AS warriors against wokeness would have it, you can hardly swing a cat (metaphorically, of course) without coming across a “trigger warning” alerting viewers to something potentially upsetting. Even news bulletins have them. So it would be the responsible thing to do to tip you the wink about Mary Beard's Forbidden Art (BBC2, Thursday, 9pm).
Here goes: in this two part documentary, the renowned classicist and broadcaster shows us sights and sounds of an upsetting, and in some cases nauseating, nature. But then you had probably already guessed that from the title.
Beard begins with a series of questions. “What art gets forbidden, why, and how? Who gets to see what, and who decides?”
Among her early stops is the British Museum where she picks out two sculptures showing Pan and a female goat having sex. Not one for granny's mantelpiece, really.
She visits Daphne Todd, who won the National Portrait Gallery’s annual portrait award with a painting of her recently deceased mother, death being another difficult subject for art.
Later, she interviews Tracey Emin about her deeply personal work depicting sexual assault, abortion, and most recently her own cancer treatment.
The final stop is a visit to a screening room in the company of Scottish artist and Turner prize winner Martin Creed, who shows her – and us– two short films you really don’t want to watch while having dinner. Trust me.
Beard is her usual breezy but perceptive self, wearing her knowledge lightly as she sets out her arguments for and against taboo works.
Most amusing of all are the scenes where we watch members of the public looking at art and trying to work out what is going on in the picture. When they find out some of them rather wish they had not looked.
“The truth is we are all censors,” says Beard at the close of a fascinating, hour. Next week she looks at art that is forbidden for political, religious or other historical reasons. A certain statue in Bristol features.
The Storyville label attached to a documentary is always a guarantee that an outstanding film follows. Misha and the Wolves (BBC4, Wednesday, 10pm) is no exception to that rule.
Once upon a time, Misha Defonseca, a Belgian woman living in small town USA, told worshippers at a synagogue the story of her childhood.
It was a riveting tale of war, lost parents, and a long trek to find them, most of it spent in the company of a pack of wolves who adopted the seven-year-old Misha as their own.
The resulting memoir attracted the attention of Oprah and Disney, and looked set to be the next publishing sensation. But then an odd thing happened …
Excuse the coyness but I would not want to spoil a minute of writer-director Sam Hobkinson’s film, which tells the story in a series of chapters named after the contributors: “The Friend”, “The Publisher”, “The Wolf Expert” and so on. Some of them would be fascinating subjects for a film in their own right.
In the new edition of Radio Times, Roger Mosey, former editorial director of the BBC, says one way for the corporation to weather the licence fee freeze is for it to boot daytime drama out into the cold.
Hardly the warmest of welcomes for Hope Street (BBC1, Monday-Friday, 2.15pm), the latest addition to the afternoon schedules.
Set in the fictional seaside town of Port Devine in Northern Ireland, the daily serial focuses on the local police station and its newest officer, Detective Constable Leila Hussain (played by Amara Karan).
Transferred from Nottingham, Hussain attracts the attention of locals curious to know why a tiny village that’s hardly a crime capital needs a DC. What is Leila’s real story? Does she know something the locals don’t, like there’s a Mexican drugs cartel on its way?
I doubt it turns out to be that, not least because Ozark got there first. No, such a move would break the cardinal rule of daytime drama, which is to keep things light.
Plus, cater for all ages and don’t be too expensive. Hope Street ticks those boxes and a few more marked “stock characters” besides. So there is a stranger in town (Leila), a nosey parker (B&B landlady Concepta, played by Brid Brennan), a salt of the earth cabbie, a teenager trying to choose the right track in life, a ducking and diving publican, and so on.
The ten-part run starts with a boat being stolen and Leila stepping on some toes. Perhaps Hope Street’s strongest selling point is that it always seems to be sunny there. We could do with more of that as February heads our way.
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