Fisk (Netflix/ITVX)
The Price of Truth (Channel 4) | channel4.com
And Just Like That (Sky Comedy) | sky.com
Who Is Erin Carter? (Netflix)
Our Antipodean friends have provided us Brits with many comic gems: Kath & Kim; Summer Heights High; Flight of the Conchords; Frayed. Now Netflix brings UK audiences Fisk, a six-episode half-hour sitcom that follows a recently divorced contract lawyer, Helen, who has moved from Sydney to a small and unglamorous suburban Melbourne firm.
Kitty Flanagan, an Aussie comic stalwart who created the show with producer Vincent Sheehan and co-writes with her sister Penny, is sublime in the role of the eponymous Helen Tudor-Fisk, wedded to both an oversized brown suit and an overwhelming cynicism.
There’s nothing edgy or cool about Fisk, but it has actual laugh-out-loud lines and a sharpness that stablemates lack. Helen is permanently on the brink of an eye-roll navigating the more irritating minutiae of modern life: the business bro on his laptop in a cafe talking obnoxiously loudly; an overbearing Airbnb host.
Helen veers towards curmudgeon by nature, but there is more going on here: the gender politics of a middle-aged woman starting afresh; her unease at the rise of intrusive technological and societal paradigm shifts.
Her co-workers – Ray Gruber (Marty Sheargold), the affable but minimum-effort boss, Roz (Julia Zemiro, mysteriously suspended from practice), and George (Aaron Chen), the gen Z receptionist and admin assistant (sorry, “webmaster”) – offer excellent support.
And there are some beautifully subtle gags. When Ray tells Helen he’s trying to make the firm a little classier, he does so by straightening their waving, gold lucky cat – that icon of kitsch – which sits on the reception desk.
Thirteen years ago I was on a train from Moscow to Samara, a city on the Volga river, where I lived at the time. As an aspiring writer, one of my heroes was Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist and perennial bete noire of Putin, who had been assassinated two years earlier.
Politkovskaya worked for Novaya Gazeta, the editor-in-chief of which, Dmitry Muratov, is making that same Moscow-Samara train journey at the beginning of Patrick Forbes’s powerful and arresting Channel 4 documentary The Price of Truth, when a masked assailant jumps aboard and throws red paint laced with acetone on him. It sets the scene for Forbes’s exposition of the daily intimidation Muratov faces by the Russian state (historically never keen on dissent) and has done since he established the paper 30 years ago.
Never before though, has the duress extended to shuttering the outlet’s entire operations, which happens here as Muratov and his staff dare to call the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine precisely that.
A good number of the staff escape to Riga to set up Novaya Gazeta Europe. “It has nothing to do with Novaya Gazeta,” pipe-smoking deputy editor Kirill Martynov says, with a conspiratorial grin. Muratov, meanwhile, remains in Russia, despite the risk to his life. “It is hard to imagine your homeland without freedom,” he says of his decision to stay, “but hard to imagine your freedom without your homeland.”
We see Muratov collect the Nobel peace prize (along with Maria Ressa, the Filipino journalist), and Putin gallingly congratulate him at a press conference. As anti-war street protests proliferate, journalists are incarcerated en masse for “high treason”. The film will end with a list of names of those sent to prisons barely changed from the gulags.
Muratov doesn’t think of himself as a hero; he sees himself as a man with no choice, duty-bound. He has a dry humour and a Father Christmas beard, which bring some levity. Muratov’s daughter is almost tearful when she speaks of her pride.
One of the film’s most memorable set pieces is when Muratov decides to auction his Nobel medal, with the proceeds going to Ukrainian refugees. As the price ticks up: $14m, 16, 17… a phone bid comes in: $103.5m. “Well, that’s one way to do it,” the auctioneer says, stunned.
The future of Russia, and other countries that have fallen under the grip of dictatorship, depends on the principles and outward fearlessness of the likes of Muratov. Forbes repeatedly asks him if he is scared. You know I am not going to answer that question, comes the reply, as the editor hops from one people-carrier to the next, safe-house to safe-house.
Fans of Sex and the City will remember The Russian, played by the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (himself a Soviet émigré). But it is Carrie’s former great love Aidan (John Corbett) who has been back on the scene in And Just Like That, the reboot that has appalled and entertained in equal measure. The first series was in the so-bad-it’s-good camp, but the second has seen improved writing and performances. Many of the more irritating elements – Carrie’s podcast, which somehow had live phone-ins; Che Diaz– were relieved of screen time, while the successful newbies Seema (Sarita Choudhury) and Nya (Karen Pittman) were allowed to flourish.
In the first instalment of a two-part finale, we saw Carrie preparing for the Last Supper in her old, beloved apartment, getting ready to move into her new place. But the episode ended with a blubbering Aidan, wracked with guilt after his son, Wyatt, drove into a tree and broke his collarbone. “For the first time,” Carrie intoned, “I was worried.” (To be clear: about her future with Aidan, not tree-struck Wyatt.)
She was right to be. In the finale of the finale, Aidan decides that his boys must come first and suggests that Carrie wait for him for five years. She seems weirdly fine with this, but at least she now has that adorable kitten. Seema, too, is left in limbo as her (badly acted) film director boyfriend heads to Egypt. This episode was a microcosm, in that it dished up the good (by a Michelin-starred chef who catches Nya’s eye) and the awful (the return of the incredibly irritating podcast co-host, stoner-type Jackie).
Miranda, meanwhile, calls a truce with Steve and Charlotte delivers a very righteous speech to Harry about pulling his weight domestically. The absurd romance between Anthony and his Italian twink poet continues.
Oh, and as for that much trailed Samantha cameo? Kim Cattrall, long-term nemesis of Sarah Jessica Parker, is on screen for about, ooh, 30 seconds, essentially explaining why she couldn’t in fact do a cameo. And just like that, she was gone.
There are perhaps three things right with Who Is Erin Carter?, Netflix’s latest thriller (created and written by Jack Lothian): the gorgeously shot Barcelona environs; the occasionally witty line from the school secretary (played by Susannah Fielding); and the acting of 13-year-old Indica Watson, who surely has a bright future ahead of her.
Erin Carter (Evin Ahmad), who isn’t actually called Erin Carter, is on the run. We know this because she wakes up at 5am in Folkestone, Kent, with her daughter, Harper, in tow to board a trawler to take her across the Channel. As if that weren’t stressful enough, she has to manoeuvre a suitcase over cobbles. Five years later, “Erin” is married to kind and handsome nurse Jordi, whom Harper considers her father, and Erin is working as a substitute teacher. All serene enough, until she has a contretemps with two masked figures in a supermarket robbery.
Episode two is better than one but your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance for cliches and suspension of reality. Ahmad is great at smartly directed and choreographed fight sequences, but elsewhere the dialogue can be cringe-inducing. If you’re after relentlessly ratcheting tension, I’d watch The Bear instead.
What else I’m Watching
Mark Cavendish: Never Enough (Netflix)
Having previously had zero interest in cycling, the Netflix documentary Unchained provided an excellent primer. Now, a doc focusing on veteran sprinter Cavendish arrives, and this convert lapped up the tale of his miraculous comeback.
Tommy Jessop Goes to Hollywood (BBC Three)
Jessop gave an acclaimed performance in Line of Duty, but as an actor with Down’s Syndrome, is often overlooked. In this enjoyable doc, he and brother Will head to LA to pitch their own superhero film.
Never Mind the Buzzcocks (Sky Max)
If I had my way, panel shows would cease to exist, given that they stopped being funny about two decades ago. Anyway, the eccentric pop quiz is back, offering quirkier fare than competitors, but still: ban them.
