The Gold (BBC One) | iPlayer
Better (BBC One) | iPlayer
Inside Our Autistic Minds (BBC Two) | iPlayer
The Piano (Channel 4) | All 4
I didn’t expect much from new BBC One drama The Gold, written and created by Neil Forsyth and plonked in the old Happy Valley slot on Sunday night. Based on the real-life £26m Brink’s-Mat bullion robbery from a warehouse near Heathrow in 1983, the title makes it sound like a naff chart hits compilation album from the same era. But watching it (all six episodes are on iPlayer), my reservations melted – or should I say smelted? – away. It’s less about stolen gold – bars gleaming in hands like lightsabers – than human nature: how far people are prepared to go and how hard others work to stop them.
Directed by Aneil Karia, The Gold starts with a gang setting out to steal a million in cash and ending up with £26m in ingots. The police task force is led by DCI Boyce (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville, exuding the dogged decency of Martin Clunes in Manhunt), with officers played by Charlotte Spencer and Emun Elliott. The gold-laundering criminals include south London wide boy Kenneth Noye (brilliantly portrayed by Jack Lowden as the dark side of Harry Enfield’s character Loadsamoney); John Palmer (Tom Cullen), smelting gold in a shed; and one of The Gold’s fictional characters, suave but fragile social-climbing solicitor Edwyn (Dominic Cooper), whose pricey shirt collars look like they’re choking him. They’re united by their greed for money and status. “I’m ready,” says a puffed-up Noye at the end of the first episode. “I can be king.”
Brink’s-Mat is an extraordinary ongoing story, including still unaccounted for gold, rumours about what the money funded (property regeneration in London’s Docklands has been cited), even talk of it being cursed. The drama focuses on police efforts to penetrate the labyrinthine international criminal network, alongside freemasonry and corruption (“there is a hidden hand”).
While it’s important not to glorify criminals (Noye, who successfully pleaded self-defence after fatally stabbing Brink’s-Mat officer DC John Fordham, was later convicted of the 1996 road-rage murder of Stephen Cameron), The Gold manages to humanise, not sanitise. A major flaw, however, is the relentless, clunking “likes of us!” speechifying about class/unfairness. Granted, it’s is set in Thatcherite times, but the repetition borders on the farcical. Still, potent performances and no-frills storytelling deliver a series with grit and shine.
Another new BBC One drama, Better is a five-parter (also all on iPlayer) set in Leeds. Leila Farzad (I Hate Suzie) stars as bent copper DI Lou Slack, who has spent nigh-on two decades fixing problems for crime lord Col – played by Andrew Buchan (Broadchurch, This England) with such a convincing Northern Irish accent, I initially thought James Nesbitt had wandered on set for a cameo.
Basically, Lou is H from Line of Duty given their own series. She and Col have a warm, mutually beneficial relationship, causing friction between her and her husband (Samuel Edward-Cook), but it’s given them the requisite swanky house with uber-fancy kitchen. Then Lou encounters challenges, not least her son (Zak Ford-Williams) falling seriously sick. She vows to be “better” and bring Col down.
Early on, there are niggles: have none of her colleagues noticed that Lou has the lifestyle of a Yorkshire Gwyneth Paltrow? Then again, there’s much to enjoy in Lou and Col’s relationship: her hammering nerves, his silky charm camouflaging the vicious monster beneath. As tensions rise, Lou must also keep fellow detectives at bay.
I wish Better had continued in this fashion, with dark sparks flying between the leading pair. Sadly, as the series progresses, plot holes turn into craters and absurd developments make for an increasingly daft story. The ending is so peculiar, it turns anti-formulaic into a negative. For all that, the cast is strong – Anton Lesser pops up as a disgraced former detective – and Better is strangely compelling. Even after plausibility goes awol, you still want to find out what happens next.
On BBC Two, Chris Packham continues the good work of his 2017 documentary Asperger’s and Me with the two-part docuseries Inside Our Autistic Minds, in which he meets others with autism, helping them to make films giving insights into their minds.
In this opener, Flo, 28, performs live comedy, but she’s exhausted after years of “masking” (suppressing atypical behaviour; imitating others) for everyone bar her husband. Flo’s film reveals to her devoted, tearful mother her wholly authentic self, complete with the anxious rocking/hand-flapping Flo always feared would upset her. There’s also Murray, 20 (radio presenter Ken Bruce’s son), who is non-verbal but communicates via a tablet. His film uses origami and animation in a plea to be heard: “I have no voice but yearn to say so much.”
This is powerful viewing with tough moments; when Packham visits a school for autistic girls, it emerges that intelligent autistic females are statistically eight times more likely to take their own lives. The programme also showcases the complexities of autism: “When you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person,” says Packham. The perfect presenter for the subject, he quietly waits for people to express themselves, with a look in his eye that says he knows exactly how hard it is.
We’ve all seen the public pianos in shopping centres, town squares and stations around the country. In new six-part Channel 4 series The Piano, presented by Claudia Winkleman, amateurs play, aware they’re being filmed, but not realising that pop artist Mika and world-renowned Chinese pianist Lang Lang are secretly watching them. Each week, one pianist is selected to perform in a special concert at the Royal Festival Hall.
The opening episode, at London’s St Pancras station, drives home that beyond the piano, it’s about people: the pianists (young, old, skilful, self-taught) and their music (classical, rap, jazz, self-written). Mika and Lang Lang observe, rapt, while Winkleman is restored to her nice/bubbly factory settings after her mean girl turn on The Traitors.
Be warned, you will feel yourself manipulated – fingers scampering over emotions as surely as the keys – but it’s all in good spirit. With Lang Lang, Mika and the Royal Festival Hall gig revealed at the end of each episode, it gives the performances a spontaneous purity distinct from talent show culture. Sometimes the sweetest, simplest ideas are the best.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Gold ★★★★
Better ★★★
Inside Our Autistic Minds ★★★★
The Piano ★★★
What else I’m watching
Prue and Danny’s Death Road Trip
(Channel 4)
I didn’t realise that The Great British Bake Off’s Prue Leith’s son is Tory MP Danny Kruger. This documentary takes them on a US/Canada road trip to examine their opposing views on assisted dying: she’s pro; he’s against.
The Twelve
(ITVX)
An award-winning, 10-part Australian courtroom murder drama, starring Sam Neill and Kate Mulvaney. Based on 2019 Belgian series De Twaalf, it puts laser focus on the motivations and prejudices of the jury.
Couples Therapy
(BBC Two)
Third series of the counselling show with Dr Orna Guralnik, in which you get a ringside seat for couples’ relationship problems. Emotional issues, sexual dysfunction, ancient gripes – it all comes spilling out. Don’t pretend you’re not fascinated.
