Time (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Dinosaur Hour (GB News)
All the Light We Cannot See (Netflix)
Roman Kemp: The Fight for Young Lives (BBC Three) | iPlayer
You’d be forgiven for wondering how writer Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, Hillsborough) could follow up his 2021 Bafta-garlanded prison drama, Time. Starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham, it was a potent stealth masterpiece examining struggling masculinity, and one that stood complete.
The answer: switching to a feminine lens. Co-written with Helen Black, directed by Andrea Harkin, the second series takes a look at three women locked into inexorable penal doom spirals. Fresh from Doctor Who, Jodie Whittaker plays first-timer Orla, a mum with distracting block-bleached hair who’s wrongfooted at receiving jail time for “fiddling the leccy”, and scrabbles to sort out childcare. Tamara Lawrance is Abi, a wary lifer whose crime is too taboo to initially admit, while Bella Ramsey portrays heroin addict Kelsey: twitchy, lost, with skin like week-old tapioca. She is, it turns out, pregnant.
Despite being a women’s prison (a grim warren of low-rise huts), there’s no stinting on violence. Over the three episodes, faces are slashed, blood pours between legs, domestic irons become weapons. Then there are the emotional wounds: Orla’s frightened, angry children at visiting time; Abi’s inner demons coming for her in the humid seclusion of the shower. As Kelsey navigates her pregnancy, you find yourself willing a miracle. In this realm, poverty is the main penal driver, pointless incarceration is normal and children are casualties. Women can’t win.
This is a shade more obvious than the first series (some stilted “speeches” undermine the naturalism), but it’s still small-screen soul food. Redemption flickers through the bleak narrative, keeping the spirit nourished. The three leads are fantastic (Ramsey’s Kelsey makes a permanent nest in your heart), and there’s a fine supporting cast including Julie Graham, Sophie Willan and Siobhan Finneran, whose charismatic chaplain provides connective tissue from the first series. I end up wondering where McGovern might take Time next: young offenders? An updated Scum? At this nerve-jangling rate, he’ll need to give us fair warning.
It’s difficult to convey quite how dire John Cleese’s new GB News “chatshow” is, but it’s also monotonously predictable. Called The Dinosaur Hour, in the introduction Cleese says the show is aimed at “the out of touch who’ve chosen to stay out of touch”. So, much like every other GB News show then?
The series is set in some castle inexplicably full of preserved animals and live cats. The actor formerly known as a Monty Python legend establishes this week’s topic (press intrusion, Leveson, Ipso) and then moves among tables, interviewing guests, who all, by astonishing coincidence, completely agree with him.
The topic is justified; it’s the way it’s done that fails: Cleese, the ultimate posturing golf club bore, drains the life from every discussion. One guest is former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant, who appears, hilariously, playing strip poker with a “nun”. As Tarrant relates his experiences of bad press, Cleese rants: “The real villains are the editors… They must basically be sociopaths.” He ends the show, blusteringly, calling for a new press regulatory body “to inhibit their freedom to tell any lies they fucking well like” (the swearword is bleeped out for the GB News viewer who likes their plain-speaking a little less plain). A clip of next week’s show (Caitlyn Jenner talking about hating “woke”) suggests similar firebrand joys to come.
Why is Cleese, once more, trashing his considerable legacy with this real-life Basil Fawlty routine? I can only assume it’s about money (the anti-woke grift is lucrative). Amusingly, over on Twitter/X, Cleese recently criticised GB News for signing up “serial liar” Boris Johnson. (Awkward!). As for The Dinosaur Hour, there are nine more shows, which surely qualifies as the television equivalent of a mass extinction event. GB News may be netting some big names, but when is one of them going to produce a watchable programme?
On Netflix, Anthony Doerr’s 2014 Pulitzer prize-winning novel, All the Light We Cannot See, has been adapted into a four-part drama by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders). It tells the story of two young people caught up in the devastation of the second world war: a blind French girl, Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti), who broadcasts literary readings over the radio, and a young soldier, Werner (Louis Hoffman), forced as an orphan into the German army.
The result is a tad fitful, as if attempting to condense the book was a task too far. Hugh Laurie plays an uncle with wartime PTSD who harbours secrets. Lars Eidinger strides in as a cartoon Nazi in search of a powerful diamond. Mark Ruffalo plays Marie-Laure’s museum director father (God bless the Ruff, but his French accent careers about on castors).
For all the tonal bumpiness, and enough script corn for several abundant harvests, there’s a lot here that works. It’s shot beautifully: one moment starkly reminiscent of last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front remake, the next like an uber-romantic historical snow globe you want to keep shaking. The young leads are heart-melting, and poignant emotional punches take you unawares. This is one of those rare streamer ventures that would have benefited from being longer.
In 2021, the documentary Roman Kemp: Our Silent Emergency saw the radio/TV host explore his grief over the death of his friend, Joe, and his own history of depression. Kemp urged struggling young people to seek help. Now in the follow-up, The Fight for Young Lives (also on BBC Three), Kemp examines how that help can be nonexistent.
He is a great advocate: matey and natural with young people, sensitive with the bereaved, and a driven campaigner. Going to a parliamentary event with the charity Young Minds, he’s shocked when Maria Caulfield, minister for mental health, declines to speak with them. Kemp, the son of Martin Kemp and Shirlie Holliman, of Pepsi & Shirlie fame, is also still clearly raw. He cries several times, and, helping his dad in the garden, tortures himself with the thought that he might be “using” Joe.
In the end, Kemp puts an open letter on Instagram calling for the government to put mental health counsellors in all British schools. Once again, he has delivered a heartfelt documentary that repurposes grief as fuel.
Star ratings (out of five)
Time ★★★★
The Dinosaur Hour ★
All the Light We Cannot See ★★★
Roman Kemp: The Fight for Young Lives ★★★
What else I’m watching
Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom
(ITV)
Documentary about the ongoing intimidation of young Iranian women whotook part in a protest march about Mahsa Amini, who died in custody last year after allegedly wearing the hijab incorrectly. With some interviews filmed in secrecy, it’s a gruelling watch.
Banged Up
(Channel 4)
Celebrities such as Sid Owen and Tory MP Johnny Mercer are jailed in a real (decommissioned) prison for a reality show that’s somewhat rawer than it initially appears.
The Gilded Age
(Sky Atlantic/Now)
Series two of the Julian Fellowes period drama that conspicuously failed to become the “US Downton Abbey”. Starring Christine Baranski, it’s mainly more olden days froth (status anxiety and hat boxes), though it’s not without amusements.
