DEBORAH ROSS: So hideously good, I can’t bear to watch. But I will…
The Accident
Thursday, Channel 4
Prince Charles: Inside The Duchy Of Cornwall
Thursday, ITV
Rating: 
The Accident is the latest drama from screenwriter Jack Thorne (National Treasure, Kiri), and it is so good you may not be able to watch. Chernobyl was so good I often felt unable to watch but did anyway, and I don’t know if I can take one after the other. They are both what I call ‘Brace Yourself’ dramas. Brace yourself for the horror. Brace yourself to be harrowed within an inch of your life. Brace yourself, brace yourself, brace yourself.
But even so, The Accident played what almost felt like a mean trick. You thought you were through the other side. You had survived The Accident of The Accident. But then, at around the midway mark, came a twist so unexpectedly dark and shocking and domestic, it didn’t seem at all fair. How could I have braced myself for that? Hey, what’s the deal here?
Mia (Emily May) and Leona (Jade Croot) in The Accident. This was hideously good
The drama, which was inspired by Grenfell, is set in a fictional small Welsh town where a large construction development offers hope of regeneration. It is the beloved project of the council leader, Iwan Bevan (Mark Lewis Jones), whose wife Polly (a powerhouse performance from Sarah Lancashire, as per) is a hairdresser.
Their day kicks off with the town’s fun run while their 15-year-old daughter Leona (Jade Croot) leads a group of other teenagers to the construction site for a jape. When a drama is called The Accident, waiting for The Accident is pure hell. I kept pausing and pausing and pausing. I think it took me several hours to get to the inevitable explosion. Maybe even a couple of days.
The explosion. Horrific, as accompanied by apocalyptic blizzards of dust and then the keening wails and screams of the parents at the construction site gates as they realise their kids may be trapped inside. Next, it’s the agonising wait for news and the arrival of Harriet Paulsen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the corporate executive who has to deal with the community fallout. Leona, it turns out, is the only teenager to have survived. But her father doesn’t appear at the hospital.
This is when it first steers from your regular ‘disaster movie’ template. Where is he? Polly returns home and there he is, staring at his model of whatever it was that was about to be constructed. And then it happens. I can’t even bear to say it. It’s so disturbing I don’t want to ever have to think about it again. It shifted The Accident from being just about The Accident, although to what end I don’t know. And I also don’t know if I’ll be able to continue watching.
With harrowing dramas, the visceral power of the story must root you to the spot, otherwise why stick it out? This was hideously good, in terms of the mounting dread, but there were also story lapses. When, in the opening scene, Polly finds Leona in bed with a young man who claims he didn’t know she was still a schoolgirl, would any mother be quite so unconcerned? All the bereaved parents – would they get their act together to mount a vigil the day after their kids have died? Would the corporation allow just the one person to truck up? Would Leona be able to blink the alphabet almost immediately after undergoing such complex spine and brain surgery? And so on. I’ve been told by someone I trust that I must keep with it. Oh God. Probably, I will. But truly? I don’t want to.
Prince Charles: Inside The Duchy Of Cornwall was PR fluff, mostly. The fly was only allowed on the wall if it was a very nice wall
On to Prince Charles: Inside The Duchy Of Cornwall, which made me laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh. It shouldn’t have. It’s a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary about the ancient royal estate that’s provided a personal income for Princes of Wales ever since 1337, and not a comedy. It was PR fluff, mostly. The fly was only allowed on the wall if it was a very nice wall. So all these tenant farmers were wheeled out to talk about Prince Charles as the most benevolent of landlords, while Prince Charles talked his own self up as the most benevolent of landlords, although it wasn’t this that set me off.
It was the fact that it must be the least ‘woke’ business in Britain. You couldn’t help but notice. You just couldn’t. Everything is run by white, middle-aged men. As it stands, there is only one woman on The Prince’s Council, which meets to advise Prince Charles on the management of the Duchy, and she is Lady Arran, whose main job is to… what, what? ‘I brought her in,’ said Prince Charles, proudly, ‘to deal with the other halves’. So Lady Arran travels the country to take tea with the farmers’ wives? No. Come on. What? Seriously? I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. And in a way, thank God. As otherwise it was just PR fluff.
However, we were told that amid the vast chunks of land owned by the Duchy it also owns B&Q in Milton Keynes. So, in fairness, I should point out that I did learn that.