LOST IN AUSTEN
STV Wednesday, 9pm
THE CHILDREN
STV Monday, 9pm
SHOOTING BRITNEY
E4 Monday, 10pmHOW much do you hate the phrase "with a twist"? Not as much as me, I bet. It meant something once, but that was eight y
ears ago, and only for five seconds. Still, it keeps being used as if it's just been minted, Sainsbury's sponsorship of ITV drama being the latest annoying example. Obviously the copywriters never had one of my old editors squinting over their shoulders. "Avoid clichés like the plague" was his catchphrase. That editor was larger than life, these were wise words, and without wishing to blow my own trumpet, I've found that heeding them in my journalistic career has been as easy as pie.
The inference in Sainsbury's espousing food "with a twist" in advance of the programmes is that what follows will be drama with a twist, which is potentially even less appetising, especially on ITV. I'm not the biggest fan of costume drama you'll ever meet, nor the biggest Doctor Who fan. The idea for Lost In Austen was that this new four-parter should combine the two, with Jemima Rooper as the time-traveller conveniently resembling a Doctor's assistant. This didn't seem promising, and for the opening minutes I thought it was still the commercial break. With a well-thumbed Penguin Classic of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, Rooper as Amanda Price was curled up on her sofa in a hackneyed manner and I couldn't work out whether she was advertising wine, gas fires or must-end-Sunday furniture warehouse credit-crunch sales.
But things got better. Sillier, but better. Amanda discovered Elizabeth Bennet in her shower and suddenly they'd swapped places, Amanda disappearing down a portal linking boring old Hammersmith with Longbourn, home to the bonneted Bennets. "So what's the deal here?" she asked. "Are we live on cable or is this like the Jim Carrey thing, but period?" Her new best corseted friends tittered at this. And they tittered some more when she wailed: "What do I have to do to get out of here – show my pubes?"
The Longbourn set were baffled by Amanda ("It's called a landing strip, Lydia") but she was certainly brightening up needlework sessions. And, slowly but surely, Amanda was forgetting all about her crummy bank job and her crummy boyfriend ("Had it off with a waitress two nights running") and his drunken proposal with a ring-pull.
Culture-clash dramas are easy, and therefore easy to do badly, but Lost In Austen is such good fun that you forget about the things which bothered you before the first ad break and another plug for Sainsbury's (Why does Amanda not take off her leather jacket and high heels before crashing on the sofa? How is Elizabeth Bennet coping with Hammersmith and 2008?). I don't know where writer Guy Andrews is going with the show but this far it's a success and much of that is down to Rooper, a feisty actress with a helmet of hair who I last saw in some supernatural guff called Life Line, playing a bunny-boiler. You wouldn't want to mess with her in any mode: fantasy, contemporary or period, especially period. In a trailer for this week's instalment she was so frustrated by her inability to dance the quadrille and, more crucially, the distant stare and high-collared pomposity of Mr Darcy, that she kneed him in the goolies.
Amanda shocks early 19th-century England with the ferocity of her kissing. When she snogged Mr Bingley I thought the lower half of his face was going to disintegrate.
Poor Kevin Whately, though, cannot kiss to save himself. He can call a tedious committee to order. He can be a proud dad on the football touchline. He did these things and more in the first episode of the new Lucy Gannon drama The Children, proving that few actors on TV can match him for dull, driving-gloved dependability. But when he snogged his new girlfriend Geraldine Somerville it put me right off my macaroon bar.
Every man in The Children has a new girlfriend. This three-parter is about the fallout from divorce and the often childish behaviour of adults as some move on quicker than others, and you can guess from the show's title who suffers the most. Not just home alone, these kids check into hospital alone. One small girl blithely remarks that a friend has "three daddies"; an older girl explains a connection with another step-family waif by the fact that "my dad's shagging her mum".
If this makes The Children sound clichéd, it isn't. It's subtle and chilling, and not just when the unfortunate Whately puckers up. That's two ITV dramas I'm enjoying right now. Maybe this is what they really mean by "with a twist".
In Shooting Britney, an endearingly rubbish paparazzo hoping to rejoice under the splendid byline of Buddy Dolphin tried to get himself a piece of the $120m that's being generated annually for the American economy by the demand for photos of one of the country's biggest stars, post-breakdown.
We're talking about Britney Spears, of course – the only US celebrity with her own dedicated "pap-pack". Like meerkats on sentry duty, they stand up in their jeeps and wait for Spears' white Cadillac Escalade to sweep down Hollywood's Mulholland Drive and then give chase.
One jeep is always out in front. Alison Silva (a man) is the leader of the pack, and you wondered how the chain-of-command worked. Silva, Brazilian like the rest, flipped open his laptop and showed footage of what Dolphin immediately dubbed "Britney Fight Club". A right uppercut to the jaw of the would-be interloper is how it works.
So how was our man going to gain acceptance and get his pictures? "You need balls," said Silva. Dolphin, bless him, didn't look like he had any. With his bed head and thick glasses, he was soon falling over at the crucial moment.
When all else fails, documentary makers often play the "British card". Alan Whicker instructed Haiti's dreaded Tonton Macoutes militia-men: "Excuse me, clear a path, British television." In desperation, Dolphin squeaked: "Britney! I'm from England!" He didn't get his snaps but he got a funny film.
The full article contains 1056 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
