At some point during the opening episode of Wolf (BBC1, Monday-Tuesday), the viewer had to confront the possibility that either they were going mad, or this rum do of a crime drama was howling at the moon.
Two stories ran in parallel. In one, a by-the-numbers troubled cop, DI Jack Caffery (Ukwell Roach), was still grieving the brother lost to him in childhood. Convinced a neighbour was to blame for the disappearance, the DI had moved back into his old home to keep the creep under surveillance. Nothing strange there, then.
In tale two, a posh family from London had driven to their country pad in Wales. They, too, had their troubles, starting with dad’s recent heart op. Plus, it was coming up for the fifth anniversary of a double murder nearby. Where better for some R&R?
Nerves were jangling even before the lady of the house, Matilda, played by Juliet “Truly Madly Deeply” Stevenson, was handcuffed to a radiator and her jewellery fed to the dog. That’s no way to treat a Bafta nominee, or a dog.
But then you had to be able to take a joke to get along with this six-parter. Based on the novel by Mo Hayder, and dramatised by Meghan Gallagher, Wolf was an anything-goes, darkly comic stew with flavours of everything from Straw Dogs to Inside No 9 running through it. Truly Madly Bonkers.
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It would have helped if everyone had been in on the same joke to a similar degree, yet it did not always seem that way. The tone was all over the shop, adding to the confusion. For all the tongue-in-cheek moments and hammy horror acting, there was some pretty nasty stuff here as well. Disembowelled teenagers anyone?
By the end of episode two there was a mountain of things that did not make sense. Was one of the notes stuffed in the dog’s collar, the one without an address, a decoy? What was the deal with the timelines? Maybe it will all come out in the wash, like the blood (or was it?) on Matilda’s floorboards.
Lord Reith would have strongly disapproved of such silliness. The BBC’s first director-general gave the corporation its mission to inform, educate and entertain, in that order. Heat Pumps - What They Really Mean for You (BBC1, Tuesday) would have been more his cup of tea.
With the subject of climate change and net zero in the news, here was something viewers might be interested in and should know about. First impressions were not promising, however. Can you imagine a more dreary, unappealing title?
Yet it did exactly what it said on the tin. The answer to the question was, “It’s going to cost you a fortune, it will be a major hassle, and there is no guarantee it will work.” All clear. Excellent work, presenters. Top job researchers and graphic artists. Even I understood.
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Trouble is, the answer was clear within the first half hour. But on we slogged for another 30 minutes, the programme giving equal weight and time to other options, even when they seemed obviously unsuitable. It felt like a box-ticking exercise. Pardon the energy-related pun, but life drained out of the subject and the programme. Just get the job done and go - it’s good advice for heating installers and programme makers alike.
The BBC should have hired Denise Van Outen, presenter of Secrets of the Supermarket Own Brands (Channel 4, Monday). The former Big Breakfast host wasn’t mucking about. She sailed around supermarkets with her trolley like an Essex version of the Queen Mary, stopping at points of interest. If she didn’t have the answers to the questions posed she knew an expert who did.
It could have been just another in a long line of shows that promise to reveal the inside story of a brand but end up as just so much free advertising. There were similarities, including ye olde taste test where a brand addict’s drug of choice was swapped for something the same but cheaper.
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The rest, though, was fresh out of the box. Outen had some genuinely good tips. Did you know about the codes on packaging that reveal where a product is made? Her analysis of how supermarkets operate was incisive and revealing yet delivered with the lightest of touches. Making something look this easy is hard. Sign her up for the next Budget someone.
Shadow of Truth (BBC4, Monday), a multipart investigation into the murder of a 13-year-old girl at school in northern Israel, was a masterclass in true crime documentary making. Fast-paced and packed with interviews, it followed every twist and turn of a complex case.
I could see why the film, first broadcast in 2016, became a template for so many others that have followed, but watching it felt like rubbernecking at the scene of a tragedy. There was so much detail, a lot of it once seen and never forgotten. Have we reached peak true crime yet? It must be getting close.
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