The Taking of Prince Harry on Channel Four

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?

Image courtesy of Channel 4.

The Catholic Church is missing a trick

Before and during his state visit to Britain Pope Benedict XVI – as you probably noticed – was under a lot of criticism. While the media focused on the historic ties being reconnected between the Vatican and Lambeth Palace, non-media voices tended to focus on the negative side of the current Pope, his Church and religion as a whole. But most of the recent criticism concern the sex abuse scandal which implicates his Holiness in official cover-ups. While that is undeniably A Bad Thing, it's only the most recent issue to cause problems for the Papacy.

What really irked me during Pope Benedict's speech at Westminster was his assertion that democracy and reason were under threat because secular societies no longer underpinned those values with the moral code of religion (ie. Catholicism). This coming from the man considered infallible by himself and his followers (no room for reasoning that one out, nor even any need to think about it), who not long ago banned any discussion in his worldwide Church on the subject of female ordination. So, no chance to think or argue about that either. The reason women can't be Catholic priests is tied into that moral code of religion that Pope Benedict insists should underpin reason and democracy. I for one can't see the logical reasoning behind (not even a discussion on) prohibiting female ordination.

Thing is, I've seen enough women leaders (both in churches and the secular world) to know that they can do just as good a job as men. In the pastoral role required of priests, they're often better than men – it's the maternal instinct. In fact, lads of the Catholic clergy, women are – whisper it – actually good at stuff sometimes. I know, I know, hard to believe. A quick look back through English history (not worldwide, nor Catholic, admittedly) shows that the periods commonly regarded as golden ages were presided over by women: Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria come to mind...it's probably too early to pass comment on the current Queen Elizabeth and the jury's still out on Thatcher, I know.

The Catholic Church is really missing a trick in not allowing women into the priesthood. I say this partly as a result of watching Peter Tatchell's The Trouble with the Pope on Channel 4, in which the one person Tatchell found to defend the Church and its policies was a woman. Fiona O'Reilly is an eloquent and non-judgemental defender of the Church (despite Tatchell's repeated efforts to trip her into calling him an evil person because he's gay), and her defence would have carried more weight had the Church taken her seriously (she clearly takes the Church and her faith seriously) and given her a dog collar. From what Tatchell says on Channel 4's website, O'Reilly sounds like she was put up by the Church as a low-level minion willing to parrot the Church's teachings without dragging the (male) hierarchy into a documentary they had no desire to be involved with. Most disappointing was that Tatchell didn't ask her about female ordination, because he was too wrapped up in the Church's apparent homophobia (though there were plenty of other disappointments in Tatchell's documentary).

As some of the strongest advocates for faith, healing and understanding, women deserve a place in the Vatican's priesthood – and should certainly not be denied ordination merely on the basis of gender. But now I'm just tripping out old feminist arguments. My point is that the Church is backward-looking and conservative on so many issues as to be radically out of step with the secular world. Its attitude to women is one major part of this; how can the Church hope to maintain its followers, or even expand, when it subjects half of the world's population to an inferior status? I don't ask the Church to change its opinion on homosexuality (not just yet) or contraception (not just yet), but the attitude to women – God's children as much as men, and surely able to hear God's word as much as men (the Virgin Mary comes to mind) – has to be re-examined.

Photo of the Vatican by Diliff.

Red Riding 1984 on C4

It doesn't get any better for West Yorkshire Police in the final instalment of Red Riding, this time set in 1983 with scenes from 1974 thrown in. That gangland nature and the corruption get dragged to the fore this week, as David Morrissey's Jobson becomes increasingly disillusioned. We're also given an idea of what Abu Ghraib might look like if the troops there had read Orwell's 1984, when Warren Clarke uses a caged rat as a torture device. He taunts Peter Mullan's Martin Laws with “We don't like rats!” - clearly a man who knows his Orwell.

This is a beautifully-shot episode, especially the scenes where Morrissey is smoking. There's also some nifty camera work to watch for when he first interviews Myshkin (Daniel Mays) and then again when Piggott (Mark Addy) talks to Leonard's (Gerard Kearns) girlfriend in his living room.
It's just a shame there's so much jumping about and messing with chronology. Sometimes, it's pretty tricky to work out which year we're looking at – more than once I had to wait for someone to appear whose facial hair was an indicator of which decade we were in.

But that jumping about does give a chance to point out all the little things Red Riding has been seeding through the previous two instalments, and they can bring back some of the earlier characters too. I don't want to give away the ending, because it's rather surprising, and also because I don't think I fully understand it. It could be that Red Riding leaves a lot of loose plot threads, or it just be very complicated, or just leaving a lot unspoken for us to work out ourselves.

The 1983 instalment again looks at a missing schoolgirl, this one connected to the girl in 1974 in that she went to the same school, and is later found with swan wings stitched into her back. But the man who took her is in jail, Myshkin, right? Wrong. Piggott is the slovenly solicitor given the unenviable task of appealing for the mentally-handicapped man who confessed under Police pressure in 1974. He (somewhat improbably) emerges as rather a hero, alongside Jobson, at the end.

