Ashes to Ashes II Episode Six on BBC One

You'll be pleased to know that the Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) in the twenty-first century has finally made it to an operating theatre and has had the operation on that bullet lodged in her brain. About time too. It's only taken a series and a half to get her there.

That's the important thread running behind the sixth Ashes to Ashes episode, which features a scam along the lines of the Darwin couple last year – but with more murder for Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) and CID to get their teeth into. Sam Spruell's snide Trevor Riley is a loan shark 'taking advantage of the current economic climate' and having his boys administer beatings as and when necessary. What's odd is how lightly those boys are let off by Hunt, especially after their encounter with the DCI in a dark street.

The reference to the economic climate and the life insurance scam make Ashes to Ashes seem very prescient this week, as if Luigi's (Joseph Long) reminder to Hunt that 'Debt is bad' weren't enough. Okay, so Hunt's a bit wide of the mark when he talks about flying cars in the twenty-first century, but you can forgive the odd slip from a man quite so brilliant as Hunt.

He has a lot of fun this week in a scrap yard – in the best scene of a fairly routine episode. It's certainly a novel interrogation technique he has, and – with the interviewee being entirely innocent (of the crime he's being asked about) – you've got to wonder about ends and means, once again.

Frankly, it's a disappointing sixth episode. Here's hoping next week the game is picked back up.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine - yes, my first published film review

So, what happens when you get two – probably indestructible – men to fight each other? Does either of them win? Can either of them win?

That's the problem Danny Huston's Colonel Stryker finds himself presented with in the latest instalment of the X-Men franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a prequel which fills in what Hugh Jackman's Wolverine had forgotten at the start of the first X-Men film. Stryker wants to use his super-dooper new toy – Weapon XI (Scott Adkins) – to attack and kill Weapon X – Wolverine. It shouldn't be too much of a problem, because, you see, Stryker has been using Wolverine's big brother Sabertooth (Liev Schreiber) to round up fellow mutants, then has sinister scientist-types steal their super powers and create one super mutant with them. So, the rather unimaginatively named Weapon XI can pull most of the tricks we've already seen X-Men pulling off: claws in his hands; samurai skills; stupidly rapid movement; climbing really big things really fast; blasting searing energy out of his eyes; being pretty much indestructible...that sort of thing. The perfect weapon with which to kill Wolverine, who's decided not to go along with Stryker's plans in the war (basically Stryker vs. the mutants) on mutants.

Except that Stryker has only gone and made Wolverine indestructible too! In fact, that's where Weapon XI gets his indestructibility from – though you have to be pretty sharp (or imaginative about adding in your own scenes to films) to spot the moment at which Wolverine's DNA is actually taken for this purpose. But it must happen, because Weapon XI also does the whole 'sliding-blades-out-from-his-knuckles' thing, because he's as cool as Wolverine.

It's actually a classic moment of one-upmanship, that. Wolverine has just slid his metal bones out, so Weapon XI (really needs a better name) slides out his much, much longer samurai swords from his knuckles. If he could speak you just know he'd say, “You call those blades? These are blades!” before proceeding to engage in that age-old male-bonding technique, also known as battering seven bells out of each other. Which is all they can really do, because both are indestructible.

But don't overlook the male bonding and machismo of this film. You could almost think it's a film that serves as a withering critique and satire on the culture of masculine beauty that dictates a need for hairy, muscle-bound men, who are sensitive enough to have their hearts broken (because of weedy men too cowardly to fight for themselves – I'm looking at you, Stryker) but can also beat each other to a pulp. Or maybe I'm being too generous, and it could just be that this is a film that wraps itself up in too much fighting/explosions/competition/freaky mutant stuff, at the expense of a working plot. For a start, why is it that the one thing deemed capable of killing – the indestructible – Wolverine is a bullet made of the same metal that his skeleton is reinforced with? Then, if you have that weapon, Stryker, why send Agent Zero – a thankless role for Daniel Henney – and Weapon XI out to kill him...without it? Of course they won't make it back!

If you can keep up with the dodgy plotting – jumping over the holes as you go – and like your heroes muscled and feral, X-Men Origins: Wolverine might do for you. But don't expect brilliance.

Captain Scarlet is still my favourite indestructible hero.

Beef at Hull Truck - the play, not an argument

Considering last week's news that short and/or skinny people get paid less on average than their taller and/or fatter co-workers, it's reassuring (as a short, scrawny bloke) to have John Godber's one-man show Beef demonstrate that the weedy victim of bullying can achieve more than his bigger (dare I say it, beefier) bullies.

