Given the choice, would you have David Tennant or Warren Brown? Or Rupert Graves, for that matter?
The BBC's newest David Tennant-drama, Single Father, has become a tug-of-love between those three men, albeit with varying prizes. Stuart (Graves) wants to look after Lucy, so does Dave (Tennant). Dave wants Sarah (Suranne Jones), so does Matt (Brown). The competition with Stuart may exist primarily in Dave's head, but the competition with Matt is very real. It's real because Dave's making Sarah doing the same sort of thing she did when she went to see Stuart without telling Dave. Oh, and they're actually having an affair.
Single father Dave's increasingly getting left behind in the middle of whirlwind of changes, which seems to be leaving him with just the one child. Still, she's easier to handle than the five he had at the start of Single Father. Hey, legally, only Tanya is his as things stand.
Somehow Dave's relationship with Sarah has been kept under wraps – despite Evie's witnessing them in the act – even as other relationships fall apart. At the same time, the layers of Rita's (Laura Fraser) family are being peeled away; turns out her mum's not really her mum after all. More dirty washing for public consumption?
So all that remains to be seen is how Dave and Sarah work their new relationship out, how long it'll be before Lucy moves in with the creepy, French-speaking Quinlan girls and whether or not Matt is going to go on the warpath over Sarah. Oh, and someone ought to find out where Mark Heap's Robin has gone with that dog...
On the plus side, my question about how photographer Dave has been earning money has finally been answered – ie. he isn't. It's probably about time the complete lack of work plus supporting a large family caught up with him.
Image courtesy of the BBC
Single Father may still be available to view via BBC iPlayer here.
This is not how advertising is supposed to work. The TV advert for Smart Car's fortwo is not supposed to make me want to avoid Smart Cars at all costs.
Adverts (commercials, whatever you chose to call them) are supposed to make me want to spend money on the product in question. This one really doesn't. The message I'm getting: the new fortwo is incredibly destructive.
The Smart Car fortwo is driven around an impossibly empty city at night, and leaves carnage in its wake. Somehow, through its admittedly cool music player, the fortwo manipulates power lines and makes office lights turn on and off. Not eco-friendly.
While making a vending machine spew out cans (in effect stealing from the manufacturer), the fortwo also wreaks havoc with the traffic lights...good job there's only this one guy on the roads, eh?
It's also lucky that this is happening at night, because in the day this car would be a death trap.
At the same time as switching office lights on and off, the passing fortwo also switches computers on and off. I hope they're set to autosave pretty frequently, because random power fluctuations could become frequent if this ad campaign takes off.
It disrupts everything - including a bloke in the bath, which is just rude, frankly - and causes untold damage. Somehow, the fortwo also manages to set off a load of fire extinguishers. Would someone like to explain that one?
Then, the best bit by far - or worse bit if you happen to be, er, human...which accounts for most of Smart Car's target market - the windows. Every piece of glass anywhere near the fortwo shatters, and you might notice the fine spray of glass (or fine spray of death, as I like to call it) that suddenly descends to ground level. Ground level, in case car designers weren't aware, is where pedestrians walk. Apparently, it's okay to cover this in glass shards, which is what will happen every time someone drives past in a fortwo. Oh good.
Don't worry though folks, it's okay. When he locks the fortwo, everything gets fixed. It's a miracle. Everything is put back exactly how it was.
It's basically a deluxe, suped-up version of the Nissan Juke (watch especially for the electric robots), seen below:
The difference here is that the Nissan Juke doesn't absolutely destroy everything (what's with the washing machines?). It seems to make electricity work in its immediate vicinity, which might be useful, but that's about it. Oh, and it exposes a diamond thief. While the effects are destructive when it parks, they are at least localised - it's only that sign that goes crazy, and we're talking a small-scale fireworks display rather than an entire commercial sector needing to be put back together.
Still, not sure I fancy driving a Nissan Juke either.
But the Smart Car fortwo advert raises all sorts of questions in my mind. For a start, when they construct these catastrophic killing-machines, how do the factories cope? At some point during construction, the fortwo's killer instinct must kick in. Why don't the factories get smashed to bits? How many Smart Car staff die every month when the factory gets ripped to shreds and then needs putting back together? Does the line manager give a slightly cute, slightly guilty blue-eyed glance at the bodies, and coyly lock the car, magically replacing the factory walls...but not his staff?
Worse, if several people buy these destruct-o-cars, what happens if two of them meet? I don't just mean in a crash, I mean passing in the same city? Not even the same street; let's face it, the fortwo in the advert does untold damage in streets it's not even in (unlike the relatively sober Nissan Juke). If a fortwo meets another fortwo coming the other way, what happens? Does the universe implode? Do we get a new Big Bang? Think how much money and time CERN could have saved if they just crashed two fortwos into each other, rather than building a Large Hadron Collider.
Actually, let's not let this happen. Everyone must avoid the Smart Car fortwo - this may be the secret message coming from their marketing campaign. Someone in Smart Car marketing knows how potentially destructive the fortwo is, and wants us to know so that we don't buy it. Someone high up at Smart Car is planning to destroy the universe. Don't let them.