Red Riding 1980 on C4

It's funny how good hygiene is as an indicator of character. Hygiene and good taste. You can spot the real villains of Red Riding 1980 a mile off, because one of them fails to employ good hygiene, while the other has rather poor taste in humour.
Even with the cold, distant performance of Joseph Mawle as the Yorkshire Ripper, I can't help thinking the bad guy is Bob Craven (Sean Harris), a Detective who doesn't wash his hands after using a urinal. Okay, so he manages not to touch Paddy Considine's investigating detective Hunter with his hands – demonstrating instead the 'soft' headbutt – but even so, it's not nice. Then there's that wheelbarrow joke...
Having been worried last week about the prospects for justice in 1980, it was good to see the West Yorkshire Police force band together and huddle in to protect their own this week. By 'their own' I mean their criminals as well as their coppers. In fact, the difference between the two sometimes seems to be very vague in Red Riding, which gives far more screen time to the constabulary than to the Yorkshire Ripper himself. This man is a serial killer, modelled on Jack the Ripper, yet when outside help arrives West Yorkshire Police – in the person of dirty-handed Bob Craven – are keen to point out that he is their Ripper, and they will catch him. Still, at least this is a force with pride in its villains. I suppose a strong adversary is a mark of a strong hero...maybe that's the logic best applied to the police force under such withering scrutiny in Red Riding. It's surely no coincidence that both of the first two episodes go some way to exposing corruption and gangland-style dealings within West Yorkshire's constabulary.
Note also the return of some characters from 1974 – including a somewhat altered BJ (Robert Sheehan) and his significant revelations. It's lovely the way this trilogy interacts within itself, the events that ended in last week's 'Jacobean' bloodbath continuing into this week's bloody conclusion.
Best moment of the episode (bar that final, sudden and somehow inexplicable twist) in terms of the trilogy itself? Hunter: Who would you call when a man breaks into your house, kills your dog and rapes your wife? Laws replies: Not West Yorkshire Police, because he'd already be there, wouldn't he?

Red Riding 1974 on C4

More from West Yorkshire...

This week sees the beginning of a dark and ambitious trilogy on C4. Red Riding promises to be gritty and basically 'orrible; I forget who coined the term 'Yorkshire noir', but it sounds pretty grim.

Reviews have so far made the “it's grim up north” joke to the point of overkill, so let's hope the next two films will allow reviewers to move on to other things.
1974 certainly sets a pretty grim – though I prefer 'bleak' – tone for the series which is based on a quartet of books by David Peace (what a surname for someone writing this pitch-black stuff!). It's all about the dealings of West Yorkshire Police and the Yorkshire Post – using fictional characters mostly, though apparently the higher-ranking police are based on real people. The fact that it's West Yorkshire Police makes me worry that my life is becoming dominated by that place, as my last blog post was about West Yorkshire Playhouse. Thankfully, Othello was a rather more pleasant experience...and it's not often you get to say that.

Being set in 1974, and having young men floating about being policemen and journalists, this was bound to feel a bit like Life on Mars. In parts, it does, though I gather director Julian Jarrold tried to avoid that.

"We went for a colour we all associate with the Seventies, which is slightly brownish and muted. What I didn't want to do was to go down the Life on Mars route and plaster it with pop songs of the periods."

he says in The Independent. Really? Well, full marks on the brownish tint conjuring a seventies feel, but if you wanted to avoid 'the Life on Mars route', maybe you shouldn't have given your central character a leather jacket almost identical to Sam Tyler's... Also, what is it about the muted brown stuff that make us think of the seventies? Surely, colour existed back then in much the same way it does now? But then, the trailer for next week's film (set in 1980) has an entirely different colour quality to it – much brighter, with more contrast between black and white.
That Independent article is also one that mentions the 'Jacobean' ending...and Jacobean it certainly is – brilliantly so.

Fresh from failure on Fleet Street – though not exactly fresh-faced – Yorkshire Post reporter Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) is investigating the disappearance and later murder of a little girl who never made it home from school. During his highly professional investigation, he somehow gets his end away three times in the space of roughly half an hour – with two different women. One of them – Paula Garland (Rebecca Hall) – is the mother of a missing girl, and turns out to be real trouble for the poor lad.

Dunford soon regrets laughing at his mate's fears about the Police 'death squads'. Barry (Anthony Flanagan) is obviously just being paranoid...until a sheet of glass flies from a lorry and slices his head off. Hmm, suspicious. It seems these Policemen really are as nasty as Barry thought. In fact, West Yorkshire Police come out of this pretty badly. They're corrupt and violent, and possibly a tad inept.

If you didn't already have a bleak impression of West Yorkshire, you probably will after Red Riding, which may be the intention, but I'm not convinced. From the bigotry of Sean Bean's brutal businessman to the general grubbiness of the council estates, it's not exactly pro-Yorkshire...unless you happen think this is quintessential Yorkshire. It isn't. Then there's the all-too-familiar black bag over the head of a man held prisoner by men in uniform. Okay, he's not a Jihadist held by US military forces in Abu Ghraib, no. He's a British reporter held by West Yorkshire Police in an underground cell near the moorland they chuck him into from the back of a lorry. So that's better, then.

It's not looking good for justice in the rest of the series.