Bad grammar. There is no excuse for it. Unless you are nose to nose with someone standing on a bomb, in which case anything goes. For this information we are indebted to Trigger Point (STV, Sunday).
The bomb disposal drama is back for a second series; no small achievement considering how nuts the first one was. Still, it has Line of Duty’s Vicky McLure and is produced by Jed Mercurio, creator of same, so we live in hope.
Explosives officer Lana Washington (McClure) has just returned to the UK after a stint abroad. Her colleagues were divided over whether it was good to have her back, and you could hardly blame them. Things have a habit of going wrong when Lana is around, which is not what you want from someone in her game.
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She hasn’t even had time to unpack her toothbrush when there’s an explosion at a London power station - the first in a wave of attacks. During one incident Lana is called on to help her ex, a fellow police officer, who has trodden on a pressure plate bomb. It is a tense situation, which Lana decides is best served by screaming in his face. “You need to be still!” she bellows. “You’re stood on a bomb!” See what I mean about grammar?
Trigger Point only considers its job done if it goes into every ad break on a cliffhanger. No matter how much mayhem has broken out, it is always quiet enough to hear Lana make the fateful snip of a wire. Bonkers, but you have to admire its commitment to thrills.
It is coming up for two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. With allies coming under pressure at home to scale back support, Putin vs the West: At War (BBC2, Monday) was a timely reminder of how we got here.
This being a Norma Percy documentary, the contributors started at director of the CIA level and went up to prime ministers and presidents, plus of course the man of the hour and every hour since, Volodymyr Zelensky.
There were no major revelations in the first of two parts. What we had was Percy’s usual flawless recounting of events, complete with telling details. Germany’s first response, for example, was to offer Ukraine 5000 helmets. Nothing else, just the helmets. Then there was the moment at the UN security council when all the diplomatic phones vibrated as one with news of the invasion.
Old faces turned up. I had forgotten/suppressed Liz Truss being the foreign secretary at the time. She recalled telling the Russian ambassador to get out of her office. He says it was her who stormed out.
Boris Johnson came out of the first part well, his support for Zelensky arriving early and staying the course. Putin is largely absent after the initial deed, save for humiliating ministerial underlings on camera, but that is set to change in the second part next week.
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To Catch a Copper (Channel 4, Monday) looked at the work of the counter-corruption unit in Avon and Somerset Police. It was by far the most disturbing watch of the week.
The job of the unit was to root out any “bad apples” in the force, the ones you hear about when a scandal erupts. Any resemblance between the real incidents dealt with and the work of the fictional AC-12 in Line of Duty was non-existent. No mysterious Mr Big was pulling the strings here. What we saw instead were pathetic bullies who should never have been in the job.
In one case two women officers were called to pick up a woman trying to jump off a bridge. The pair’s behaviour, caught on their body cams (stupidity being a mark of the breed), was appalling.
Filmed over four years, this was genuinely ground-breaking television. The question was: what is being done about officers who step over the line? How many cases are there and what percentage of officers are kicked off the force? The answers, like the rest of the film, will shock and dismay. There are two more films to go; I doubt things are going to get any better.
After all that, this viewer, for one, needed something to restore their faith in humankind. Thank you to Wilderness with Simon Reeve (BBC2, Sunday) for supplying it.
The sheer delight of Reeves and his travelling companion on seeing one of the famously elusive pumas of Patagonia was wonderful to behold. Grins lit up their faces, excited (and whispered) cries were exchanged, and just for a bit all was better with the world.
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The Apprentice (BBC1, Thursday) was in Scotland for the start of the 18th series, with contestants asked to organise corporate away days at Cawdor Castle. Too many toe-curling moments to keep track of, but I did enjoy the one of the women trying to get her head around the tossing of the caber: “I think it’s like a giant piece of wood that gets, like, tossed.”
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