Collateral
Monday, BBC2
Civilisations
Thursday, BBC2
Rating: 
Mum
Tuesday, BBC2
Rating: 
(I don’t have space for it this week, but it’s still terrific… and Cathy and Michael nearly went to a garden centre!)
Time to say bye, then, to David Hare’s Collateral, which ended this week and, like McMafia, sharply divided opinion, with its detractors saying it wasn’t so much a drama, more political hectoring dressed up as drama, and there was that, admittedly. I imagine Hare’s day may start with him saying to himself: ‘I will make a cup of tea and I will walk the dog and then I will sit at my typewriter and have a Labour MP say exactly what I think about the free market and the free movement of people and then I will make another cup of tea and then I will go back to my typewriter to show everybody how those at the top get away with it while those at the bottom pay and then I will have a sandwich – ham – and then I will put yet more words into characters’ mouths that people would never naturally say.’ I don’t know if he gets so carried away with putting yet more words into characters’ mouths that people would never naturally say that he clear forgets to walk the dog again, but I hope not. Dogs do need walking, you know, at least twice a day.
Carey Mulligan in Collateral. Despite dividing opinion, the programme had a tremendous cast
But still. It had a tremendous cast – Carey Mulligan, Nicola Walker, Billie Piper, John Simm – so if you are going to have characters say what people would never actually say, it’s best coming from them. And Jeany Sparks’ character, Sandrine Shaw, who wore her battle fatigues even when taking lunch in Surrey with her mother, was fascinating. The two most riveting scenes were entirely down to her. One was when she confronted the wife of the army major who had raped her, and the other was when, holed up in that inn, Mulligan’s police detective, Kip – or Quip, as she’s known in this house as she has a sharp riposte for everything – tried to talk her down and made a crucial mistake. Needless to say, with Hare being Hare, Sandrine wrote a full and frank expositional suicide note before blowing her head off.
Some have said that storylines just dribbled away, and there is truth in that too. Walker’s priest and Piper’s trust-fund mum, for instance, turned out to have nothing to do with the story in hand but, come on, it was good having them along for the ride, surely. In fact, I was more interested in them than the story in hand, which was undramatic and confusing. I suppose one would have to know more about the relationship between the police and MI5, but they work in opposition? You’d remove a ‘mole’ responsible for saving hundreds of British lives, just like that? And I know Sandrine was suffering from PTSD, but would she simply buy that Asif was a ‘terrorist’?
It was sometimes cliché-ridden – ‘the time for listening is over,’ said every politician, ever – and sometimes obvious-metaphor-ridden. Sandrine’s blood, for instance, splattered all over wallpaper depicting English hunting scenes. (A stain upon our nation!) And also the birth of a baby after a death to symbolise new life, which is such a tired old trope it’s a wonder babies put up with it. (As one said to me lately: ‘I have range. I could play a fishmonger, say. If only someone would have the courage to cast me.’ ) And Quip? It was fun watching her run rings around the MI5 fella, but I was insanely disappointed that her pole-vaulting past never came into play. I was thinking: a high fence, a suspect the other side, a broom leaning against it… but no. Perhaps that was a metaphor too, but I can’t think for what. I may just be metaphored out.
On to Civilisations, which is intended as a landmark arts series, like its 1969 forebear, but just seems like standard BBC arts programming. And is ‘civilisation’ purely art? A good sewage system: is that not civilising? Putting all that aside, this week Mary Beard considered how we look at art, and the approach was higgledy-piggledy as she flew all over the world cherry-picking artefacts, which she then perched on, rather distractingly. There was no coherent timeline but, that said, I did enjoy seeing what I could see of the artefacts, given all the perching. Her argument, I think, was that our reverence for Greek and Roman sculpture as the artistic ideal only exists because, in the 18th century, the German art historian Johann Winckelmann, who had tremendous influence, told us this was so. But why her view should be more legitimate than his, I don’t know. They’re simply both telling us what to like. Needless to say, Beard was trolled yet again after the episode went out because she doesn’t conform to what abject morons think women on television should look like. I note Jeremy Clarkson never gets trolled in this way. But then, he is a dish.
