Becoming Karl Lagerfeld (Disney+)
Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate (ITV) | ITVX
D-Day: The Unheard Tapes (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Queenie (Channel 4) | channel4.com
The new Disney+ French drama Becoming Karl Lagerfeld won a standing ovation at the Canneseries television festival, and it’s easy to see why. I’m not sure what I was expecting – maybe something brittle and peculiar, not unlike its subject. The late German designer (he died in 2019), who ended up as Chanel’s creative director, was known for strutting around with platinum hair, flapping his signature fan, spewing bitchy asides (Adele was labelled “a little too fat”).
This six-part series, created by Isaure Pisani-Ferry, Jennifer Have and Raphaëlle Bacqué, goes back to the 1970s and 80s, with Lagerfeld played by gifted German-Spanish actor Daniel Brühl (Inglourious Basterds, All Quiet on the Western Front).
It’s set, of course, in the world of Parisian haute couture: the spats; the drama; the sketchpads; Lagerfeld’s struggles not to be dismissed as a “ready-to-wear mercenary”. However, its true subject is Lagerfeld’s intense amour with Jacques de Bascher (Théodore Pellerin), the fiery French dandy who becomes the sexually daring yin to Lagerfeld’s uptight yang (it’s not depicted in the series, but De Bascher died of an Aids-related illness in 1989, nursed by Lagerfeld).
Donning lederhosen to meet Lagerfeld, De Bascher has a provocative way with words: “I wanted you to unwrap me like a gift and all I get is boils on my anus!” He craves a full relationship, but Lagerfeld can’t cope. The situation is complicated by Lagerfeld’s designer rival Yves Saint Laurent (Arnold Valois), who has a penchant for drugs and BDSM. Crikey, if I’d known all this back in the day, I’d have sprayed my YSL Paris perfume around with more gusto.
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld is almost indecently glamorous (gowns, chateaus, decadence), but also much more than that. It’s about repression, power struggles, decay and painful, terrible love. The two leads (both brilliant) manage to bring dignity and melancholy to their unconventional bond. There are some lulls (quelle surprise!), but it’s a beautiful work. It made me think about Lagerfeld – really think about him – in a completely different way.
Is it OK that I had an erotic dream about Rishi Sunak? The prime minister was on stage rudely interrupting Keir Starmer. A studio audience was there, talking about the cost of living and the broken NHS, which made Sunak yell about being “bold” and about Labour intending to raises taxes by £2,000 a year. The figure was made up, conjured by civil servants (“Absolute garbage,” said Starmer), but I suppose anything goes in an erotic dream…
Of course, it wasn’t a dream, steamy or otherwise. It was Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate, the first televised leaders’ debate of the general election. Perhaps to lend a little razzle-dazzle to the 14 years of Tory rule downer, the set had lit-up podiums and a quasi-gameshow (The Bleakest Link?) vibe.
Charging through issues (immigration, climate change), host Julie Etchingham did her best (“Gentlemen, please!”), but both men kept running over time. Sunak was the worst (boorish, butting in), though his voice started quavering when the audience laughed at his “bring back national service” idea, which Starmer dubbed “a teenage Dad’s Army”.
People mock the Labour leader for referring to his working-class roots (“My father was a toolmaker”), but hark at Sunak – witnessed here, cravenly trying to summon a rosy nostalgic glow about the pandemic. “I’ll always have your back as I did with furlough,” he sighed, batting “Dishy Rishi” lashes at the camera.
Who won? Did anybody? Yes, politicians should be tested, but I’m increasingly unconvinced by these growly, gladiatorial US-style debates – not because they aren’t great telly, but precisely because they are.
Mark Radice’s superb docuseries, D-Day: The Unheard Tapes, marks the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. In three instalments, it depicts the devastating but ultimately successful landings in northern France and the fighting afterwards, in which 100,000 lives were lost.
Similar to 2022’s Aids: The Unheard Tapes, from the same production stable, the story is told by actors (at the ages the people would have been on D-day) lip-synching to genuine audio recordings from archives around the world. There are testimonies from allied troops (British, American, Canadian), but also Normandy civilians, the French resistance and members of the German military.
With historians giving extra context, this relatively new form of oral history is more immersive than regular documentary and it works brilliantly. You feel connected to the people as they sit on dingy 1940s upholstery, sometimes sporting spivvy moustaches, tugging their ears anxiously. You feel you’re there with the soldiers trying to make it over the doomed, blood-splattered beaches.
As it’s the first “taste of battle” for many, the fighters initially seem to draw strength from a heightened form of adrenaline, but in the face of unfolding horror, it soon drains away. In the words of one US army lieutenant: “To see your friends, people you’ve served with for years, floating face down or face up in the water… At times, I was crying”. As the years pass, the need to remember becomes ever more urgent. A heartfelt bravo to the actors, who pull off a difficult task respectfully and seamlessly.
Published in 2019, Candice Carty-Williams’s novel Queenie (dubbed “the Black Bridget Jones” by the author) sold about 150,000 copies in the UK alone. Now it’s an eight-part Channel 4 dramedy created by Carty-Williams and starring Dionne Brown as Queenie, a 25-year-old British-Jamaican woman, who suffers an agonising breakup with her white boyfriend (Jon Pointing from Big Boys) and grapples with trauma from her past.
Myriad big themes thread through the show: racism, interracial relationships (“Why is this family against seasoning?”), violence and abandonment. Reeling from a miscarriage, Queenie ends up on soul-destroying dating apps (“Bet you taste of chocolate”).
Brown embodies a smart, unapologetically messy heroine, backed by a strong cast, including Samuel Adewunmi (You Don’t Know Me) and singer-songwriter Bellah as Queenie’s gobby BFF (“Why don’t you start dating black guys… throw some melanin in the mix?”). There are weaknesses (even with Sally Phillips playing the editor, Queenie’s media workplace is too sketchily drawn), but this is nicely honed television not without bite.
Star ratings (out of five)
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld ★★★★
Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate ★★★
D-Day: The Unheard Tapes ★★★★`
Queenie ★★★
What else I’m watching
Lost Boys and Fairies (BBC One)
Daf James’s wrenchingly emotional drama, also featuring glorious full-on musical numbers. Two Welsh gay men (Sion Daniel Young and Fra Fee) try to adopt, but one of them has suffered a traumatic childhood.
The Acolyte (Disney+)
A moody new Star Wars spin-off, created by Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), focusing on the Jedi in an earlier era. Starring Amandla Stenberg, this time, the lightsabers have a distinctly feminist twist.
Love Island (ITV for launch, then ITV2)
So it returns: the sun-soaked Instagram-adjacent TV-romance juggernaut. Hosted by Maya Jama from Mallorca, thus far it lacks energy but could yet pep up.
