Fatal Attraction TV review: The bottom line? It’s missing Michael Douglas’ buttocks

If you were paying attention last week you’ll recall that I began the telly crit by mentioning the male derriere. Well, here I go again, but it’s kind of avoidable when the big new show is Fatal Attraction (Paramount+).

Lizzy Caplan as Alex Forest and Joshua Jackson as Dan Gallagher in Fatal Attraction. Photo Credit: Monty Brinton/Paramount+

In the 1987 movie Michael Douglas’s buttocks were iconic. Doubtless slapped on his arriv al into the world in the maternity wing of St Peter’s Hospital, New Brunswick, New Jersey, they helped birth the erotic thriller genre. Every film of this type seemed to star Douglas - Basic Instinct, Disclosure, etc - and he refused a body double every time.

This is a problem for the small-screen reboot. A giant shadow is thrown across it like an eclipse with two cheeks. So, not even attempting to compete, Joshua Jackson as district attorney Dan Gallagher keeps his pants on.

Hang on, though, isn’t this eight-parter supposed to be the feminist Fatal Attraction? Well, Jackson also keeps his socks on so maybe as he’s believing himself to be omnipotent - wife at home, promotion in the bag, car in the repair-shop after getting off with driving while drunk - we’re supposed to see the guy as faintly ridiculous.

Solly McLeod as Tom Jones

And we do, for what’s going on with his barnet? In the movie Glenn Close as Dan’s colleague Alex Forrest turned 1980s big-hair into full-on Medusa. Here, rather than housing the snakes of Greek mythology, Jackson rocks a wild and shaggy style capable of accommodating an assortment of woodland creatures, possibly voles and the odd weasel.

This is Dan just out of prison having done time for second-degree murder for the series expands the story beyond the movie and its schlocky-horror ending.

Lizzy Caplan gets to expand the characterisation of Alex, delving deeper into her mental health. Then there’s the mental health of Dan’s daughter who’s undergoing therapy. When the shrink first appears I think it’s Glenn Close, such is the power of the original. And Caplan cannot make us forget Close, despite her obvious talent.

As Alex she possesses more than enough allure to make Dan risk everything, especially when he possesses more than enough smarm. What did the movie of Fatal Attraction do for office affairs? It surely must have made married men think twice, even those fanboys for Wall Street’s Gordon “Greed is good” Gekko, another Michael Douglas classic.

Martin McCann and Sian Brooke in Blue Lights.

By the way, do you know what his performance in Basic Instinct did for crimson v-neck pullovers? Absolutely nothing if you remember the nightclub scene, trying to impress Sharon Stone with the shapes he was cutting on the dancefloor. And two more vital things about this Fatal Attraction: the line “I’m not going to be IGNORED!” is still terrifying and spoiler - actually, make that boiler alert - no bunny rabbits are cooked on the stove.

In one of the early flirty scenes Dan and Alex discuss “things we’re supposed to like but don’t”. She nominates beaches and live music and he goes for holidays and hats. I can only back them on one and present in support of my case Tom Jones and his bunnet of choice.

No, not that Tom Jones, the irresistible Sexbomb, but the hero of ITVX’s dramatisation of Henry Fielding’s comic novel, played by Solly McLeod. I know nothing about hats so can only say it’s one of those three-cornered affairs presumably from the period - the book was published in 1749 - but it’s too small for his head, possibly nicked from a child’s dressing-up box, and doesn’t square, or triangle, with the fellow’s persona, that of the irresistible Sexbomb of Georgian England.

But this is what he is. He sits under a sturdy oak and mopes about having “no money, no parents, no standing” while Alan Partridge’s chat-show sidekick Helen Fielding, Ted Lasso soccer supremo Hannah Waddingham and former Coronation Street wild-child Lucy Fallon - all adept at resilient, resourceful women, just not here - drool over him.

And he’s too young - McLeod is 23 - like so many leading men these days in the once-great British tradition of the costume drama which seems to be going the way of the Empire. Is he, square of jaw and plump of lips, the new Eddie Redmayne? Can he contrive the “Poldark effect”? I can’t really see the TikTok generation stopping filming themselves to find out. Admittedly the lad has a hard act to follow - Albert Finney whose portrayal 60 years ago ignited British cinema’s new wave of “Angry Young Men” - but this version isn’t anything like sexy enough or funny enough, although our own Shirley Henderson is a riot as Aunt Western.

The best drama of the 2023? I’m going early again. Last year round about now I confidently declared for Winning Time: the Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Hardly anyone backed me but I’m sure I won’t be alone in nominating Blue Lights (BBC1).

It’s as much of a surprise that I’ve been gripped by a British cop show amid the great glut as I was a drama about basketball. Specifically, Northern Irish. There’s nothing blandly generic going on here. The rasp in the voices has older viewers remembering James Ellis in Z-Cars where the bobbies were filmed in static cars with moving backgrounds. Blue Lights, though, is genuinely exciting and genuinely terrifying in how daft boys worship would-be hard men. With every character deftly drawn by writers Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, there’s a tantalising ending for Grace and Stevie but it’s truly tragic that Gerry has gone. Thankfully we’re getting a second series.