Hull Truck regular Matthew Booth takes the lead (Dave) in this re-staging in the Truck's new studio venue – the first all-professional production in there – that has toured before returning to roost in Hull. Perhaps fortunately, the beef of the title bears no relation to any animals (at least not of the bovine variety; there's an argument to be made about animalistic men). It's used in the human sense of enhanced muscles, in the late seventies and early eighties when body-building was just becoming big. The true story is of a body-builder who returns to his northern mining town home seeking revenge on the old school bullies who called him 'Dumbo', among other classically flattering schoolboy nicknames. He's evened up the odds a bit though, by beefing up (ahem) and arriving as the UK Powerlifting champion – he's a big, hefty bloke.

It's a deliberately stark contrast with the play's first half. In fact, there's a major shift after the interval. Booth starts with his natural physique – muttering away to himself – persuading himself to work out. Six years later he looks like a muscular Michelin Man. He struts around his gym, ready for violence.

He's still completely alone though. The woman of his dreams is now a kinky widow/single mum. Unluckily for Dave, she's only interested in sex with the 'animal men' of the town. While they're fascinated by him, and willing to be his friends, they're also the former bullies. What's worse is that they're happy to share her around, but she doesn't want Dave. Poor bloke.

I say he's 'alone'...before the interval Booth gives us a loner and first-rate fantasist. His anger and grief are directed inwards; his quest for revenge happens mostly in his imagination. Later, there's still an awful lot of talk like 'I'd do this' and 'I almost said' – to which the response is always 'But you didn't, did you?'.

So, in the end, does Dave use the Gurkha knife to cut off his enemies' hands? Probably not. What an inconclusive end to one man's story told from only one perspective.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Five on BBC One

The first rule of time-travel – as every sci-fi fan knows – is: Don't mess up anything that affects the future.

Okay, so we don't know if the eighties world of Ashes to Ashes is in DI Drake's head (Keeley Hawes) or if it's actually the past, but she really ought to have learnt her lesson from Sam Tyler's exploits (John Simm). Why has she not yet learnt that going round people's houses and acting as though she's known them for years – despite their persistent failure to have the foggiest clue who she might be – is a sure-fire way to creep those people out? In fact, I'm increasingly going off the idea that Ashes to Ashes is inside anyone's head at all, because there's no way Drake would know what her in-laws were like this early in her (strictly speaking 'future', yet also 'estranged') husband's life.


Remember that fantastically ambivalent opening sequence to Life on Mars? The parent show was founded on the question of whether Tyler was mad, in a coma or back in time, but Ashes to Ashes is looking more and more like some kind of Purgatory and not any of those three. Unless it's Limbo. For the first time this week, I found myself comparing it to Lost, and I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that.


Discomfort is a theme of Episode Five, actually – and I don't just mean the lads' reaction to a transsexual cockney gangster. No, what's discomforting (apart from the slightly creepy opening with Orville the Duck: Ashes to Ashes making kids' TV disturbing again (like Life on Mars did)) is the latent, ever-so-slight paedophilia floating about and Drake's unfair attacks on a boy who hasn't committed a crime nor done anything to Drake herself (yet). The fourteen-year old lad (Perry Millward) is her future husband, and the mystical, long-gone father of Molly (amusingly, the name of his cat). I've often wondered where Molly's dad was, and now we know: he left when she was six months old, and is apparently a two-timing good-for-nothing. Mind you, Drake doesn't exactly get the most out of her attempt to improve his character before he meets his future wife. When she should really just leave him alone, she ends up creeping him out with an uncanny 'female intuition' (read: knowledge about him that a Police officer of the eighties wouldn't know) and setting him up to be intimidated by (and freaked out by) any Alex-like woman he meets in the future...like Alex, for example. The first thing she says to him is the rant she has probably been saving since he left her, which utterly bewilders the poor kid. Get a grip, Drake – no wonder he left you, if he was traumatised by you when he was barely a teenager. Yes, it might not be the real past, but who knows? She could have shot herself in the foot, just with a very slow bullet.


If it is Purgatory – not the real eighties – this week we finally meet the man in charge. Mr. 'I can help you, Alex'. The man who's been sending the roses and creepy phone calls. He knows stuff. Like the fact that he and Drake are the only ones from the 'real world', and that she has just arrived in hospital in 2008. In such a plot-thick episode, his warning about the oncoming Operation Rose is kept on the quiet, but it's there. Watch for it.

