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2 days ago
4
This City Is Ours (BBC One) | iPlayer
Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Studio (Apple TV+)
The Change (Channel 4) | channel4.com
Oh great, I thought, when I first heard about This City Is Ours (BBC One), a gangland drama – we definitely haven’t got enough of those. But, oh me of little faith! Written by Stephen Butchard (The Last Kingdom) across eight episodes, set in Liverpool and laced with pathos, greed and everyday brutality, this turns out to be a different level of gangland drama.
Sean Bean is Ronnie, a seasoned drug lord of “lemo” (cocaine), in league with Colombian “amigos”, who wants more money to retire with his wife, Elaine (Julie Graham). With slick-haired, Matt Monro-loving Ronnie verging on stepping down, those around him start to manoeuvre. Swooping through the deluxe kitchens and hard, watchful eyes of the gang’s wives, the vibe is The Sopranos meets The Godfather, scouse-style. Ronnie’s right-hand man (James Nelson-Joyce) is even called Michael, and he has a new redemptive love interest in Diana (Hannah Onslow). He and Ronnie are locked in an ersatz father-son formation. Ronnie’s actual son, Jamie (Jack McMullen), is a lairy blowhard, but Ronnie seems to be listening to him.
Thus, This City Is Ours begins extremely well: dark, tight, unpredictable, with stirring themes of succession, frustration, betrayal, secrets and status anxiety. Nelson-Joyce and Bean, who appeared together in Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama Time, mesh brilliantly. Then again, so do all the cast, whether lolling around Ronnie’s swanky Spanish villa or obediently line dancing en masse at a christening. Only one lacquered, dead-eyed wife (Derry Girls’ Saoirse-Monica Jackson) breaks the spell, hissing sourly to Diana: “I’m you sooner than you think.”
I can’t say what happens (that would be spoiler-geddon!), just that there’s a death, and everything – violence, manipulation, desperation – surges from that. As time goes on the drama is marred by a risible plotline involving a cage fight; there’s also an oddly lacklustre finale. But it’s elevated by stunning performances, not least Nelson-Joyce, who cements his credentials as a charismatic screen presence with extensive emotional range. TCIO is nowhere near as good as The Sopranos (what is?), but it’s still a cut above the ordinary.
The 90-minute BBC One documentary Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On focuses on an important issue: are people starting to forget the Covid pandemic (lockdowns, social distancing, the rising death tolls numbering hundreds of thousands), and where does that leave the bereaved?
The Alzheimer’s-stricken mother of the film-maker Catey Sexton died of Covid in a care home: “Three carers were holding her hand and I will be grateful to them for the rest of my life.” Sexton gives voice to some of those who, like her, lost people they loved, during a crisis that led to the UK’s biggest loss of life since the second world war.
Here it’s not just about how people died, but also how they lived, who they were. The bubbly nurse and mother who was pregnant and couldn’t have the vaccine. The kind, funny grandad. The popular, wise bus driver. The affectionate uncle with special needs. The care home worker who was only 21 when she died.
There are spikes of politics and anger: the deadly mistakes of the UK government; the misleading medical advice; the risks faced by key workers. There is also a keen sense of two Britains: one still consumed by grief and the other that has moved on. Somehow managing to be both gentle and harrowing, Love and Loss strikes a poignant chord.
In Seth Rogen’s new Apple TV+ comedy The Studio, his character, Matt, is a newly minted Hollywood studio head who yearns to make important movies. “I’ve heard you’re really into artsy fartsy film-making bullshit,” says his boss (Bryan Cranston), a sulphurous la-la land grotesque. Matt despairs when he and his team (Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders) are forced to start a farcical franchise (Kool-Aid Man): “I got into all this because I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.”
With Rogen working alongside longtime creative partner Evan Goldberg, The Studio aims to be a self-lacerating Hollywood satire (The Player, Tropic Thunder, The Franchise), but also full of love for movies. Most of the 10 half-hourish episodes highlight industry mores: one-take scenes, award ceremony speeches et al.
This is crammed with starry cameos: Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Olivia Wilde, Charlize Theron, Steve Buscemi, Zoë Kravitz, Zac Efron and more. Some work, others are laboured and overly deferential. Ricky Gervais hit the celebrity cameo sweet spot in Extras: go completely savage with their reputations or just don’t bother.
More effectively, the main cast (including Catherine O’Hara as a deposed studio head) are great, and, in Matt, Rogen delivers an unravelling, soul-sapped everyman who Jack Lemmon might have played. The Studio is good fun, but in terms of truly biting satire it needs to be naughtier and sharper.
Bridget Christie’s Channel 4 menopause comedy The Change is back for a second six-part series, co-directed by Mackenzie Crook. Creator-writer Christie returns as Linda with the wild warrior-woman hair, who left behind her husband (Omid Djalili) and teenage children to abscond to the Forest of Dean to claw back time she’s wasted on housework-drudgery.
This time, “Linda’s ledgers” (in which chores are listed) spark a quasi-feminist revolution, seeing her denounced as the “Mick Lynch of dusting”. Laura Checkley joins Susan Lynch as an “eel sister” (siblings who run a cafe serving eels and mash to local people). Also returning is Jerome Flynn’s cryptic Pig Man; Paul Whitehouse doing his Peter Cook/Dudley Moore double act with Linda in the pub; Liza Tarbuck as Linda’s abrasive sister, Siobhain, the human equivalent of paint stripper; and Jim Howick as the raving manosphere radio jock: “You think you’re a Milf but you’re just bitter, old and barren.”
As the drama’s signature pagan, pastoral, folksy, mystic, witchy themes hiss, spit and crackle, there are times when it tips over into Game of Hormones. Still, you’ve got to love a show that persists in being this riled up about women being lumbered with housework (hallelujah, sister!). The Change remains one of those stubbornly eccentric TV curios that should be cherished.
Star ratings (out of five)
This City Is Ours ★★★★
Love and Loss: The Pandemic 5 Years On ★★★
The Studio ★★★
The Change ★★★★
What else I’m watching
Million Dollar Secret
(Netflix)
A new gameshow in which one person is given a million dollars but must keep it a secret from fellow contestants on a luxury Canadian estate. Hosted by Peter Serafinowicz, it’s not the new Traitors, but it’s a giggle.
David Blaine: Do Not Attempt
(Disney+)
The magician travels the globe being taught dangerous stunts (sticking knives up his nose, setting fire to his head). Whatever they’re paying him, he’s earning it.
Salman Rushdie: This Cultural Life
(BBC Four)
Rushdie was due to be interviewed for This Cultural Life before he was stabbed in 2022. He talks to John Wilson about his work and surviving the attack.
