Big Mood (Channel 4) | channel4.com
Renegade Nell Disney+
A Gentleman in Moscow Paramount+
Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods (BBC Two) | iPlayer
There’s a point in dark new comedy Big Mood (Channel 4) when Eddie (Lydia West from It’s a Sin) turns to Maggie (Nicola Coughlan, the first of two Derry Girls to hit the week’s screens) and says: “I fix problems and you… have them.” Written by Camilla Whitehill (a friend of Coughlan’s; they do the Whistle Through the Shamrocks podcast together), Big Mood starts as a potty-mouthed millennial sugar rush. Impetuous Maggie is a playwright; steadfast Eddie runs a bar. Together, the BFFs navigate life in east London.
In the opening episode, Maggie returns to her old school to reconnect with a teacher she fancied (I’ll leave it as a lovely surprise what she ends up washing out of her tights). In another episode, Eddie throws Maggie a secret (“nonconsensual”) Love Actually-themed 30th birthday party. Later, Maggie tries to trick a protege into doing her job (“Being paid for creative work before the age of 25 is something made up by your generation”).
Big Mood is about trying to hold on to friendship in that brutal moment “young” turns into “youngish”. It’s also about Maggie’s bipolar condition, so, yes, another for the genre of female-led mental health/addiction issues – but if the quality remains high, what of it? (In a cheeky meta move, Maggie pretends to have written Fleabag.)
Moreover, Big Mood goes further. People lose patience with Maggie; she self-harms (“It’s more like self-irritating,” she tells a psychiatrist, played by Sally Phillips). When she stops taking her medication (she feels it blunts her creativity), she becomes unkempt. Her skin is blotchy. She loses track of days. She sees things. She lets people down (she lets Eddie down) in big, terrible, irrevocable ways.
Some set pieces, such as a pagan festival, don’t quite land, and over time, Eddie’s character feels underwritten, adrift in the vast Maggie megamix. Still, some jolting, disorienting moments feel genuinely innovative and immersive (this is what mental illness feels like?), and Big Mood manages to be funny, scratchy, sad and strange. This, you soon realise, isn’t mental health gussied up for television. It’s comedy powered by fear, with Coughlan taking you all the way through Maggie’s agonising tumbles down the psychological rabbit hole.
On Disney+ there’s another Derry Girls alumna, Louisa Harland (who played the eccentric Orla). She stars as the titular Renegade Nell, an 18th-century highwaywoman endeavouring to protect her young sisters in the new eight-part comedy drama from Sally Wainwright.
Yes, that Sally Wainwright, but Renegade Nell isn’t Happy Valley with added stagecoaches and smoking muskets. In an audacious pivot for Wainwright, it’s a magic-drenched fantasy adventure set in Tottenham, north London, where proto-feminist Nell is followed by a tiny fairy (a fluttering Nick Mohammed), who imbues her with special powers (catching bullets, hurling foes over coaches and the like) in the manner of a Marvel-esque super-highwaywoman.
Elsewhere, Adrian Lester is a wonderfully diabolical satanist (“I dabble in things most people are frightened of”) who dominates a pair of titled siblings (Alice Kremelberg and Jake Dunn) and conjures darkness (writhing snakes, giant horsemen). Joely Richardson delivers an unscrupulous newspaper magnate, while Frank Dillane really perks things up as a droll rival highwayman (what an assured, witty actor: he gives off Alan Rickman tingles). The plot hinges on a Jacobite rebellion, which Wainwright laces with modern-day messaging (social justice, media intrusion). Then there’s the stoutest Wainwright motif of all: the strong female lead, played with limitless brio by Harland.
Wainwright has clearly breached her contract with the British public. She is our gritty dramatist du jour; she’s not supposed to make Disney fantasy adventures. Except she has – there’s even a brief outburst of musical theatre in a later episode. At times, Renegade Nell feels pitched too young (arguably younger than it needs to be), and apologies to Mohammed, but I found the whimsy-drenched fairy stuff wearing (by the end, I’m ready to pull his little wings off). However, in the main, Renegade Nell is tight, bold and full of heart. I can’t see viewers feeling robbed.
An eight-part drama about a deposed Russian aristo rattling around a fusty hotel? You may be thinking: “Where do I not sign?” The Paramount+ adaptation of Amor Towles’s 2016 bestselling novel A Gentleman in Moscow stars Ewan McGregor as the luxuriantly mustachioed aristocrat Count Alexander Rostov, who unexpectedly survives the 1917 Russian Revolution and, having lost everything, is sentenced to a bizarre form of house arrest at the grand Hotel Metropol. As secret policeman Osip (Johnny Harris) informs Rostov, if he leaves he will be executed (“It is our inclination to put you against the wall”).
Adapted by Ben Vanstone, the novel’s other characters move in and out of the hotel and Rostov’s life, from the (generally supportive) staff to the children he comes to love, to the charismatic actor Anna (McGregor’s real-life wife, Mary Elizabeth Winstead). The count even develops a stilted but meaningful understanding with the grave Osip. Looking ahead, through his years of gilded-cage captivity, there are encounters, too, with the outside world (the terror and poverty of Russia; Rostov’s own poignant memories).
Appearing in almost every scene, McGregor is superb, portraying Rostov almost as an inspirational, Wonka-esque character imbued with copious human spirit. A Gentleman in Moscow is also beautifully filmed (like watching history unfold within a snowglobe). Though let down by a ponderous pace – it’s at least two episodes too long – if you can stick it out, it’s worth a look.
More Russia in Jamie Roberts’s gruelling BBC Two documentary Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods. Using bodycam footage from Ukrainian soldiers, it follows a battalion guarding a crucial railway line near the Kupiansk forest.
Amid the dugouts, the tension, the eating, praying and cursing (“Putin is a dickhead!”), some of the visuals are unbearable: dead and injured comrades; teenage fighters staring sadly into the lens; bloody corpses of Russian soldiers strewn across the snowy forest. (“They are not people to me… they are all devils,” says one commander.) Here is another vital study of the invasion of Ukraine, all the more excruciating because you’re listening to people breathe.
Star ratings (out of five)
Big Mood ★★★★
Renegade Nell ★★★★
A Gentleman in Moscow ★★★
Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods ★★★★
What else I’m watching
Passenger
(ITV1/ITVX)
New drama created by actor Andrew Buchan (Broadchurch). Investigating incidents in a northern community, a police detective (Wunmi Mosaku) encounters what appear to be supernatural elements. Strangely gripping.
Mandy
(BBC Two)
Diane Morgan’s twisty-faced heroine returns with a new series of comedy shorts, starting with Mandy trying out as an air stewardess with magnetised legs (don’t ask). As per, belly laughs and celebrity cameos aplenty.
The Underdog: Josh Must Win
(E4)
New reality fare in which presenter Nick Grimshaw and reality regulars must ensure a relatively introverted contestant (Josh) wins a fake popularity show. It’s undeniably novel.