More important is Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) being brilliant. More gruffness, more human heart, more violence, more tender moments with Drake, more verbal filth and more perfect resolution to a tricky problem. Damn you, Gene Hunt.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Four on BBC One

Operation Let's Round Off The Police Corruption Story Early In The Series (or Operation LROTPCSEITS, for short) this week. The episode opens with DCI Hunt (Glenister) and DI Drake (Hawes) slinking off together – to much sniggering – to carry out Operation Burnt Ring: the bugging of SuperMac's (Allam) office. At the end, a dying officer warns them about the oncoming Operation Rose (which may or may not be connected to the mysterious roses and phone calls Drake keeps receiving).

This week shows Allam's SuperMac as the nasty piece he's become – while highlighting the terrors of having the Police against you when his men ransack Drake's flat – as well as the decent, honourable man he once was. Hunt demolishes him with some stern words (“You've done some bad, bad things, Mac”) and a little shove – amazing, considering Hunt's normal technique – and the result is yet more superlative acting from Allam.

Now, I for one am no fan of dogs. Least of all barky ones with lots of teeth. So Hunt's method of removing the threat of the Rottweiler guarding the house of virgin-collector Jarivs (John Bowe) had me in stitches. It's classic no-nonsense Hunt, as well as a victory for dog-haters everywhere. Shaz is characteristically unimpressed, but we've come to expect that.

What's more distressing than doggy-death is that Ray (Dean Andrews) seems to have completely forgotten his Mason loyalties, and utterly fails to warn fellow Mason SuperMac about the approaching danger of Hunt and Drake (though why either of them thought he was a good person to confide in escapes me). It means that the Masonic story seems to have been put to bed in Episode Four...with half a series to go. So, that Operation Rose has got some time to bubble away (sorry, Allam's quasi-Shakespeare quote's still rumbling round my head), and it's bound to go higher than SuperMac.

Funny Turns at the brand-spanking new Hull Truck

First thing's first: this is a new venue, and it's all very nice and whatever, but some of the FoH staff are a bit moody. Aside from that, the new main stage lives up to expectations, and is a trendier version of the old Spring Street venue. Nice.

As for Godber's Funny Turns...well, in less than 150 words:

There's an unwritten rule at Hull Truck: plays must be aware of their status as plays, or characters must be aware that they're onstage.

It's a hallmark of John Godber's writing, and the opening of Funny Turns makes that plain. We've got a bunch of tecchies (or roadies, as they seem to prefer) who mill around stage setting up as the audience enters, then speak together in a poetic introduction that tells us all what on life on the road is like. Then they introduce each scene and form bits of set during them – it's hard to escape the idea that Godber's telling us that all of life is one long performance.

In this, Godber's newest play, there's a dance hall. Yep. But it's made by tecchies holding steel bars. It's classic Godber and classic Truck; a basic set and idea creating the image of something bigger.

[Then, to continue, more detail, beyond a 150 word limit]
Funny Turns opens the new Truck building, which is all shiny and sparkly. The new main stage is a bigger version of the old Truck stage, but feels more like a spaceship – at least it feels a bit like being in a Star Wars Senate Chamber. So it seems a shame that the Truck's going for its traditional, stripped-back style. The image works, but doesn't exactly make the most of the Truck's super-dooper space-age venue.

Other relics left over from Spring Street include the male leads in this script about an ageing pair of Hull women acting as roadies while the money back home dribbles away on dance lessons. Those roadies crop up again at the end, in a much more crucial – and highly convenient – way...in fact, it feels a bit too easy a plot solution – a bit deus ex machina, if you will. Then, there's the manipulative feel-good song – given to completely the wrong character – tacked on the end. Hmm...

You're never too old for a Godber play. But you might start to see the cracks more easily after a while.

Boy Meets Girl on ITV1

There aren't many things that get my Feminist hackles rising. I'm not a Feminist, or even a woman, so it takes quite a bit for me to get annoyed about the portrayal of women on screen (or stage, or in print etc.). ITV's Boy Meets Girl was enough.

