Cheat (ITV) | ITV Hub
MotherFatherSon (BBC Two) | iPlayer
After Life Netflix
Speechless (E4) | All 4
60 Days on the Streets (Channel 4) | All 4
Written by Gaby Hull, directed by Louise Hooper, from the same stable as The Missing and Baptiste, Cheat was an intriguing psychodrama that spread over consecutive weeknights like an ever-deepening stain.
The always superb Katherine Kelly played Leah, a university lecturer whose (blissful-seeming) existence was torpedoed by Rose, a student she’d caught cheating (Bafta-winning Molly Windsor of Three Girls – radiating malevolence). At first, Rose just seemed to be a spoilt brat – her father (Ade Edmondson) was a benefactor of the university, while Leah’s father (Peter Firth) had worked here, leading to a tense bout of Nepotism Top Trumps: “Do you really think it’s a coincidence that you ended up teaching at the same university as your dad?”
Cheat twisted and teased from the first moment: a flash-forward to a prison meeting between Leah and Rose, after Leah’s husband, Adam (Tom Goodman-Hill), had been murdered – but who was visiting whom?, through an eventful plot (Leah masturbating in a lavatory cubicle while thinking of a colleague, Leah’s cat killed, Adam seduced by Rose), to yet another bloody twist in the final seconds.
After it was revealed that Rose was the result of Leah’s father’s affair (“You’re my sister. I love you,” breathed Rose), it became about how many definitions of “cheat” there could be: Rose’s essay; Leah’s fantasies; Adam and Rose; Leah’s dad. Even for an ITV miniseries, Cheat was a tad overblown (put it this way: Rose made Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look reasonable), but there was an omnipresent sense of menace, and great acting, particularly from Kelly and Windsor. And how refreshing, after Killing Eve, to watch another thriller where two complex female leads are obsessed… with each other.
Two episodes in and there’s still a sense of narrative stodge from MotherFatherSon. Which is mystifying, as it has a stellar cast (Richard Gere, Helen McCrory, Sinéad Cusack, Sarah Lancashire), and it’s written by Tom Rob Smith, who wrote the excellent The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.
Gere plays Max, a ruthless media mogul who might remind you of someone (clue: sounds like “Mupert Rurdoch”). His newspaper was run by his beta-son, Caden (Billy Howle), whose attempts to numb feelings of inadequacy with drugs and escorts led to a deranged sex scene in the opening episode, before he succumbed to a stroke (poignantly portrayed by Howle).
MotherFatherSon works best as a family drama about recovery and dysfunction, with Max’s ex-wife, Kathryn (McCrory), battling him for her son’s soul (“Only you could speak about the birth of my child as though I wasn’t there”). However, it keeps darting off into other, murky storylines encompassing politics, media ethics and corruption, and thus far, most of them have been overworked and deeply boring. MotherFatherSon has its moments, but if it continues in this opaque fashion I MightSwitchOff.
After Life is the latest offering from Ricky Gervais, where he plays widower Tony, a man corroded by grief (staying alive only to feed his dog) who decides to be as obnoxious as he likes and then kill himself, behaviour that he thinks is “like a superpower.”
The cast includes Penelope Wilton s a widow, Diane Morgan as Tony’s gobby co-worker, and Paul Kaye as a self-satisfied therapist. Apart from videos left by Tony’s late wife (a touching Kerry Godliman), the heart is mainly provided by Ashley Jensen as a care-home worker looking after Tony’s dad (David Bradley), and Mandeep Dhillon’s rookie journalist at the local newspaper where Tony works.
The problem is the wildly swerving tone – from obnoxious to sentimental to caustic to maudlin to pointlessly vile. At one point Tony helps a junkie (Tim Plester) buy enough drugs to kill himself. Ho and ho. This just won’t cut it as edgy comedy in the era of Succession, Russian Doll and so much more. After Life worked better during the running joke featuring Tony covering hopeless local stories, such as a boy playing recorders with his nostrils: “Why would people rather be famous for being shit than not famous at all?” This is Gervais’s true superpower – as a carping, eye-rolling everyman.
In US comedy Speechless, Minnie Driver plays frazzled, determined Maya, who feels she must be the voice of her teenage son, JJ (played brilliantly by Micah Fowler), who has cerebral palsy and communicates via an electronic board. When Maya drags her husband (John Ross Bowie) and other kids, Dylan (Kyla Kenedy) and Raymond (Mason Cook), to live in a derelict house to access a better school for JJ, it clearly isn’t for the first time. “Why are we here?” mused Raymond. “Maybe she got a coupon for a crack house.”
By the end of a slightly frantic first episode, JJ had a new helper (Cedric Yarbrough) and Speechless had a promising set-up. It toys with perceptions of political correctness, with digs about everything from people trying to nick disabled parking spaces (“She says she has difficulty walking, awww!”) to a teacher nervously second-guessing his decision to get the class to give JJ a welcoming standing ovation. “Everybody down!” Its other major strength lies in its darkly wisecracking family dynamic (think Modern Family, with added scorn), with Driver and Bowie perfectly encapsulating a couple who’ve learned the hard way to use cynicism and humour for fuel.
60 Days on the Streets was a Channel 4 documentary about Britain’s escalating problem of homelessness, with survivalist Ed Stafford living rough, first in Manchester (next in London).
Before long, Stafford was eating food from bins, washing his crotch in the basins in public lavatories, and engaging with homeless people, who were mainly friendly. There were some jarring moments. Stafford made a somewhat over-romanticised case for the freedom of street life. He was also taken aback when a straighter-seeming homeless friend suddenly started scoring crack and heroin – not all homeless people end up on drugs, but who could blame the ones who do?
Was this just more telly poverty-tourism? A homeless safari? Destitution bingo? No, that would be unfair. Stafford made a point of challenging his own preconceptions and, by doing so, invited the viewer to do the same.
