TV preview: The Poison Tree | This World: Cuba with Simon Reeve

THE POISON TREE

Monday, STV, 9pm

THIS WORLD: CUBA WITH SIMON REEVE

Tuesday, BBC2, 9pm

Sarah Lancashire is being stalked by a pervert! Trevor Eve has got himself involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse! You know, that sort of thing.

So you won’t be shocked to learn that two-part drama THE POISON TREE is yet another psychological thriller in which things go from bad to worse for a troubled household of desperately unlucky sods. Produced by STV, it stars MyAnna Buring as Karen, a woman who’s spent 12 years waiting for her partner, Rex (Matthew Goode), to be released from prison. With a sentence as lengthy as that, it’s obvious that Rex’s crime was – to put it mildly – rather serious, and the central mystery of exactly what it was is sustained quite effectively throughout the opening episode.

Desperate to move on from this dark chapter in their lives, Karen, Rex and their teenage daughter – who thinks daddy was banged up for tax evasion – begin life anew in a remote cottage by the sea, because that’s the sort of moodily atmospheric setting one requires in dramas of this nature. Almost immediately, Karen starts to receive a series of sinister phone calls and texts of the “I know what you did” variety, and their guilty secret threatens to explode.

Most of the action unfolds in extended flashbacks to 1999, when mousy Karen (who hasn’t aged a day since) abruptly befriends an irritating free-spirit called Biba (yes, really) who brings her out of her shell during an evening taking Ecstasy. Biba also introduces Karen to her brother and housemate Rex, and together they enjoy a bohemian lifestyle subsidised by the family’s seemingly inexhaustible independent wealth.

Inevitably, it all goes horribly wrong once Biba reveals herself to be a complete fruitcake and the drugs and company she keeps grow more dangerous. Her conspicuous absence from the scenes set in the present day certainly suggests that things didn’t exactly pan out well for this overstated hippie stereotype.

Despite climaxing with two unlikely dramatic bombshells in rapid succession, part one introduces The Poison Tree as a perfectly serviceable, entertaining pot-boiler. Unfortunately, part two degenerates into unmitigated balderdash, as the already thinly drawn characters start behaving implausibly simply to serve the mechanics of the shoddy and nonsensical plot.

Goode wanders through the production looking remarkably sanguine for a man who’s just spent 12 hellish years in jail. But with such an underwritten part, there’s not much else he can do. Buring fares slightly better, delivering a competent portrayal of the same character at two very different stages in her life. But The Poison Tree is ultimately a crashing waste of time. It doesn’t even have a tree oozing poison in it. What a swizz.

“Buenos dias!” Ah, look, it’s that nice Simon Reeve, the hale and hearty travel presenter whose ability to get on famously with the peoples of the world is central to the appeal of his programmes. In his latest adventure, THIS WORLD: CUBA WITH SIMON REEVE, he investigates the sweeping economic reforms that have transformed one of the world’s last Communist strongholds into a burgeoning crucible of grass roots capitalism.

With Cuba’s economy in ruins, its government has been forced to cut a million public-sector jobs and – by Castro’s beard! – actually encourage self-employed entrepreneurs in the hope of generating urgent tax revenues. Reeve meets ordinary citizens – he was only allowed into the country if he promised not to interview any prominent political dissidents – to discuss the second-most significant revolution in Cuban history.

His many new friends include a qualified doctor paid so little by the state that he moonlights as a plumbing supplies salesman; a former cheese-trader currently earning a fortune on Havana’s emerging property market; and the owner of a McDonald’s-style fast food franchise.

He also discovers that the legendary Bay of Pigs – a symbolic site central to the tenets of the revolution – is now surrounded by privately owned guest houses.

The point of all of this, of course, is that – healthcare and arts-funding aside – Castro’s system has failed dismally, and that for too long Cuba’s population has been forced to endure appalling living conditions under the oppressive gaze of a totalitarian regime. But now that the iron fist is loosening its grip, for how much longer can the government square its Communist manifesto with the unstoppable influx of western consumerism?

While the overall mood is cautiously optimistic, it’s constantly undermined by images of abandoned sugar mills and crumbling houses. And the fact that few of Reeve’s interviewees are prepared to say anything remotely negative serves as a grim reminder of Cuba’s atrocious human rights record. It’s a commendably clear-eyed and revealing report.

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This Oscar-nominated period drama from the celebrated Merchant Ivory stable stars the heavyweight thespian dream team of Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson as a head butler and housekeeper chastely fighting their feelings for each other. The film is a model of restraint, acutely mirroring Hopkins’ astonishing performance as a man whose emotions have been repressed almost to the point of invisibility. Despite being the very antithesis of melodrama, this thoughtful rumination on unrequited love and the perils of servitude packs a huge emotional punch.

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