The Reckoning (BBC One) | iPlayer
Frasier | Paramount+
Lessons in Chemistry | AppleTV+
Scars: Surviving a Stabbing (BBC Three) | iPlayer
Watching Steve Coogan portray Jimmy Savile in BBC One drama The Reckoning, I find myself trying to remember: was Savile that gruesomely obvious at the time? I’d say he probably was. A tracksuited, cigar-chomping, arm-kissing shapeshifter with Halloween-wig hair. A primetime predator lounging like a dark king in his Jim’ll Fix It chair.
Presumably in response to criticisms about dramatising (celebrating? trivialising?) Savile, no previews were available. Journalists were invited to a screening/Q&A session, involving Coogan, director Sandra Goldbacher, writer Neil McKay, co-executive producer Jeff Pope and real-life Savile victims. Instead, I watched all four episodes from my sofa when they launched on iPlayer. My conclusion: while Savile got away with it (dying, unexposed, in 2011), I’m not sure The Reckoning always does.
Savile spent decades hiding “in plain sight” (the title of the Dan Davies book the series is partly based on). He used his DJ/TV fame and charity fundraising as masks to cover his tracks as a sex abuser, paedophile and necrophile; to get into hospitals (such as Stoke Mandeville and Broadmoor); and as an entree into the establishment (Margaret Thatcher, British royalty, Pope John Paul II), resulting in a knighthood and a papal knighthood.
The Reckoning (made by ITV Studios for the BBC) goes some way to convey all this (the madness, the darkness, the enabling toxicity of the era). Coogan is very good, delivering a dead-eyed bogeyman without lapsing into caricature. Gemma Jones also excels as Savile’s critical but dependent mother. While a mercifully brief morgue scene feels grotty and unnecessary, abuses are generally dealt with sensitively. I like how episodes are bookended with real-life victim testimonies. But, but…
Savile’s Catholicism, his “reckoning” with the “big fella”, is overplayed to absurdity. There are oversimplistic attempts to contextualise his mindset within the era (including swipes at David Bowie and John Peel). As for the BBC, concerns about Savile (including the suicide of a young Top of the Pops audience member) are dealt with unsatisfyingly. After the DJ’s death, the BBC produced a tribute and axed a Newsnight investigation (covered here with one line of text!). In short, there’s nowhere near enough heat on the BBC; at most, it receives a light singeing.
Beyond that, maybe paralysed with fear about causing offence, The Reckoning frequently feels stiff, overly self-aware, an exercise in dramatic damage limitation. My take on true crime is that each drama should be judged on its own merit (McKay-Pope’s 2011 series Appropriate Adult, about Fred and Rosemary West, was superb). Considered purely on those terms, The Reckoning sometimes verges on ordinary.
Over to Paramount+, where I warily approach the new 10-part Frasier reboot as if it were a suspicious package. What is Kelsey Grammer (Dr Frasier Crane) thinking, resurrecting the long-running 90s/00s sitcom masterclass about a pompous Seattle psychiatrist? While behind the scenes some of the old crew are involved, the original cast (David Hyde Pierce as Niles; Jane Leeves as Daphne) have steered clear, and the mighty John Mahoney, who portrayed Frasier’s father, Martin, died in 2018.
The action is transplanted to Boston (site of Cheers, in which Frasier originally appeared). As Frasier reconnects with his fireman son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), the double-bill launch clunks along like a Frasier/Cheers tribute act. While Grammer is as brilliant as ever (that voice purring away like a classic motor), there’s ungainly exposition and numerous, desperate-seeming references to old characters. Some new faces seem like proxies for the original cast (Freddy comes across as a younger version of Martin). It takes two characters to replace Niles: Frasier’s nephew (Anders Keith) and Frasier’s old college friend, Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst). Eek!
However, ploughing ahead a few episodes, there’s a reboot miracle: characters sync, jokes zing, storylines flow. Lyndhurst (hardwired in the British psyche as Rodney from Only Fools and Horses) emerges as a crucial waspish intellectual foil for Crane. Frasier’s reputation as a show for classic female characters (Roz! Lilith! Bebe!) starts to feel safe with Jess Salgueiro (Freddy’s flatmate) and Toks Olagundoye (a Harvard department head). Frasier’s signature comedy pulse (French farce transplanted to America) finds a rhythm.
It’s still rocky and the old-school sitcom setup gives it a dated cadence. But if you’re patient, the Frasier 2.0 tossed salad and scrambled eggs is tastier than expected.
The new 1950s-set eight-part Apple TV+ drama Lessons in Chemistry, developed by Lee Eisenberg from the bestselling Bonnie Garmus novel, comes in looking like a culinary Mad Men, then marches off in different directions.
Brie Larson plays the untypical Elizabeth, a brittle mashup of Betty Draper and Peggy Olson. A talented scientist, she’s forced to work as a lab tech (because: sexism, and worse), alongside Calvin (Lewis Pullman), another offbeat scientist. She then (spoiler alert) becomes a TV chef, who uses chemistry to make delicious food.
This is an intriguingly eccentric story, about love, tragedy and ambition. Less successfully, some elements (such as a storyline about race) feel tacked on, and there’s so much whimsy (protective ghosts; talking dogs), you could convulse from all the sugar.
Lessons in Chemistry, at heart a misfit love story, sometimes feels like The Notebook for nerds. At the same time, there’s something touchingly brave and gentle about it. Larson is quietly brilliant as a “square peg” who stubbornly rejects being scrunched into a societal round hole.
With stabbings so often in the news, Aodh Breathnach’s BBC Three documentary, Scars: Surviving a Stabbing, looks at people who’ve been attacked, and the physical and psychological impact.
Eight years ago, Breathnach (who has also made films about young footballers in south London and people living in poverty in Devon) survived a stabbing to his head and face. He reflects on his mental health and talks to other survivors. One young man responded with defiance. Another began collecting weapons and handing them in. Breathnach wrestles with whether it’s too dangerous to contact his attacker.
While Scars… could arguably have examined knife crime in the UK more deeply, this is a no-frills study of 21st-century violence, male emasculation and survival that’s all the more powerful because it treads softly.
What else I’m watching
Big Brother (ITV2/ITVX)
“The original social experiment” is back, hosted by AJ Odudu and Will Best. Is the concept passe in the modern reality era? Too early to tell, but thus far, it’s been tense and spiky.
The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix)
Created by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House), this updated horror series is (very) loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe story. Tune in if you like your spookiness on the campy side. Mark Hamill is among the cast.
Big Little Journeys (BBC Two/iPlayer)
New nature series focusing on small animals, from Canadian turtles to South African bush babies. Sometimes it looks like wildlife reimagined as Beanie Babies, but every tuft and shell is real.
