Early on in Bible Belt bonking and butchery tale Love & Death (STV, Saturday) the central female character, Candy, the cliché bored housewife, turns to the male lead, Allan – who is also unhappily married – and says, ‘Would you be interested in having an affair?’
It’s a great line, delivered by the masterful Elizabeth Olsen with all the deliberate indifference of a coffee shop barista asking if you’d like sprinkles on your latte.
And Allan does indeed accept sprinkles, served up in a cheap motel once a week, because Candy is in fact gorgeous. And that represents the biggest problem with this series. Olsen is of the same DNA as the Olsen Twins, and like her sisters considered to be one of the most beautiful women in all America.
However, Allan is played by Jesse Plemons who is not beautiful at all. And we are asked to believe that Candy could be sweet on a Texas muncher who looks as though he works in a pie shop and eats much of the product.
Okay, you may think I’m being rather superficial here; perhaps Candy sees the inner man in Allan, but no. He’s utterly boring too, with all the charisma of a chilli dog.
And just to totally dismiss even the possibility of such congress, when Allan does have sex with Candy, he keeps his vest on. As we know, only two men in the history of the universe have ever looked good in a vest and that’s Bruce Willis and Brando. The rest of mankind look like Nesbitt.
But if you can get past this casting incongruity there is much to be enjoyed in this slow burn true crime series, including some sharp comedy touches, such as when Candy drops her daughter off at school; ‘Try and come out less stupid than when you go in,’ she says, deadpan. And it really does capture the stupefying boredom of small-town America, loosely held together by religion, but in reality, it’s only the bitching and gentle backstabbing that bonds the town together.
You can almost see Olsen, or indeed Nicole Kidman starring in BBC’s big sci-fi drama The Battle to Beat Malaria (BBC 2, Monday night). Okay, I’m taking a little journalist flyer here. It wasn’t a sci-fi drama, it was a documentary, but it was as scary, thrilling and then ultimately joyous as any space creature movie you’re likely to watch.
Professor Katie Ewer, a senior immunologist at Oxford University played the lead role in this fascinating piece of television that took us under the skin of the work done to combat malaria, a disease which kills more than 1000 children in Africa every day and 600,000 worldwide annually. And when the Malaria parasites were revealed (under a microscope) they proved scarier than the monster in Alien, because they were real.
The drama was always intense, a race against time to find the elusive vaccine, ‘before another child dies needlessly.’ And it heightened each time we cut to a Tanzanian village where we saw the havoc the world’s biggest killer could create. (One mother lost three of her children to the disease.)
Meantime, the Marvel movie-like tension increased when we cut to India, where production company Serum’s CEO Adar Poonawalla showed superhero strength in taking a chance on approval that vaccine R21 would be granted by WHO - and ordered 30m doses to be formulated.
And in the end, we had an ending that Tinseltown producers would have approved of. Extensive tests revealed that R21 was not only safe but between 70-80 per cent effective; an incredible story. And we almost cried as the sobs of unremitting joy flowed from Katie Ewer’s tired and swollen eyes, and gasps of sheer delight emerged from doctors and scientists across continents.
Turns out we didn’t need Nicole Kidman and the like at all. We managed to crush the monster parasite without her.
Oh, for such excitement in sport this week. Don’t know about you but I’m more interested in a Paris bun than the Paris Olympics. But would a look at Sprint (Netflix) help, given that an insight into the characters taking part in sport often heightens enthusiasm?
Well, there was lots to learn watching the hopefuls run around the tracks of the world, but mostly that top runners such as Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson are in a lane of their own when it comes to ego.
‘It’s not about winning a 100m race at all, it’s about chasing immortality,’ says Lyles.
And Richardson isn’t just a runner. ‘I’m a Ferrari,’ she declares.
I know what you’re thinking; you need to have massive self-belief - and a level of narcissism - to be a winner. But I’ve seen Chariots of Fire, and I don’t recall Eric Liddell standing at the winners’ podium in 1924 screaming out ‘I am the greatest athlete of all time!’ And I certainly don’t remember Allan Wells ripping his vest in half in 1980 as he crossed the line in Moscow.
Just as well we’ve got Andy to look forward to.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here