DEBORAH ROSS: Sorry, I just can’t get to the bottom of it…
The Little Drummer Girl
Sunday, BBC1
There She Goes
Tuesday, BBC4
Rating: 
This adaptation of John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl has been made by the same team as The Night Manager but it has none of its sexiness or swagger, although what it lacks most are the two crucial qualities for it to work. It’s not involving and it’s not dramatic. It is exceptionally busy, quickly cutting between multiple locations (where are we today, West Germany? London? Tel Aviv? Athens?) but as every element vied for our attention, it was impossible to invest in any one. It will be a critical success – it’s labyrinthine and critics love that for fear they’ll look stupid if they don’t; fact – but not a popular one as it has all the grip of a marshmallow and there isn’t a bare bottom in sight. Bare bottoms, also not crucial. But they do help, are cheering and we have come to rather expect them on a Sunday night.
Florence Pugh and Alexander Skarsgård. Skarsgård plays ‘Joseph’, one of those mysterious, emotionally unavailable men that (male) writers think women adore, but in reality would actually wish to swipe round the head with the instruction, ‘For God’s sake, say something’
The first episode opened excitingly with a tense, clock-ticking bomb scene. I will give you that. But from then on it was essentially talking in rooms or on beaches or in taverns while the inter-titles specified the location and you, perhaps, struggled to put this element together with that. (I know I struggled: I had to watch it twice and still haven’t done with the struggling.) There are three main characters. There’s Kurtz (Michael Shannon), the Israeli Mossad agent charged with bringing down the Palestinian cell blowing up prominent Zionists around the world. There is Charlie (Florence Pugh), the gullible English actress who superficially espouses radical views and is being recruited by the Israelis to infiltrate that cell. And finally there’s ‘Joseph’ (Alexander Skarsgård), also a Mossad agent and one of those mysterious, emotionally unavailable men that (male) writers think women adore, but in reality would actually wish to swipe round the head with the instruction, ‘For God’s sake, say something.’ His job is to make Charlie fall in love with him. (By the way, with ‘Joseph’ and Kurtz did it occur to you that we are somehow being directed to Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness?)
Directed by the Korean cinema auteur Park Chan-wook, this was visually lush, if not absurdly so. It’s all set in 1979 – Shannon is trussed up like Tom Selleck – and the mise en scène is a sea of Seventies brown, offset by lurid wallpapers and vast modular sofas, although I grew up in the Seventies and there was still a lot of Edwardian and Victorian furniture around, you know. It’s not like everyone throws everything out to keep in chime with a particular decade’s style. Meanwhile, plot-wise, as Kurtz busied himself with capturing Salim – the cell is run by four brothers and he’s the youngest – Charlie was appearing in a London pub production of St Joan, future uncertain, until an anonymous patron paid for her to tour Greece along with her fellow cast members. Here, she’s befriended by ‘Joseph’, who turns up humming a tune specifically written for the show. (So, he must have been watching her in London, but she wasn’t creeped out by that?)
Pugh is a magical actress but there may be something too fiercely intelligent about her to play someone quite so naive. Charlie does fall for ‘Joseph’, rather than swipe him, which leads to an embarrassing scene at the Parthenon involving full-body shadow puppetry and lines like, ‘How will I ever love again?’ He finally delivers her to Kurtz, for ‘the role of her life’. ‘I didn’t lie to you,’ ‘Joseph’ says sincerely, as he hands her over. We are meant to take this as true, and as an indication of the beginnings of his feelings for her, as well as his fundamental integrity, but it didn’t wash. He had lied to her. Often. I watched twice, like I said, and I’m still confused. Would a Palestinian terrorist in a safe house conduct his private life in front of the window? Why recruit an actress when you could just employ a female agent? This may pick up, and because I feel guilty about letting Black Earth Rising slip, I’ll watch the second episode. But I may not be in it for the full six-week ride.
The highlight of my week is currently There She Goes. A comedy-drama written by Shaun Pye, based on his own experience of raising a severely learning disabled child, it stars David Tennant and Jessica Hynes (a revelation) as the parents of Rosie (Miley Locke), who is now nine. Rosie is gloriously herself, but it’s hell getting her to the park, and it’s hell getting her out of a bubble bath and, if it weren’t for Mini Cheddars, it would be even worse hell. But this is also filled with love and warmth and understanding and while I can’t say if it’s true, having never raised a disabled child, it has the ring of truth about it. So far, it has been gently comic, but the final scene of this week’s third episode was laugh-out-loud funny, as well as brilliantly touching. (One two woman!) The highlight of my week.
