The Winter King | ITVX
Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Vanishing Act (ITV1) | ITVX
Gyeongseong Creature | Netflix
There can be a feast or famine feel to the television schedules before Christmas, as things turn a tad sluggish before the full-on yuletide bonanza. One hates to whinge but, at its worst, you can feel as though you’re crawling, martyred TV critic-style, through the equivalent of a barren wintry landscape, with a remote control frozen to your hand. And, yes, you are welcome.
As such, I was grateful to see ITVX’s 10-part fantasy drama The Winter King nestling on the horizon. Based on The Warlord Chronicles novels by Bernard Cornwell, a retelling of the Arthurian legends, it clearly has aspirations to join the major league fantasy blockbusters (Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon et al). Does it manage it? Well, sometimes.
Opening on a foggy, hellish battlefield, the show focuses on Arthur, of course, a brooding Jon Snow-alike played perfectly well by Iain De Caestecker. As the illegitimate son of King Uther (a grippingly vile Eddie Marsan), Arthur gets a churlish reception when he brings back the body of Uther’s real son, who’s been slain on the battlefield. “You truly are my bastard,” snarls Uther, and tries to kill Arthur. Wizard Merlin (Nathaniel Martello-White) intervenes to save his life and Arthur is banished, though he is later begged to return to save the kingdom of Dumnonia (do keep up).
With fantasy fare you have to allow for a modicum of convoluted plotting, cod-Shakespearean oration, ancient names (Gundleus, Derfel), cosplay Tolkien and mystical flourishes (along with Merlin, there’s a druidess, played by Ellie James). Even so, The Winter King spends too long whimsically dawdling in the hippy-esque community of Avalon, to the point that (spoiler alert) it’s almost a relief when baddies show up to unleash bloody mayhem.
This makes it sound terrible, which it isn’t. Rather, it’s middling, lacking the wit and audacity of House of the Dragon or peak Game of Thrones. But a few episodes in, after a stodgy start (setting up its kingdoms, dynasties, feuds), the Arthurian storytelling starts coming through strongly and things liven up. Be warned, though, even for the fantasy genre, it’s jaw droppingly violent. Swords ram through mouths; spears sprout from a child’s back like a porcupine; a baby is… well, wait and see.
Moving along, there’s joy to be had in the BBC Two docuseries Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution. It’s about time the genre got its due as an earlier form of punk: music for the marginalised (gay people, black/Latino culture, women) you could dance to. In this way, the programme is a treat, tracking disco from underground 1970s New York into the heart of the global mainstream and beyond.
Over three episodes, it works as an archive of social history (weaving in civil rights, gay rights, feminism, the Aids epidemic and the rock-centric “disco demolition night” pushback) as well as a homage to the sounds, clubs, moments and people, from the early nightspots through to infamous haunts such as Studio 54.
There’s sweet footage of the late Donna Summer looking slightly alarmed about criticism of the trailblazing 16-minute-long orgasmathon Love to Love You Baby (hadn’t she realised?). A section on the rise of the black disco diva features the ever-impressive Candi Staton (“Disco freed me. Disco saved me”). Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic discusses how YMCA’s subversive melange of gay tropes charmed itself into the hearts of middle America (“Quite a Trojan horse!”).
The final segment, about disco’s huge cultural impact, rather peters out, but no matter. There’s still much to enjoy in this spangled homage to anarchy on the dancefloor.
Remember the TV schedule-style Siberian wasteland I mentioned earlier? That is very much the home of Vanishing Act, a three-part Australian true-crime drama that looks as if it could be interesting… then isn’t. Kate Atkinson plays Melissa Caddick, a financial adviser and con artist who embezzled millions of dollars from investors, including friends, family and neighbours. After being raided by the Australian federal police, she disappeared in 2020. Later, her training shoe turned up on a beach, with just her severed foot inside. Caddick was officially declared dead earlier this year.
While this has all the ingredients of an intriguing drama, it turns into a true-crime dog’s dinner. There’s scant characterisation of Caddick – just that she relished her glitzy lifestyle in Dover Heights, Sydney – nor even of her victims, who are just wheeled in occasionally to look “upset” or “angry”.
It’s not helped by the omnipresent, excruciatingly arch voiceover in which Caddick second guesses her unresolved story. Were gangsters involved? Did she kill herself? Did she chop off her foot and fake her own death? At best, The Vanishing Act is unintentionally amusing (Crimewatch reconstruction meets Kath & Kim: the blooper reel), but even in a slow week it’s probably one to avoid.
Thankfully, over on Netflix, there’s Kang Eun-kyung’s ingenious, macabre 10-part Korean period horror-thriller Gyeongseong Creature. Gyeongseong is the old name for Seoul, and the thriller is set in 1945 in Japanese-colonised Korea. Uncompromising from the off, it isn’t long before bodies are burned, people are shot in cages and fire rips through what appears to be a secret military bunker.
Park Seo-jun is a raffish pawnbroker (“Master of the house of golden treasure”) looking into local disappearances, with Han So-hee playing a missing person specialist. Without revealing too much, it evolves into a textured, unsettling tale involving sinister laboratories and the central idea of a “creature” in both a real sense and as a proxy for state control and human cruelty.
The show won’t be to everyone’s taste – it sometimes lurches into hysteria, while there’s so much gore splattering about that at times you feel as if you need an umbrella. However, making my way through the first drop of seven episodes, the intensity is relentless, the sense of menace verges on operatic and I’m keen to unravel the layers of mystery.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Winter King ★★★
Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution ★★★
Vanishing Act ★
Gyeongseong Creature ★★★
What else I’m watching
Nigella’s Amsterdam Christmas
(BBC One)
Nigella Lawson is shown preparing for Christmas by bustling around the foodie Dutch city. Back in her UK kitchen you can barely see her food mixer for all the tinsel.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
(Disney+)
An inventive US fantasy/coming-of-age quest about a teenager who’s secretly a demigod. Starring Walker Scobell, it cleverly weaves in themes about ADHD and dyslexia.
Imagine… Russell T Davies: The Doctor and Me
(BBC One)
Whovians will doubtless love how Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies sits in the actual Tardis to talk to Alan Yentob about life, death, sexuality and an oeuvre including Queer As Folk, Years and Years and It’s a Sin. Warm and revealing.
