CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night’s TV: You can almost smell the 1970s in this riveting cold case drama
Sheeltown Murders
Launch the Quattro! Philip Glenister is back as a time-travelling cop – and this time he’s sporting a moustache.
However, he does not play DCI Gene Hunt and Steeltown Murders (BBC1) is not the long-promised sequel to Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes. Instead, this four-part drama recreates the cold case investigation that captured a 1970s serial killer and rapist.
That means across two time zones. Glenister plays Detective Inspector Paul Bethell in the 2000s, sharing the role with Scott Arthur as the industrious young DC Bethell in 1973.
The two actors are so similar that it’s easy to recognize them as the same man in different eras, but the constant switching between decades slows down the story.
That’s a real shame, because it’s a moving and compelling case, and writer Ed Whitmore powerfully evokes both the horror of the crimes and the community’s unwillingness to reopen the wounds.
New drama: Philip Glenister is back as a time-travelling cop in Sheeltown Murders
Actor: Gareth John Bale (pictured) as DC Geraint Bale in Sheeltown Murders
History: The four-part drama recreates the cold case investigation that busted a 1970s serial killer and rapists
It might have been better, and certainly easier, to keep the two strands separate – to reconstruct the murders and then track down the police’s tenacious work after advances in DNA analysis made it possible to reexamine the evidence .
Part of the problem is the sheer vibrancy of the 1970s scenes. Supported by heavy pop from Mott the Hoople and Badfinger, those working-class clubs and rainy bus stops look so real you can almost smell the Rothmans King Size.
Some great CGI backdrops add to the realism, including a shot of the M4 under construction outside Neath. Inside, it’s all leatherette armchairs and rough brickwork.
The noughties are less convincing, despite desktop computers the size of windblocks. Those years lacked a defining style – everything was light beige.
Young and old, Bethell is a methodical cop with a conscience who believes in fair questioning and proper fact-checking. Unlike Gene Hunt, he is more at home in the later period. When he goes off the grid and takes a suspect to a crime scene in hopes of getting a confession out of him, he appears guilty enough to arrest himself for police brutality.
unhappy
Gene would love the total absence of political correctness in Hapless (Amazon Prime Video), a laugh-out-loud sitcom about a socially awkward newspaper reporter. The show started on Amazon as The Jewish Enquirer, before Channel 5 streamed it under its new name. Then it went to Netflix and, thanks to writer Gary Sinyor’s persistence, it’s back for a second series on Amazon.
Starring Tim Downie as Paul Green, a man who never puts one foot in his mouth when there’s room for two, Hapless combines blatantly dirty jokes with a unique penchant for philosophical debate and wide-ranging physical gags. You never know for sure whether the next line will be the opening salvo in a sarcastic discussion of Middle Eastern politics, or a dirty innuendo. No other comedy would dare wonder aloud why arachnophobia is a fear of spiders, and not a prejudice against spiders. . . so why is homophobia not a fear of gays?
Starring Tim Downie as Paul Green, a man who never puts one foot in his mouth when there’s room for two, Hapless combines blatantly dirty jokes with a unique penchant for philosophical debate and broad physical gags.
It is set in North London and many of the running jokes deal with tensions between Muslims and Jews. I just can’t tell you the punch line about why storms don’t have Islamic names like Ahmed, or how to tell the difference between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews. . . but i almost choked laughing.
Hapless is filmed on such a tight budget that one of the sets is Sinyor’s house. It only exists because of its determination to bring it to the screen, regardless of the risks.
Good comedy takes time to develop the characters and find its rhythm, and courage to make us laugh. That’s why there’s so little of it now. This one deserves to succeed.