Aidan Smith's TV week: The Twelve (ITVX), Daddy Issues (BBC3), Bad Monkey (Apple TV+), Emily in Paris (Netflix)

Returning Australian courtroom drama The Twelve is no 12 Angry Men but it’s still bonzer
Sam Neill as legal eagle Brett Colby in The TwelveSam Neill as legal eagle Brett Colby in The Twelve
Sam Neill as legal eagle Brett Colby in The Twelve

If I was to tell you that the first episode of legal drama The Twelve centres on a tool for digging holes for posts you might not think this augurs well for the rest of the series.

Did you know that the selfsame implement is called – different spelling – an auger? Me neither, but Sam Neill does. He’s the whiskered and wise defence attorney who gets to crack a joke involving the identical sounding words, to the amusement of the courtroom. He also gets to bonk a fellow legal eagle during trial downtime but really this show is not about him. It’s about the jurors, their deliberations and also who they are. We’re at the selection process but already know that one potential member of The Twelve is a heroin addict, two of them went to school together and another two used to be married (“That’s my ex... my very, very f***ing annoying ex”).

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Neill’s character is called Brett Colby, which doesn’t really suit a practitioner of the law – it’s possibly the most Mills & Boonish name TV could attach to a leading man – although the drama comes from Australia where things are more relaxed.

David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood in Daddy Issues (Picture: BBC)David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood in Daddy Issues (Picture: BBC)
David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood in Daddy Issues (Picture: BBC)

This is the second season and I enjoyed the first precisely because it’s Aussie and slightly rougher round the edges. When Colby’s adversary in the trial attempts to use the phrase “folie a deux”, the judge snaps: “English, Mr Prosecutor”. Indeed I’m surprised the judge doesn’t bounce a can of Fosters off his head.

As before, the charge is murder. A wealthy landowner was found at the bottom of a well on her farm, the blow to the back of her head not consistent with an accident. In the dock are her daughter and the latter’s ex-boyfriend. “Greedy lovers,” Mr Prosecutor calls them, avoiding any more French.

The trial takes place in Tunkwell, a one-kangaroo town in the rural west. It’s been scheduled for six weeks but a blowhard among the jurors insists that amount of time won’t be needed. The victim, he says, was “the most notoriously disliked battleaxe in the district – people would have been lining up to knock the old bitch off”.

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This guy could be the Lee J Cobb character from the movie classic 12 Angry Men, or the Ed Begley one or any of the others quick to condemn, but not Henry Fonda as the lone, liberal voice of reason.

Lily Collins in Emily In Paris (Picture: Netflix)Lily Collins in Emily In Paris (Picture: Netflix)
Lily Collins in Emily In Paris (Picture: Netflix)

A jury room remains a great setting for a drama, maybe a bit stagey for modern audiences, but by moving outside its confines The Twelve can plant a number of intriguing storylines in the ground. Handy things, augers.

Aimee Lou Wood is upfront, funny and positively inspirational on the subject of her looks, specifically her teeth. At first the actress thought only Channel 4 was quirky enough to accommodate them. Netflix? “Everyone on that has perfect Hollywood teeth,” she reckoned, then suddenly she was in Sex Education and “hundreds” of kids were messaging their gratitude for making buck teeth cool so they were no longer being called Bugs Bunny.

Anyway, Wood and her gorgeous gnashers are now in Daddy Issues and this comedy about a father and daughter back living together in mildly desperate circumstances is really clarty and very funny. She’s Gemma and David Morrissey is Malcolm, the dad. Since his wife had an affair and ran off with their savings he’s been holed up in a grotty bedsit with other angry divorcees. Meanwhile, Gemma clearly never watched Sex Education, or if she did, its (occasional) notes of caution did not register.

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In one scene she meets a man in a pub and soon they’re back at her flat, which has just been burgled, only this doesn’t dampen the fellow’s ardour and he has to be told: “Someone’s stolen all my things so unless your c*** fires out Argos vouchers I’m not going anywhere near it tonight.”

Then Gemma finds out she’s pregnant. This is probably as a result of a mile-high club encounter with a random. But with her mum gallivanting and her sister in jail for trying to have her partner bumped off, the support network has completely crumbled, given her flatmate has scarpered too. She interviews for a replacement but they’re all weirdos (claiming to have been in the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the usual stuff). Dad to the rescue, then, only he’s completely useless and thinks baked potatoes are covered in... well, is it some kind of leather?

In Bad Monkey there’s a requirement for the leading man to mooch around the Florida Keys in a loud shirt. To sip cold beer on his porch with its fabulous ocean view. To have a beautiful woman happen by late at night while her husband is away. To flirt outrageously with another beautiful woman, then another. To wind up irritating neighbours with raccoon roadkill. To be sarcastic and carefree at all times. Now, does that sound like the sort of gig Vince Vaughn would like?

This is a crime caper adapted from a Carl Hiassen novel and it begins on a boat where you dearly wish the big-game fisherman bullying his new bride will be swallowed by a shark, or at the very least impaled on a swordfish. Instead the perisher ends up landing a human arm and it’s brandishing the middle finger.

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Vaughn is Andrew Yancy, a detective initially suspended for ramming a buggy off a jetty with the hubby of his nocturnal nookie still inside. Before very long he’s fired, but does this stop him being intrigued by the severed limb and the less than convincing grief of the widow of its owner? He goes rogue. He continues to flirt. A giant key lime pie of trouble ensues.

The fourth season of Emily in Paris opens at the Roland-Garros tennis tournament with a match in full flow until the moment a fashion commercial flashes up on a giant screen to the strains of Love Is In the Air and the crowd burst into wild applause. I wish John McEnroe at his most combustible had been on court at the time. Or Novak Djokovic with his death stare or even Andy Murray.

None of them would have stood for such flibbertigibbet frivolousness.

And I don’t see why I should either.

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