TV reviews: The Night Watch | Law & Order: UK | Torchwood
IN THE opening minutes of The Night Watch a meal was put on the table. "Fish paste all right, dear?" Outside in the street a shop sign – "No potatoes, no fruit" – more or less confirmed we were in 1947 before the caption came up. Unfortunately the rationing didn't end there. Sarah Waters' 500-page novel of forbidden love during wartime, which vaults back into the Blitz to reveal secrets and ends at the beginning, had been condensed to a one-off 90 minutes. So when one of its sexual non-conformists said, "What we felt for each other wasn't entirely equal", it was hard to avoid thinking this pretty much summed up the film.
In straitened times for telly drama such as right now, the memory can play tricks. For instance, I've convinced myself that in 1981 a whole episode of the 11-part (11!) adaptation of Brideshead Revisited was devoted to Charles Ryder absent-mindedly caressing Lord Sebastian Flyte's left lughole while Flyte absent-mindedly caressed the left lughole of his teddy bear. The Night Watch still managed to offer tantalising glimpses of its clandestine worlds but this only added to the frustration.
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Hide AdThere was the world of staying overground when the bombs fell, a good place to be if you were a bit different, like the gals played by the two Annas, Wilson-Jones and Maxwell Martin. The latter was the more androgynous but both were as exotic as potatoes would be, come 1947.
And there was the world of women generally, drinking gin in a speakeasy and reflecting on the shaky equality of war. Said one: "They need us to be independent to drive their damn ambulances and work in their damn factories. Come the peace, they'll have us back in aprons, you'll see."
One of this column's bugbears is the detective show featuring the crimebustin' maverick with the battened-on, self-consciously quirky and/or chaotic private life. You know the type: goes home alone, listens to phone-message from mother/brother/ex-wife wondering why he hasn't responded to the previous five calls, roots around in fridge, finds One-is-Decidededly-Unfun fish pie (checks date and bins), opens bottle of wine, puts on unlistenable jazz, falls asleep in suit, wakes up with next door's cat squatting on head, does it all again.
So, you're thinking, I must love Law & Order: UK because the tecs don't go home, the personal never intrudes, it's chop-chop, busy-busy, work-work, bang-bang from the tent going up at the crime scene to the coat collars going up on the court steps after the trial verdict. Well, I'm afraid not. Halfway though the first episode of what is the fourth series (how did that happen?) I was screaming: "Please let me see inside Bradley Walsh's fridge, his imitation teak writing bureau, his library of leatherette-bound caravanning magazines – anything!"
A police procedural providing only procedure, it's an oddity, for sure – and the colour of Walsh's hair is not all that's strange. The title sequence is very American – the show is a version of a US crime franchise – and seems to promise schmaltz but also sophistication. What we get, however, is a revival of The Bill by stealth. Don't be fooled by the "UK" bit – it's London-set, which is not what Sunday nights are for. The tecs all finish each other's sentences, with every twist flagged up ridiculously early. Then, case concluded, Walsh goes home alone and presumably nips out to the shed to soak his barnet in creosote.
With Law & Order: UK and The Night Watch scrimping on the action, I needed to see a budget being properly spent (eg, used on explosions). Torchwood obliged with the first of its US tie-ups, and after the abruptnesses of the other dramas last week, it was a bonus to find Captain Jack & Co wrestling with the problems thrown up by eternal life. Not that the show is simply rolling over for the Americans. "CIA!" snapped the operative at the cottage door of the sexiest woman in Wales. Gwen, baby in one hand, gun in another: "Yeah, so what?"