TV review: Five Days | Burnistoun

Published on Monday 1 March 2010 18:03

Five Days, BBC1 Burnistoun, BBC2

ALTHOUGH the idea of running a drama over consecutive weeknights isn't a new one, the success of Five Days in 2007 encouraged the BBC to revive the gimmick with the likes of the enthralling Criminal Justice and a surprisingly effective Torchwood mini-series.

As the digital multiverse continues to make our viewing habits ever more autonomous and diffuse, it makes sense for the BBC to produce more appointment-to-view events (ratings have always been important to them, despite what amnesiac naysayers claim), and it was only a matter of time before they returned to the source of its resurgence.

They needn't have bothered. Five Days regards itself as an explosive comment straight from the simmering heart of multicultural Britain. Everything about it sings "quality British drama" in a proud and sonorous voice. Just look at that cast: Suranne Jones, David Morrissey, Bernard Hill, Anne Reid – we do not deserve such thespian quality. And neither does Five Days.

It began promisingly, by grabbing the attention with two seemingly unconnected dramatic events: an unnamed baby is abandoned in a hospital while a Muslim woman kills herself by jumping in front of a train. But the more it went on the more annoyingly implausible it became, with the various strands not so much entwining as strangling each other.

The storyline was linked by a series of massively unlikely coincidences: an off-duty cop escorts her sick mother to the same hospital where the baby was dumped; their train journey is curtailed by the suicide jumper, so the cop gets involved in the case.

Meanwhile, the train guard and his Muslim wife are looking to adopt a stray baby (oh, if only there was one in the vicinity!), while even the driver harbours a guilty secret that may be connected to the woman who jumped in front of his train.

Except wait – le twist! – it wasn't a woman at all, it was (dun-dun-DUN!) a man dressed in a burqa. And it looks like he didn't jump, he was pushed, because some kids fortuitously filmed the deed while playing beside the tracks. It could happen!

Although a willing suspension of disbelief never hurt anyone – I can accept outrageous plot contrivances if the whole is greater than the sum of its holes – Five Days is a mess. And believe me, it gets worse. Straining under the weight of its convolutions and embarrassing pretensions towards cultural verisimilitude, it's so unconvincing it makes Lynda La Plante stories look like searing Michael Winterbottom docu-dramas. Still, at least it'll be over by Friday.

A starring vehicle for venerable Scottish comedy scribes Iain Connell and Robert Florence (whose credits include the unfairly overlooked Gregor Fisher sitcom, Empty) Burnistoun is an amiable yet decidedly unremarkable sketch show. This is disappointing as they are clearly talented.

But at least they have the courage to produce sketches dependent on verbal playfulness and ideas rather than repeated catchphrases or lazy cruelty.

Their hit rate may be scarce (although I liked the parochial Scottish MP unwittingly elevated to the role of PM), but I cautiously welcome any sketch show in the approximate tradition of, say, Absolutely over the abysmal Little Britain. Maybe it will improve, although the idea is normally that you put some of your best material in the first episode…