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The TV shows to watch this week: From Dublin Murders to The Name of the Rose

BBC
BBC

Dublin Murders looks to be a worthy contender for viewers’ attention as the nights draw in. This new crime drama – murder mystery of course – is designed to draw you in and keep you there for an ambitious eight-week run.

Well, over the years we’ve had detectives looking into grisly murders everywhere from Oxford to San Francisco, from Shetland to Sicily, from Oslo to Guadeloupe, so why not Dublin? There are some reliable contours to the story – male-female pairing of cops, Cassie and Rob (played by Sarah Greene and Killian Scott), each with troubled lives and a complicated professional relationship; a ritualistic murder of a young girl in the woods (they are almost always young girls, aren’t they?), her body laid out in theatrical fashion upon a sacrificial stone; and not much to go on.

I suppose the genre has grown so formulaic over half a century or more of television treatment that the investigation of a grisly homicide in your living room (I mean the investigation on the telly, not the homicide), is a sort of comfort viewing, where you sort of know where you are and what you’re supposed to be wondering. Or maybe I am being a touch unkind. Based on the novels of Tana French, the “first lady of Irish crime”, and adapted by Sara Phelps, it has promise.

More reliable, or leastways even more familiar quantities are the evergreen The Apprentice, The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing, the sort of sub-brands that the broadcasters can milk for all their worth over many, many years, again because the average British television viewer doesn’t actually seem all that keen in innovation and the shock of the new. They’re all about halfway through their run, it’s easy to pick the threads, and they’re all as good, to be fair, as they ever were.

Granville (David Jason) with his son Leroy (James Baxter) (BBC)
Granville (David Jason) with his son Leroy (James Baxter) (BBC)

Would that one could say the same for Still Open All Hours. Those of us old enough to remember the originals – goodness, they were on the air 40 years ago, you know – treasure Ronnie Barker’s beautifully drawn caricature of the mean old shopkeeper Arkwright, ably assisted by young delivery boy Granville, as in G-G-G-Granville, f-f-f-fetch yer cloth!” Granville, or David Jason as he is better known has grown up and inherited Arkwright’s shop, I presume, and an actor of Jason’s abilities will make the best of it and make it minimally watchable, but that’s about all.

The original writer, Roy Clarke (89) is still knocking the scripts out, but it does feel a bit past its sell-by date, despite the charm. Still, it gave me one of my favourite catchphrases “I know that face” which Arkwright used to say when he spotted his paramour Nurse Gladys Emmanuel bending over the bonnet of her Morris Minor or some such. Simple, crude, dated, innuendo-laden humour delivered with impeccable timing, then as now, but I still think they should have stopped making it in 1985, on balance.

Bernard Gui (Rupert Everett) brings some torture to the slaughter (BBC)
Bernard Gui (Rupert Everett) brings some torture to the slaughter (BBC)

I am much looking forward to seeing the incomparable Rupert Everett as late medieval papal inquisitor (ie torturing sadist) Bernard Gui in this Italian production of The Name of the Rose, based on Umberto Eco’s famous novel. Everett will be displaying his catholic, in more ways than one, range in due course. For this week we have the murder of a young monk discovered dead in a vat of pig’s blood – dead, but not drowned, a sort of human black pudding. And there’s plenty more sanguinary horror where that came from in this sumptuously photographed if gory eight-part series. A bit of a treat, in fact.

Last, the football highlight of the week is England’s clash with Bulgaria, broadcast by ITV on Monday evening. Hopes for England are high, and the interest, these days, derives from which of the dizzying array of young talent Gareth Southgate will pick for the squad, and how they repay his confidence – Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Marcus Rashford and Trent Alexander-Arnold are the ones to watch. Should make for excellent viewing, though the Bulgarian fans can be racist and there is the chance of a dramatic walk-off by England.

Dublin Murders (BBC1, Monday 9pm); The Apprentice (BBC1, Wednesday 9pm); The Great British Bake Off (Channel 4, Tuesday 8pm); Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1, Saturday 6.40pm); Still Open All Hours (BBC1, Friday 8pm); The Name of the Rose (BBC2, Friday 9pm); Euro 2020 qualifier, Bulgaria v England (ITV, Monday 7pm)

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