The TV shows to watch this week: From the moon landings to Agatha Raisin
It is all of 238,855 miles to the moon, and not particularly easy ones either, requiring the traveller to slip the Earth’s gravitational field and, on the way back in, subsist without natural air, and survive temperatures of 1,649C. So that’s like driving round the M25 2,041 times non-stop (provided there’s not the usual blockage at the Swanley interchange).
Yet, back in 1969, the Yanks managed to do just that, and to send back live moving images to the earth, beamed more or less directly into the (probably) black and white television set in your living room. Even now, it would be counted an amazing achievement, a technological and human breakthrough, but with the technology around half a century ago the first manned lunar mission is, in retrospect, even more impressive.
It took eight days, three hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds for Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Collins to make history, and the remarkable story is dramatised for this week’s special BBC commemoration – Eight Days: To the Moon and Back. Although there had been unmanned landings on the moon, by the Russians, as early as 1959, and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had become the first man in space in 1961, managing to land human beings on the surface presented a new order of challenges, ones that were spectacularly overcome.
The cosmic hopes, fears, tensions, humour and bravery of all those involved are played out once again in a story that always bears a fresh treatment. In retrospect, you might wonder whether it was such a giant leap for mankind after all, in terms not of the fact of it – indisputable – but in terms of the lasting legacy. Most people might be able to identify the invention of the non-stick frying pan as one boon to mankind, and, if you’re a real student of space, that the Apollo programme helped accelerate the miniaturisation of electronics that, in due course, gave us YouTube videos of sneezing cats on our smartphones, but otherwise the benefits seem scant. The sequels, in other words, have been a bit disappointing.
An especially gruesome episode in our island story is recalled in Mad Cow Diseases: The Great British Beef Scandal. About three decades ago, the then government conducted one of those periodic wars on red tape politicians are sometimes given to. One of the areas where the rules were relaxed concerned the treatment of animal feedstuffs, and, in particular the way that feed derived from dead animals could be fed to live ones. In the past, a web of complicated procedures had made it difficult for sheep’s brains with the debilitating disease of scrapie to enter and infect the human food chain via cattle, but in the 1990s some highly bizarre, almost comical images of cows tottering and toppling over began to appear on our television screens and in the newspapers. Eventually some cases in human beings were also diagnosed. It was determined that the national herd had indeed been contaminated, that mad cow disease could spread to humans, and that beef was not necessarily as safe to eat as it once was. Then there was a panic.
This documentary details this cautionary example of the law of unintended consequences of deregulation – the human misery it caused and the huge damage it inflicted on the finances and reputation of British farming. Of course it has one other malign legacy. Alarmed by the disease, the European Union banned the export of some British beef to the continent, on the precautionary principle. The act enraged the British government, led by John Major, who withdrew all cooperation in the councils of the European Union, even when it was not in the British interest to do so. Beef, then, became something of an emotive and powerful symbol of national defiance against a supposedly bullying European superstate. And we all know where that ended up. Ironically, a no-deal Brexit would decimate British beef exports all over again, but that’s another scandal waiting to happen.
Extreme Tribe: The Last Pygmies is Channel 4’s reminder to us that these peoples have, somehow, managed to survive civil war and industrial incursions, and to preserve at least some of their culture well into the 21st century. Around the DR Congo and Central African Republic these descendants of stone age hunter-gatherers are still living their lives in traditional ways, and film-maker Livia Simoka has joined in with the Mbendjele in the remote forest. She only observes, however, rather than joining in with the teeth-sharpening rituals that the ladies deploy in the name of beauty. Funny old world.
Jill Halfpenny stars in Dark Money, which follows Channel 4’s recent The Virtues with a story around child abuse. London parents Manny and Sam (Babou Ceesay and Halfpenny) welcome back their child actor son from his adventures on set for a new sci-fi movie. The magic is soon dispelled when Isaac (Max Fincham) reveals that he has been sexually abused by the film’s producer. It is another four-parter and, like The Virtues, you will find it difficult, if rewarding, viewing.
Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure pretty much says everything about this national-treasure-meets-global-treasure set-up, a random juxtaposition of showbiz and natural history, a phenomenon so commonplace we’ve ceased to ask the rationale for any of these random pairings. What next? Phil Tufnell meets the Naked Mole Rats? Ann Widdecombe does the Serengeti? Len Goodman goes scavenging with hyenas?
Still, who could fail to be moved by Dame Judi comforting a tiny orphaned baby orangutan? She also meets some snakes, and takes the cue for one of those fine theatrical anecdotes that don’t get the circulation they deserve these days. Asked if this was the first time she had handled one she replies: “No, we had real snakes in Anthony and Cleopatra, they got out one night and frightened Michael Gambon out of his wits”. You can take the dame out of the theatre…
Last, a welcome return for the ever-wonderful Ashley Jensen in her screwball detective role of Agatha Raisin. Only Jensen could get away with the fuchsia and tangerine outfits she models for much of the episode, and only she could make the outlandish plots about electric murderers seem perfectly believable. Almost.
Eight Days: To the Moon and Back (BBC2, Wednesday 9pm); Mad Cow Disease: The Great British Beef Scandal (BBC2, Thursday 9pm); Extreme Tribe: The Last Pygmies (Channel 4, Monday 9pm); Dark Money (BBC1, Monday 9pm); Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure (ITV, Tuesday 9pm); Agatha Raisin (Sky 1, Friday 9pm)
