Patrick Melrose
Sunday, Sky Atlantic
The Bridge
Friday, BBC2
Rating: 
Innocent
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
(was there no end?), ITV
Rating: 
Patrick Melrose is based on the autobiographical novels by Edward St Aubyn and stars Benedict Cumberbatch, and what else can I tell you? Ho-hum. Let me think. Drums fingers, stares into the middle distance, picks nails. Oh yes, I’ve remembered now: it will blow your socks off. I watched the first episode twice and both times it blew my socks off. I then watched ahead and episode two also blew my socks off. There will be five episodes all told, so once you’ve retrieved your socks, do fully expect to have them blown off again.
Directed by Edward Berger, with a script by David Nicholls, it is riveting yet not easy viewing in the same way, say, Trainspotting is riveting yet not easy viewing – heroin addicts are never an especially pretty sight – and this did put me in mind of Trainspotting but from the opposite end of the social scale.
Patrick Melrose is based on the autobiographical novels by Edward St Aubyn and stars Benedict Cumberbatch
The opener is set in 1982 and begins with Patrick (Cumberbatch), who is upper class and super-wealthy, answering the phone in London. It’s a crackling line from New York. His father, he is told, has died. ‘Very sorry, Patrick…’ Patrick slumps, falls to his knees. In grief, we assume, until we see it’s to pick up a fallen syringe. From here on in, Patrick is under the influence of heroin or Quaaludes or amphetamines or alcohol or cocaine, not always all together, but sometimes. This actually sounds dull – oh God, not another of those descents into drug-crazed madness – but that’s only because I probably haven’t sold it very well. There isn’t a dull moment, I absolutely promise.
He heads to New York. Shots of him approaching the room where his father’s corpse is being held at the funeral home are cut with him approaching his father’s bedroom door, with terror, when he was a child. What happened in that room will become the focus of episode two, but for now it’s enough to know his father was a monster in some way, and that Patrick is in pain. Patrick twitches, throws up, slides against walls, trashes hotel rooms, contemplates suicide, showers everyone with wads of cash, hits the streets in the middle of the night in search of smack. And throughout, Cumberbatch is dazzling.
It’s not just the energy of the performance, which would likely be sufficient in itself, but the way he makes Patrick so vulnerable and relatable and darkly funny. It will blow your socks off unlike, for instance – let me think, let me think – any of the crime thrillers currently doing the rounds? It’s hard to say whether I am done with crime thrillers or they are done with me. I can only tell you it’s one or the other. Even The Bridge, where Saga’s autism is now being clumsily played for all its worth, has become monumentally annoying. The Danish head of immigration has been gruesomely murdered and there’s still only a couple of cops working on the case, and there’s no government or media interest, and the intelligence services – where are they? So it’s either that, on the crime-thriller front, or it’s those small communities where everyone is harbouring a festering secret. You may think you don’t live in a small community where everyone is harbouring a festering secret, but are you sure? As they are so rife?
Small communities were everyone is harbouring a festering secret can happen anywhere, any time, but if you live by the sea where fishermen’s blue twine is to hand, you may want to get out especially quick. That was the setting for Broadchurch, and now it’s the setting for Innocent, which dragged on and on over four nights. The deal, in a nutshell: David Collins (Lee Ingleby) went down for his wife’s murder but seven years later is acquitted on a technicality and returns to this place by the sea with the blue twine to hand. Did he do it? If not, was it his best friend (Elliot Cowan) or his wife’s sister (Hermione Norris) or her husband (Adrian Rawlins)? There was one person who seemed above suspicion so of course it turned out to be that person. I don’t think you had to be a genius to have worked that out by the end of episode two although if you insist otherwise, I can happily go with that.
My plot-hole police were all over this, inevitably. The actual, initial police investigation into the murder was appalling. Evidence was obscured, witnesses not interviewed, phone records not investigated, forensics not thorough, and so on. It had to be, if the story were to work, but when it came to court either the judge would have thrown the case out or the defence would have eaten the prosecution alive. Either way, David would never have gone down in the first place. So there is that but, more importantly perhaps, if you don’t put the character work in, everyone is just a cog, and charmless and forgettable. In fact, quiz me in ten minutes and I’m sure I won’t remember a thing…
Every picture tells a story
Hell’s Kitchen begins on ITV
May 23, 2004
The stress-infused cooking show saw Angus Deayton make his presenting comeback, but the leading antihero was Gordon Ramsay. He trained ten minor celebrities – from Edwina Currie to Al Murray – to cook as they ran a restaurant in London. Pugilistic Ramsay ensured the heat didn’t just come from the food – two contestants walked out after roastings from the chef, and he drew complaints for his fondness for conducting conversations purely in expletives. After series one, Ramsay bundled the show off to Hollywood, though it carried on here with presenters including Marco Pierre White and Gary Rhodes. Gwen Smith
Pugilistic Ramsay ensured the heat didn’t just come from the food – two contestants walked out after roastings from the chef, and he drew complaints for his fondness for conducting conversations purely in expletives