This advert, on the other hand...yes, yes and yes again. Simple, effective - it makes me want to buy the product, and no one gets hurt.
Who has been more irresponsible here – Channel 4 or Prince Harry? Channel 4 fakeumentary The Taking of Prince Harry has been controversial long before broadcast, with Channel 4 accused of placing Prince Harry in danger as well as jeopardising the way hostage situations are handled by the British government and secret services. But, as the narrative of this makes implicit, the Prince himself places British servicemen and women in (increased) danger by his presence in Afghanistan. His grandmother may appreciate him serving his country, but how much should Prince Harry be allowed to risk?
The Taking of Prince Harry poses the hypothetical – though not entirely implausible – question: what would happen if Prince Harry were to be captured while on active service in Afghanistan? It then unfolds the sensitive and potentially disastrous situation of a British royal held by Afghan terrorists. The idea isn't implausible, as the documentary footage comprising most of the beginning of The Taking of Prince Harry explains. The son of the Prince of Wales and third in line to the British throne has been on active service in Afghanistan before now, amid a media blackout. What seems less plausible is the very noble way this smallscreen Prince Harry reacts, forever asking about his fellow pilot and telling Scotland Yard not to treat him differently.
It's television that falls between the two stools of gripping drama and fascinating documentary. But the drama is never allowed to run at full pace and the documentary pales away next to the possibility of a Prince (even if he is only a spare and not the heir) as a hostage. The stories of foreign film-makers and journalists are drafted in alongside scenes of Prince Harry at Taliban gunpoint. But the drama eventually manages to get the upper hand, with the talking heads sounding like experts talking about the actual event in hindsight – defending the actions of those involved (in the West, obviously, not the Taliban).
What makes The Taking of Prince Harry controversial is also partly its strength. It's a drama-cum-documentary produced with advice from members of MI6, the CIA and people like that. These are people who know what they're talking about in terms of the authorities and how they react. Does that mean that the Taliban could be watching The Taking of Prince Harry to pick up tips? Or maybe someone from Al-Quaeda might be watching in Europe, hoping to lean how the West handles hostage situations? Or do they already know how it works? Fifteen hostage-takings a day in Afghanistan makes you wonder...
Just try to overlook the laughable Photoshopping done to make it look like the Prince Harry actor (Sebastian Reid) was at a football match with the real Prince's girlfriend. Can you even get internet in the Taliban hideouts near the Pakistan border?
Now – two weeks in – Single Father is getting a bit seedy and distasteful. David Tennant is still valiantly plugging away at being a single father for the BBC, but the family seems to be splintering around him and suddenly the whole thing has become a digging-up of dead Rita's past life.
Thank goodness the grief-fest of the first episode is over, and we can get on with examining the situation writer Mick Ford was originally interested in: a single father raising several children. Dave is doing a better job than last week, with the help of various other family members (including Tanya's mother, his ex-wife). He does less well at fighting off Rita's sister, Anna (Neve McIntosh) who seems both childless and determined to take her sister's children for herself. Her brother-in-law (Mark Heap) can only watch and apologise as she goes off on another rant about Dave not being up to fatherhood. In fairness to Heap, he's got the disgruntled look of a man not quite able to interrupt down perfectly, and at other times brightens up scenes wonderfully (see him and Tennant discuss a possible father of Rita's daughter...lovely).
Except we can't really get through the heavy-handed emotion into Ford's proposed situation. Single Father still insists on giving misleading flashbacks, that aren't really flashbacks at all because some details have changed – it happened last week when Rita died and Dave said different things depending on which occasion you were watching it. Again this week, the flashbacks don't quite match the events (that kiss, say) as seen first time around. As for the sentimental soundtrack occasionally layered over shots of David Tennant brooding...
But worse is the way that Single Father insists on doing Rita's dirty washing in public. Alright, we get that Dave wasn't her first lover (by a long way), but does it need rubbing in so much? The (remarkably easy) search for Lucy's real father also obscures the story and makes it seem more about a search for a natural father than about Tennant's Dave raising his brood. It's a search that diverts Dave (and us as an audience) away from problems like his son's smashed ankle (surely a cause for concern?), his youngest daughter's illness (Evie), and the way that his eldest (Tanya) has suddenly become far less reliable as a babysitter/employee. These are the issues that tie in with that original single father idea.
Also tying in with that idea is Dave's growing relationship with Rita's friend and Evie's schoolteacher, Sarah (Suranne Jones). That got a lot steamier recently, and I suspect Evie's lessons are going to get more interesting soon...”Miss, are you my new mommy?”
Single Father may still be available via BBC iPlayer here.
Single Father, Sunday night's much-publicised return to the UK small screen for David Tennant, certainly packs an emotional punch. But then what could we expect from a four-part series about a man whose wife is suddenly killed within the first four minutes?