As the title implies, this is a gender-swap show. Apparently, it's a comedy; the laughs are – present, yes, but – pretty few and far between, to be honest. Martin Freeman's blokey bloke, Danny, finds himself mysteriously zapped into the body of fashion journalist Veronica (Rachael Stirling), after an implausible meeting outside a power generator. There's a nice bit of flashback to tell us how Danny got there, and it sets him up as an interesting character, while leaving Veronica's past largely blank.

And that's the problem with Boy Meets Girl – it's all about Danny. Veronica is vapid (and that's not just handy alliteration, she really is vacuous – her mind as well her story). The first episode focusses on what Danny – in Veronica's body – did after the body-zapping. Without wanting to ruin it for you, s/he got rushed to hospital to be collected by the one bright spark of the episode: Paterson Joseph (I tell a lie: Danny's B&Q co-workers are alright as well). After that, we've essentially got what feels like a conveyor belt of man-in-a-woman's-body scenarios. Which is fine, but the woman-in-a-man's-body stuff is conspicuous by its absence. The ITV blurb only tells us about what happens to Danny, and that bias is seen throughout the show.

So, what does this man-in-a-woman's-body learn? Predictably, he has fun with his new breasts and a vibrator. He also learns that the woman whose life he now has – the fashion journalist, remember? cue derogatory scowls and cries of 'fashion journalist?' - may well be having an affair with her friend's man (who happens to have 'callous, womanising jerk' written all over his smug face). The sort of man you'd have to be pretty dim to want to have a relationship with. Danny (as Veronica) has conversations with her female friend where they essentially say that men are rubbish. Somehow it's not very fresh or satisfying. In fact, it's all rather obvious, and that conversation is especially awkward; it just doesn't feel real.

What quickly became obvious is that Boy Meets Girl was written by a man, imagining what it would be like in a woman's body. I checked – no, really, I hate to make baseless assumptions – and it turns out that writer David Allison is indeed a man. Gosh. This may be why we have such vapid women, who somehow can't fend for themselves. Occasionally, Veronica (as Danny) is seen drifting around looking confused – which is understandable, but at the same time, Danny (as Veronica) has adjusted and slipped into her life by convincing everybody that s/he is just a bit shaken after her electrocution.

The female fashion journalist is utterly incompetent, while the male DIY store worker scorns writing horoscopes but can barely handle stilettos. That's all you need to know about this stereotyped, one-sided affair.

Ashes to Ashes II Episode Three on BBC One

It must be pretty unnerving to have children's TV character Morph attempting to do the old electric shock to your heart trick.

No wonder DI Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) spends so much of Episode Three being spaced out and flummoxed. The hunt for Episode One's cop-killer ends a little prematurely, and there's a creepy anti-vivisectionist (David Bradley) who knows far more than an ordinary man from 1982 ought. He doesn't seem to be the mystery medical man who leaves Drake flowers and cryptic messages every now and then, but for a minute it looks like he might be.

It's animal rights this week, with David Bradley as a hunger-striking animal rights activist pulling the strings of a terror campaign from behind bars. Once again, there's the old clash of techniques on display – Drake wants to talk to prisoners and analyse them, meanwhile DCI Hunt (Philip Glenister) prefers to batter information out of them. Rory Kinnear pops up as a shrink for Drake to talk to, and is unrecognisable from his characters in the new James Bond films or the National Theatre's Revenger's Tragedy last year. To be honest, it's a fairly classic story of trying to stop the bad men hurting people, with our favourite eighties coppers using their mix of modern and eighties policing to hunt down the criminals who theoretically have a decent cause to be fighting, but are a bit mental with it.

What's worth watching out for this week is the little things, the small moments that fit Episode Three into the grander scheme of Ashes to Ashes Series Two. Especially the music – as ever – and Roger Allam. Also on the acting front, Glenister – now wearing Hunt like a second skin – is gradually peeling back the layers of this man week by week; it's like watching him pick at a fascinating scab, and I mean that as a compliment. Though the series has been low on car chases so far, the music for Hunt's reckless driving is still fantastic. This week he may only be driving down a street, but Eye of the Tiger is a perfect song for the Quattro belting to the scene of an arson attack.

The music's also pretty good when Super Mac is in Hunt's office. There's a chilling note to both that and Allam's demeanour when he innocently mentions facts that threaten Hunt – or will if Super Mac doesn't get his way. Rarely is an actor so in tune with his background music. There's a curiously upbeat song to end this episode on, which is really at odds with the news that we've just had delivered, but beautifully so. If nothing else, this show excels with its soundtrack.