Strike: The Silkworm
The Jonathan Ross Show
Rating: 
Does private eye Cormoran Strike ever remove that greatcoat? He wears it in the office, he wears it in cafes, in cars, in pubs, and even when he’s watching football on the telly.
If his besotted secretary Robin cared for him half as much as we’re supposed to believe, she’d tell him: ‘Take it off indoors, or you won’t feel the benefit when you go out.’ Perhaps Strike (Tom Burke) needs to keep warm because he thinks he’s so cool.
The second story in the J.K. Rowling series, Strike: The Silkworm (BBC1), was striving desperately for that shimmer of danger around Hollywood investigators as played by Elliott Gould or Robert Mitchum.
Cormoran Strike (Tom Burke) and Robin Ellacott (Holliday Grainger) in Strike: The Silkworm
But it’s impossible to radiate cool when viewers have seen you battered around the bonce with your own prosthetic leg, wielded by a weedy lawyer — the climax of last week’s adventure.
Strike must still have been stunned, because his latest escapade was coming apart at the seams. One minute it resembled out-takes from a Seventies Hammer Horror, featuring people in goats’ heads dancing around a pentagon as they prepared to sacrifice an overweight novelist.
The next, it turned into an audition for Top Gear, with Robin (Holliday Grainger) driving a Fiat at 80mph across a ploughed field.
Sometimes the script was no better than small talk. As Strike and Robin motored down the M4 to interview a suspect, the great detective moaned: ‘Why does he have to live in Devon?’ ‘At least it’s not Cornwall,’ the secretary countered brightly. If that passes for witty conversation between them, it must have been a long journey.
Sometimes, both Burke and Grainger mumbled their lines. Twice, I had to stop and replay dialogue — to find it hadn’t been worth hearing in the first place.
Other characters were so stereotyped that the drama was in peril of turning into a sitcom.
Comedian Jack Dee regaled The Jonathan Ross Show audience with a story of dodging a drink drive charge at Christmas: he was so sloshed that he climbed into the back-seat
The chain-smoking literary agent Liz (Lia Williams) was the identical twin of mad Jane Plough from Matt Berry’s thespian send-up, Toast Of London, on Channel 4. Toast is funny for all the right reasons — but I don’t think J. K. meant us to howl with laughter.
The episode opened with a scene so badly misconceived, it’s hard to know what the writer was thinking. A disappointed author killed herself by lying down with her head in a gas oven.
Either Ms Rowling didn’t know that in 1963 the American poet Sylvia Plath committed suicide in just this way, one of the most famous deaths in literary history. Or she did and was paying some sort of twisted homage to it — a ghastly error of judgment.
Comedian Jack Dee wasn’t showing the best judgment either on The Jonathan Ross Show (ITV) as he regaled the audience with a story of dodging a drinkdrive charge at Christmas: he was so sloshed that he climbed into the back-seat.
It’s not as if these anecdotes are blurted out by accident. They must be rehearsed, since the director always has the appropriate photos and film clips to flash on-screen.
The audience have been rehearsing, too. How else could they manage to laugh at unfunny remarks such as ‘Trainspotters are known for their patience’, or ‘I’ve got four kids’? But such rehearsals were wasted on tattooed soul singer Rory Graham, alias Rag’n’Bone Man, who was almost too shy to speak. He seemed like a nice fellow, a former carer who’s just become a dad for the first time. He can sing, too.
Modest and talented … no one ever said that about Wossie.