The TV shows you need to watch this week: From Endeavour to David Bowie
Sunday evening will see the battle of zodiacs as ITV’s new series of Endeavour goes up against BBC offering Call the Midwife. Ford Zodiacs, that is, because, set in roughly the same rose-tinted era of the 1960s, we may well see DCU Fred Thursday in his black Ford Zodiac with police markings, simultaneously broadcast with Dr Patrick Turner driving his blue Ford Zodiac estate. Not that I’m mad about old cars or anything, but it is just a telling symbol of the current mania for period dramatisations with disproportionate effort going into the work of the props department rather than, oh, I don’t know, maybe, the writing. Short of inventing a Tardis, we will probably never get closer to time travel than this.
Endeavour, by the way, an Inspector Morse prequel, is now in its sixth series, and the look and feel is authentically Morsian, as is Shaun Evans’ portrayal of young sergeant Endeavour Morse. The best thing about the new series is the return of the incomparable Roger Allam, who can hold a television audience with a barely perceptible movement of lip or brow. To be honest, these later iterations lack some of the watertight qualities of the original stories by Colin Dexter, but, as escapist reveries of half a century go, it has the edge of Call the Midwife. In any case not since Z-Cars has the Ford Zodiac (the mark III version, to be precise) enjoyed such cultural prominence. Not great to drive, mind you.
Nikki Lilly is a star vlogger who has displayed enormous courage in dealing with a disfiguring and life-threatening illness. That’s a bit of a cliche, the bravery thing, but her life really has required some considerable reserves of resilience, and that does amount to courage. Two years ago she made a film about her life, in its own way trying to improve the acceptance of people who look, but who are not in fact, different. Now, aged 14 there is a further update and further progress, as she endures her toughest surgery yet. Combining observational footage, video diaries and her own vlogs, I Will Survive is an intimate and very personal insight into the resilience of a remarkable young woman.
Recent increases in blood pressure in her body has made her nosebleeds and headaches a lot worse, and last June after a bleed that wouldn’t stop Nikki was rushed into hospital and put into a sleep induced coma. Getting past that, Nikki is feeling isolated and very lonely. She is honest about not wanting pity and people to feel sorry for her but feels it’s important to let people understand her life better. So thanks to her and, of course, thanks to Great Ormond Street hospital for all they do.
The luvviefest that is the Baftas will mesmerise the media over the next few days. Joanna Lumley kicks off the actual awards, rather than the media and gambling frenzy that precedes them, and she’ll be doing so in the fittingly grand setting of the Royal Albert Hall. Olivia Colman and The Favourite are the favourites to pick up the gongs. Cirque du Soleil do a turn to break up the monotony; it drags on for two hours.
It is a final farewell to Catastrophe, which probably should even more awards than it has. If you didn’t know it, by the way, the title derives form a line in the 1964 classic movie Zorba the Greek: “Am I not a man? And is not a man stupid? I’m a man, so I’m married. Wife, children, house – everything. The full catastrophe.” That about sums it up.
Written by and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney as an angst-ridden every-modern-couple dealing with the usual and unusual challenge life has to throw at them, it has few equals for wit and foul-mouthed charm: They manage to make mugging amusing, that’s how clever they are. Somehow Delaney and Horgan have also succeeded in stopping sufficiently short of turning into a schmaltzy mid-Atlantic take on friendships, by making sure their principal characters suffer sufficient sexual, economic and emotional hardships to keep them real. Anyway, it’s climaxed, and left behind its own warm, wet patch in the middle of the televisual bed for us to remember it by. So, thanks.
The BBC’s recent Icons competition tells us just how fleeting fame can be, but also how strong a roel fashion plays in fame, even posthumously. Alan Turing for example, the winner of the global figure of the 20th country, has enjoyed a considerable vogue in recent years – and I do not mean to demean his colossal achievements nor trivialise the persecution he suffered in a supposedly civilised Britain; I’m just saying he’s trendy, and so trendy that he managed to overhaul Mandela and David Bowie, not to mention leaving Elvis Presley and Gandhi way back in the dust.
Which is a long way of introducng yet another retrospective on the works of Bowie, who died just over three years ago. David Bowie: Finding Fame promises rare tracks and interviews that throw us back to the days when David Jones, as he then was, was wandering around 1960s London looking for some work.
Perhaps someone will plonk the young David Jones/Bowie with his long hair and funny ideas a cameo on Call the Midwife or Endeavour. He could get to drive one of the classic Fords and everything. Ziggy Stardust in a Zodiac: The ultimate synthesis.
Endeavour (ITV, Sunday 8pm); Call the Midwife (BBC1, Sunday 8pm); I Will Survive (CBBC, Monday 5.30pm); The British Academy Fim Awards (BBC1, Sunday 9pm); Catastrophe (Channel 4. Tuesday 10pm); David Bowie: Finding Fame (BBC2, Saturday 9pm)
