Sherwood (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Lazarus Project (Sky Max, Now) | sky.com
Grenfell: Five Years, Five Stories (BBC Three) | iPlayer
God’s Favorite Idiot (Netflix) | netflix.com
Is Sherwood the best title for the new six-part BBC One crime drama from writer James Graham (Quiz, Ink)? Obviously, it’s set in Nottinghamshire, but that doesn’t mean it has to spark unfortunate mental images of a mulleted Kevin Costner romping earnestly through the glades in sage-hued hessian.
Still, when was the last time a television drama made you jump – truly jolt? Sherwood achieves that with an incident in the second episode (two will be broadcast weekly): an eruption of bewildering, wretched viciousness that left me gaping. Too often, in British drama, you sense what’s coming, if not a mile off, then at least a narrative beat away. Not this time. It was at this point I realised that Sherwood – dark, thorny, uncommon – was something special.
Directed by Lewis Arnold and Ben A Williams, it is loosely inspired by real-life crimes in the area where Graham grew up in a Nottinghamshire mining district. A small community is still poaching in enmity from the 1984-85 miners’ strike, where some downed tools, while others (“Scabs!”) didn’t. Dealing with two murders, the first committed with a crossbow, local detective Ian St Clair (David Morrissey in solid, brooding mode) is joined by Robert Glenister’s nervy Met officer. Both men are dragging personal baggage into the investigation; a subplot involves undercover police spies operating during the strike, one of whom never left the area.
Sherwood isn’t a routine whodunnit – such details are brusquely revealed – it’s more a study of deception against a wider picture of communities flushed into sinkholes by outside forces. In a cast flexing with heavy-duty acting muscle, Lesley Manville and Claire Rushbrook play estranged sisters and Alun Armstrong is a pro-strike diehard. Generally, the blend of personal/political is deftly handled, though, peeking ahead, a character played by Lindsay Duncan unleashes a speechifying state of the nation near oration. It feels so crowbarred in that in a wicked moment, you might wonder if it’s by way of an apology for Graham’s 2019 Channel 4 drama, Brexit: An Uncivil War, where Dominic Cummings, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, was reconfigured as a cuddly genius. As a Midlands lass myself, I was on red alert for accent slippage (only minor offences to report). More importantly, Sherwood has a true sense of the blunt language (“Daft apeth”) and pitch-black humour of the still-undersung region. In this dynamite cast, Adeel Akhtar is particularly effective as a widower atomising before our very eyes.
Over on Sky Max, there’s the new eight-episode time-hopping sci-fi drama, The Lazarus Project. Created by Joe Barton (Giri/Haji), it stars Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You) as George, a data analyst slash app inventor. One moment, George is with his new wife, looking forward to parenthood, the next, he is flung back to relive the last six months again. Eventually, George is invited to join the Lazarus Project by the mysterious Archie (Anjli Mohindra), who describes it as a “top secret multinational organisation dedicated to preventing and undoing mass extinction events via diplomatic, scientific or militaristic means”. Basically, TLP reverses time to avoid global annihilation, but only for that reason. When time reverses, anything that happened during the previous six-month period – good or bad – is in peril of not happening.
Perhaps by now you’re rolling your eyes – “Not another time-hopping thing!”- but it’s nicely done: a Marvel-hued Groundhog Day with imminent Armageddon attached. There are decent special effects – the Arc de Triomphe detonating – and the strong cast includes Tom Burke as a Lazarus-agent gone rogue – “The world wants to die and we keep stopping it” – and Caroline Quentin in one of those flint-eyed head-spook roles that tend to go to Fiona Shaw.
Full disclosure: I succumbed to Cher-themed giggles when a character solemnly asked: “Do you want to turn back time?” Here and there, The Lazarus Project feels too much like a dramatised video game, and what used to be known in certain shampoo adverts as “the science bit” becomes wearing – it’s a surprise the actors don’t explode in a dust storm of expositional dialogue. Still, the show knows the secret of quality sci-fi: it’s always driven by grief and pain.
Last week saw the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster, where a fire caused by flammable cladding ripped through the building in north Kensington, London, claiming 72 lives. Among programmes marking it, there was a spirited BBC Three short, Grenfell: Five Years, Five Stories. Directed by Immanuel OR Adeneye, Comfort Adeneye and Jamal Mehmood, it focused on young people from the area.
Enrique talked about how he hopes to go as far in professional football as he can, but he still remembers the fire. Singer Lyric Grant wrote her first song in the aftermath. Zeyad Cred became one of the founders of the celebrated Grenfell Silent Walk. With closure still not achieved over Grenfell – the age-old grisly story of profits over human safety – this elegantly simple snapshot of young lives playing out against a fraught backdrop gave a real sense not just of community, but of green shoots pushing through.
I was interested to see the new eight-episode Netflix comedy, God’s Favorite Idiot, created by and starring Ben Falcone, mainly because it featured Melissa McCarthy (Falcone’s real-life wife). McCarthy was easily the best thing – earthy, wisecracking – about the 2021 Netflix offering Nine Perfect Strangers, which otherwise could have been entitled Eight Tedious Episodes.
The premise of this – office worker (Falcone) is hit by lightning and revealed as an agent of God – is fine, albeit suffused with gags and characters that feel like comic leftovers from Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Bedazzled. As a small-town workplace comedy, it has sweet moments, but also too much dead time. However, what really scuppers it is the clammy, mawkish, dated feel: the eerie sensation that it could have been made in the 1980s and would still have felt dated then. While Falcone is likable but underpowered, and McCarthy (as his wing woman/love interest) delivers her signature bawdy panache, it’s just not enough to rescue it. With another eight-episode half-series to come, I suppose one could always pray it gets funnier.
Star ratings (out of five):
Sherwood ★★★★★
The Lazarus Project ★★★
Grenfell: Five Years, Five Stories. ★★★
God’s Favourite Idiot ★★
What else I’m watching
Brian Cox: Seven Days On Mars
BBC Two
A documentary in which physicist Brian Cox joins Nasa’s mission control for Mars 2020. Steering the Perseverance rover over the red planet, Cox paraphrases the question: was there ever life on Mars?
The Bridge: Race to a Fortune
Channel 4
AJ Odudu hosts the show where a team builds a bridge, but only one person wins the cash. This time, it’s in Vietnam, with two teams competing. This is top-drawer reality fare: lots of heart, but also bickering and skulduggery.
Jennifer Lopez: Halftime
Netflix
A behind-the-scenes look at Jennifer Lopez preparing for the 2020 Super Bowl half-time show, featuring the gloriously non-humble La Lopez huffing about her lack of an Oscar-nomination for Hustlers. Remember, Jen: they usually label women “divas” when they’re scared of them.
