Tv review: Into the Storm | A History of Christianity | Wonderland: The Ghostman of Skye | Wonderland: I Won University Challenge

Published on Sunday 1 November 2009 14:06

Into the Storm Monday, BBC2, 8:30pm A History of Christianity Thursday, BBC4, 9pm Wonderland: The Ghostman of Skye Today, BBC2, 10:40pm Wonderland: I Won University Challenge Thursday, BBC2, 9:45pm

With multiple Emmy awards and nominations clanking around its ankles, comes (drum roll please) the prestigious HBO/BBC co-production, Into the Storm, a sequel to the similarly feted 2002 television movie, The Gathering Storm. Like its predecessor, it concentrates on specific chapters in the life of Winston Churchill, in this case his steadfast leadership during the Second World War and his landslide defeat in the subsequent general election.

Unlike in the first film, Churchill is portrayed not by Albert Finney but by Brendan Gleeson, who acquits himself admirably. Although he captures perfectly Churchill's British bulldog scowl and distinctive speech patterns, this is no mere caricature. Behind the rousing oratorical certitude of his public pronouncements, Churchill is depicted as a sensitive man troubled by doubt and guilt. Fortunately, the great man has the traditional great woman, Clemmie (Janet McTeer), to counsel him through those long, dark evenings of the soul. Their relationship supplies the film's heart, and it is testament to both actors, and the sensitive screenplay by Hugh Whitmore (who also wrote The Gathering Storm), that it comes across as being so warm and believable.

Briskly episodic, the film flits back and forth between the Churchills holidaying in France in the days leading up to the election, and Winnie's wartime machinations. Rather than portray him as a kind of all-knowing superhero, Whitmore and Gleeson imbue Churchill with a volatile mix of arrogance, stubbornness, ruthlessness, naivety, and a leavening ounce of childlike vulnerability. But we are left in little doubt (if ever doubt there was) as to his abilities as a morale boosting war leader and occasionally brilliant tactician.

Inevitably, given the inherent flaws of the biopic genre, there are a few corny moments and some laboured exposition, but it's a competent production overall. Unless you know of Churchill only as a nodding dog with the voice of Deryck Guyler, it probably won't tell you anything new about him, or about why the British public decided to oust him after the war. But it at least portrays him as a rounded human being rather than the one-dimensional symbol of indomitable Britishness to which he has often been reduced.

Having taken care of their quality drama quota for the week, the BBC goes on to trounce the opposition with another of the things it does so well: sweeping history programmes presented by men with letters after their name. In truth, the first episode of A History of Christianity is pretty hard-going, despite the best efforts of its host, religious historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, to make it seem as exciting as an episode of 24 in which Jack Bauer rescues a school bus full of orphans with a time-bomb strapped to his teeth.

MacCulloch's aim in this admittedly ambitious six-part series is to challenge our preconceptions about the evolution of Christianity, find out what it means to be a Christian, and ask whether the religion can survive in an increasingly secular society. No slouch he.

"I'm not giving you a history of Christian theology," he trumpets, somewhat defensively. Instead, this is a history of the religion itself in which "the main character here is the church". Struggling manfully to be heard over the kind of oppressively melodramatic music score that always blights these things, MacCulloch travels to Jerusalem and Istanbul to examine the origins of Christianity, primarily to prove that it began, not with St Paul on the road to Damascus, but in the East. But then you already knew that, right? So much for myth-busting. Despite MacCulloch's enthusiasm, it's a dry and not especially absorbing lesson.

Faith looms large in Wonderland: The Ghostman of Skye. It tells of one Donald Angus Maclean, an old man who, since his wife died, has been recording reports of paranormal activity on his home, the Isle of Skye. Billed as a Halloween special, it's actually less concerned with chills and more with the pathos of Maclean, a former missionary who believes the existence of ghosts proves there is an afterlife. It's a comfort to him, a way of coping with the death of his beloved wife.

The ghost stories themselves are hardly Henry James, most being of the "I saw a thing and then the thing wisnae there" variety, and overall the programme is far too meandering and self-consciously poetic for its own good. But if you can stick it out, you may be surprised to find yourself quite touched by a poignant eulogy to enduring love and grief.

The British aversion to intelligence is examined in I Won University Challenge, in which members of former winning teams discuss the burden of owning a highly developed brain. It involves tales of alcoholism, bullying, lack of success with the opposite sex, and general suffering from a ludicrous prejudice.

Unfortunately, it's also intent on proving that the extremely intelligent are eccentric misfits, but then again, that's not a description they themselves would necessarily refute. Fly your freak flags high, you big-brained champions.

This article was first published in The Scotsman on October 31, 2009