SCOTLAND on the eve of the World Cup was not a good place to be watching My Summer With Des (BBC1, Monday). Not that any place was particularly good, but we had extra reasons for finding it objectionable. It was an orgy of anglocentrism, featuring clips of the English goals in Euro96, a spoof-commentary on the love action from the eponymous Mr Lynam, and a lackadaisical plot about a hapless waster dumped by his girlfriend who quit his job to watch the footie and found the girl of his dreams. A football-literate sexpot who climaxes when England scores and dispenses free tickets for the semi-final: what more could a boy want? And she turned out to be Des Lynam's daughter. At which point the cynical among us wondered why our hero didn't cut out the middle woman and tackle big Des himself?
My Summer With Des was not the worst entertainment available at 9pm on bank holiday Monday - there was stiff competition for that particular accolade - but it was shamelessly formulaic.
Having scored with the stage play An Evening with Gary Lineker (later adapted for the small screen), Arthur Smith obviously thought he could repeat the trick. (What next?
A Bank Holiday with Alan
Shearer?) Again the male characters were soccer-crazy cases of emotional arrested development (but good lads at heart). Again there was plenty of bar-room whimsy masquerading as dialogue (''who's better looking: Brad Pitt or Des Lynam . . ?'') Imagine Fever Pitch crossed with Men Behaving Badly and you'll not be far wrong.
Neil Morrissey did his daft-laddie-mooning-over-a-girl routine, only this time his character's name was Martin, not Tony. John Gordon Sinclair played the Scottish flatmate - a sop to us folk north of the Tweed. Arabella Weir, as his no-nonsense girlfriend, fleshed out a thinnish female stereotype (Smith's idea of sexual equality is to make the girls as knowledgeable about football as the boys). And Rachel Weisz alternately simpered and smouldered her way through the role of magical-realist mystery woman: the sort of girl who'll keep you up all night, and be out pruning your garden before breakfast. Not only was she Des's daughter but she had slept with Eric Cantona, and she drank pints.
All this was, of course, ironic, a satire on the juvenile fantasies of the New Lad, which didn't stop Smith trying to persuade us that Martin's relationship with this Tinkerbell had yanked him into a new phase of emotional maturity, allowing him to see that there were some things (ie her) more important than football. Then she disappeared, as sexy guardian angels will, telling him the result of the yet-to-be-played final so that he could place a bet and win enough dosh to set himself up in a new career as a sports writer. Two years on, a reunion with his lost love beckoned . . . It's called having your cake and eating it. Which is fine, as long as you like cake.
The Stalker's Apprentice (ITV, Monday) was a pot-boiling short story with the obligatory twist, stretched into a 90-minute thriller. Utterly without wit, subtext, social conviction, or psychological depth, but competently executed within its modest ambitions. Gideon Turner acquitted himself creditably as the smirking yuppie who developed a crush on a waitress at a greasy spoon caff and took to offing her friends. Paula Wilcox, Martyn James, Angela Chadfield, and Liz May Brice struggled with a depiction of the English upper classes which could have been scripted by
the Ministry of Propaganda under Brezhnev. James Bolam, in a cameo role as the cardigan-clad master-killer, brought a redeemingly chilling touch to the proceedings.
Soft Sand, Blue Sea (C4, Monday) was as perversely inappropriate for a bank holiday as My Summer With Des and The Stalker's Apprentice were predictable. It was also classic Channel 4: a two-hour drama about children in care, set in Northern Ireland, but featuring street-children from around the globe. Uncomfortable viewing, and not always by design. The adventures of 13-year-old David and nine-year-old Dannielle, on the run from a children's home where - how's this for a twist? - they had not been abused, yielded moments of terrible poignancy, but also periods of bleakly interminable boredom.
I'm not sure I would have stuck it out without my reviewer's hat on, but it was worth it for Aimee Mulligan's portrayal of Dannielle, a heartbreaking mixture of chirpy toughness and buried feeling. Most eloquent of all was the scene where, minutes after she almost drowned, she found herself in the middle of a Post Office raid and was taken hostage, the gunman recoiling involuntarily as he touched her wet clothing. The robbery over, she calmly walked up to the counter and bought a postcard, while the postmistress stood numbed with shock. Only later, when her residential care worker received the card, were we sure that the child had registered the incident at all.
So, there are worse things for a child than a gun to the head. Parental rejection. Hopes cruelly dashed. So much hurt in 13 short years that you steal from the one person who offers you love. Experiences so grim that persecution fantasies offer a queer sort of consolation. Unhappiness so relentless that driving a stolen car into a row of bollards seems a viable escape route. The trouble is that we the viewers knew all this, and felt as distressingly impotent in the face of it as Sarah the-care-worker-who-cared-too-much (Julia Ford). We were granted a half-happy ending, and even that was stretching credulity too far.
Meanwhile, Into the Red (BBC2 Tuesday) offers us conviction-free politicians, boozy hacks, perverted bank managers, scheming bureaucrats, and a dominatrix in thigh-high patent leather boots. In short, the usual ingredients of television satires on British public life. And there is comfort to be had in familiarity. A writer like Guy Jenkin at his best (in Crossing the Floor, for example) can wring belly laughs out of such stock characters, but Malcolm Bradbury lacks the requisite deft touch. Over-wordy witticisms fell clanking from the characters' lips. On the other hand, the cast is starry enough to deserve a second glance.
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