasising the clamour of the backbenches. In the Dáil, drama leaks away quickly. It is a place where democracy comes for a light afternoon nap. On its return on Tuesday, the tumbleweed blew through the comb-overs and the empty seats gave the chamber the feel of a Friday afternoon lecture hall. As Enda Kenny shouted at him, Bertie Ahern hardly bothered to lift his head to meet his gaze. The sound of shuffling paper scratched at the microphones, the dust settled on the words. The fuse had been burning down in the days before the confrontation, only for it to be pinched out at the moment it was due to explode.
By the way, have you noticed that nobody steals anything while wearing a Bertie mask? I suppose there's no subtlety in that.
An Irish Wedding took place in New York. The groom, Brendan Fay, had inquired at a few churches close to his home there, but when the priests asked the name of the bride, the fact that it was actually another groom and his name was Tom tended to make the phone go cold.
The story of Tom and Brendan's marriage - he claims to be the first Irish gay man to wed another man - had already been related so well on Marian Finucane's radio show that this programme was a form of adoption.
Otherwise, this was a simple, affirming wedding video of two men committed to their faith and to each other. They wore kilts. They had a ballet dancer lead them up the aisle. The congregation was asked to huddle together in a "circle of love". The bridesmaid wore a silly hat.
It was, then, just like watching any other wedding video, with a mix of delight and surprise at the bad taste of others, only there were two grooms and they both wore dresses. "Let love rule" was as complex as the message got. Tom and Brendan, as it happens, met at Mass. The divine dating agency works in mysterious ways.
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