It may be useful to introduce the family of the single father (Dave, played by David Tennant, who is a photographer) so that, without the distraction of trying to work out who they are, you can get on with appreciating the difficulties Dave has – and maybe cry along with him. Dave's married to Rita (Laura Fraser), with three children: Paul (11), Ewan (9) and Evie (5). Then there's Lucy, fifteen, Rita's daughter (not Dave's), and Tanya, eighteen, Dave's daughter (not Rita's). Got that? Then there's his sister-in-law Anna (Neve McIntosh), hurrying in to mark territory after her sister's death, followed by Rita's family (Mark Heap and Isla Blair). Right, now that's out of the way, we can get on with appreciating David Tennant's moving masterclass in grief.
That said, you'll have to overlook the juddering narrative as well. Single Father starts admirably in the midst of things (like I say, Fraser's Rita gets killed pretty sharpish) with a beautifully-pitched and attractively-shot first three and a half minutes. Then we go back a day, which is all well and good; Single Father manages to avoid making the whole thing seem like a situation that's too good to be true and will soon end – the accident's a shock to everyone. But then, for some reason, the BBC seems to think that, just fifteen minutes later, we'll have forgotten what happened and need to see it again (with ever-so-slightly different dialogue). The tense inevitability of the first time round has gone, replaced with a tedious certainty that Rita is not long for this happy life. Which rather spoils the fine work put in by Tennant and Fraser (with Suranne Jones and Warren Brown) up to that point.
As if that weren't enough, the next ten weeks are skipped out altogether. While I appreciate we don't need to see the immediate few hours in detail, I can't help thinking the interesting bits of the premise (a single father, remember?) occur in those first few days/weeks. If, as writer Mick Ford claims, the focus is on a man dealing with the kids once their mother is dead, then surely this is when it's at the most raw? Surely this is the time for Dave's struggles with getting the right lunchboxes and getting swimming trunks washed in time? Two and a half months later – call me a sadist if you like – just isn't as interesting.
But you can't take away from Tennant the fact that he knows where to hit his audience emotionally. It's worth watching out as well for Mark Heap's quietly assured turn as the brother-in-law.
Single Father may still be available to watch via BBC iPlayer here. Picture courtesy of the BBC.
When Christopher Reid, writer of The Song of Lunch recently dramatised by the BBC, was teaching at my University he always came across as an advocate of the idea that poetry had to be read aloud to be fully appreciated. The BBC's staging of his long poem The Song of Lunch does great service in defence of this idea (but don't be put off reading it aloud yourself – like radio, the pictures may be better and/or more personal that way). Interestingly, it was Reid's successor at the University of Hull, Martin Goodman, who suggested The Song of Lunch be dramatised in the first place.
While the thought of putting a long poem about a lunch onto the small screen may not sound thrilling, this reading by Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson (talk about casting big guns) brings the work to life in a way you just wouldn't get if you read The Song of Lunch to yourself in your head. It comes as no surprise that Reid took James Joyce's Ulysses as an inspiration for The Song of Lunch, as that's another long piece of writing that gains immensely from being read aloud. The original poem The Song of Lunch has been praised for its cinematic quality, a quality which is plain even without watching Rickman acting out the words being intoned by his own voiceover.
What we have in The Song of Lunch is a slightly mournful reminiscing about past love, the fading of youthful promise and the remorseless march of time. Alan Rickman is beautifully cast as a failed writer stuck in a job editing other people's (in his opinion, worthless) prose. The lunch is question is with his old flame, Emma Thompson, now happily married (to a successful author, the agony!) with children yet still curiously affectionate toward a man she chastises for being overly fond of her. They're having lunch to catch up after fifteen (or so) years, and this is where the combination of small screen dramatisation and poetry really comes into its own. Aching moments are slowed down to allow for the poetic interior monologue of Rickman's thoughts and narration to pour out and colour the scene, filling in the blanks pulsing with heart-saddened meaning.
But The Song of Lunch is about more than just the lunch, and more than Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Okay, so it's a bit of an obvious metaphor that Reid goes for, but the restaurant itself encapsulates the overriding theme at work here. Remembered by Rickman's character as a niche and proudly Italian restaurant fifteen years ago, Zanzotti's is under new management...new waiters, new tablecloths, new menu (content and printing material), less satisfying wine (but, boy, does Rickman get through the stuff) and less impressive food. He's as disappointed by that as he is with his life since he last saw Thompson's character. Yet she is pleasantly surprised at the 'improvement', as she calls it. For her, none of Rickman's (gloriously expressed) contempt of white tablecloths – another case of Reid taking a leaf from Joyce and examining the minutiae of the mundane – and far less of the wine used as a coping mechanism. Thompson is assured and comfortable (both actress and character), humouring her old lover but reminding him of the boundaries; unlike him, she has moved on, thanks in part to that remorseless march of time thing.
Most impressive about the BBC's The Song of Lunch is the way in which dedicated acting brings to dramatic life a poem already vividly cinematic in quality. Although the final message does seem to be that, when meeting an old flame, drinking too much wine is unwise...you might end up sleeping it off on the roof.
The Song of Lunch may still be available via BBC iPlayer here.
