Vigil (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Crown Netflix
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Imagine: The Factory: Made in Manchester (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Real Full Monty: Jingle Balls (ITV1) | itv.com
Blessed are we, for DCI Amy Silva (Suranne Jones) has been winched off that tedious submarine for series two of Tom Edge’s BBC One crime drama Vigil. However popular the first outing proved with viewers, for me, the promised subaquatic thrills didn’t materialise and it ended up feeling like a corporate team-building escape room activity with some dead bodies lumped in.
I liked DCI Silva though: stern, with a shortfall in human warmth, even when she was with her professional and romantic partner, DS Longacre (Rose Leslie). So it’s good to see her now on dry land, even if she is in a Middle Eastern country called Wudyan (a place that sounds made up, because it is).
This second six-part series, shown across two weeks, opens with a Scotland-Wudyan dual military drone exercise going fatally wrong, just as an air vice-marshal (a juicily cynical Dougray Scott) is trying to impress prospective clients.
This is a key theme of Vigil 2: the sale of military hardware, with support from British forces, in a kind of five-star, munitions-based customer services arrangement. Silva and Longacre again mainly operate separately, Silva in Wudyan with Romola Garai’s scowling squadron leader, and Longacre investigating in Scotland. They were never the best drawn of screen couples, and this time their relationship mainly comprises a pregnant Longacre chafing at an overprotective Silva, plus a couple of lacklustre cuddles on the sofa.
Elsewhere, frothing overexcitement with drone-tech results in entire sections where you’ve no idea what anyone is talking about. There’s exposition overload (if you get confused, somebody will be along shortly to explain everything). Subsidiary themes (PTSD, torture, homophobia) waft in and out. Jones also needs to stop whipping her specs on and off: it starts off commanding, then becomes artificial and annoying. For all that, halfway through, I am much preferring Vigil 2: unlike the flatness of its predecessor, there’s a modicum of colour, action and life.
On Netflix, the concluding half series drop of the sixth and final outing of Peter Morgan’s The Crown isn’t quite as risible as the first, so that’s a shame. There’s no “Ghost Diana” (boo, she’s my favourite), though there’s a smidgeon of “Ghost Margaret” in the rather touching episode about the death of Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville, finally getting something to do other than imperiously wave a cigarette holder).
Otherwise, the Queen (Imelda Staunton) tangles with Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), Harry (Luther Ford) is all prescient sniping from the second-born cheap seats, and there’s a lot on the romantic blossoming of William (Ed McVey) and Kate (Meg Bellamy), with an unseemly side order of Carole Middleton (Eve Best) scheming like a social-climbing, Berkshire-dwelling Lady Macbeth.
The final episode livens things up. The Queen mulls her demise. Harry sports the swastika-adorned fancy dress. Finally (spoiler alert!), the Queen is joined by her younger selves, played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, both dispensing unwanted advice (“Monarchy is something you are, not what you do”). There it ends, not with a bang, or a whimper, but with an existential visitation. What a strange series The Crown became: a turgid mishmash of schmaltz, grovelling and trolling. I’ll miss it more than I’m letting on.
In Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle (BBC Two), the historian effects a spin on her Agatha Christie: Mystery Queen series last year. That is, she takes an author she clearly relishes and dips into the murk of their backstory.
The opening episode of three explains how the driven, ambitious Conan Doyle, a Scottish doctor and literary snob, grew to resent his hugely popular and lucrative detective creation, and resolved to kill him off, convinced that Sherlock Holmes was stopping him from being taken seriously as an author.
Along the way there are archive images, the now standard cosplay/docudrama visuals, and background details (Conan Doyle’s father, also creative, suffered from alcoholism and mental health struggles). While I’m more of an Agatha Christie buff, I still found it engrossing. I never realised that Conan Doyle was such a proto-selfie peacock: in one vintage photograph, he poses in long johns, hitting a punchbag.
Opening-night nerves crackle off the screen in Imagine… The Factory: Made in Manchester (BBC One), as Alan Yentob goes behind the scenes at Manchester’s new cultural centre, Aviva Studios, home of Factory International, which runs the Manchester international festival.
The fraught genesis of the building has been well documented. The biggest UK arts building since Tate Modern, it took nine years to complete (the pandemic didn’t help), coming in at £240m, double the original estimate. Still, what imposing results. The “warehouse” space alone is roughly the length of a Boeing 747 and the height of four double-decker buses. Danny Boyle, the brains behind Trainspotting and the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, directs the launch show, Free Your Mind, a spectacular-looking contemporary dance homage to The Matrix.
With appearances from the likes of actor Maxine Peake and poet Lemn Sissay, the documentary also does a deep-dive into the city’s immense social and cultural legacy, from cotton mills to Granada TV to Factory Records, the Haçienda nightclub and beyond. As someone who spent vast swathes of their youth basically gatecrashing the thriving Manchester scene, it’s TV nectar from the gods. The sight of the late, great Factory supremo Tony Wilson rocking a fedora feels particularly poignant. You wonder what Manchester would look like today without him.
The latest two-part ITV1 festive-themed, cancer awareness-raising exercise The Real Full Monty: Jingle Balls, presented by Coleen Nolan and Diversity’s Ashley Banjo, is only a few seconds in before we’re treated to the bare, tattooed buttocks of former royal butler and prostate cancer sufferer Paul Burrell. Elsewhere, ex-Countryfile presenter Julia Bradbury (breast cancer), former footballer and reality star Ashley Cain (who lost his baby daughter to acute myeloid leukaemia in 2021) and The Only Way Is Essex star Gemma Collins (her mother is in cancer remission) are among the participants.
It’s a strange mashup of nudity, panto silliness (people dressed as testicles and breasts), profound pain and the very best of intentions. Bravo, everybody!
Star ratings (out of five)
Vigil ★★★★
The Crown ★★★
Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle ★★★
Imagine… The Factory: Made in Manchester ★★★★
The Real Full Monty: Jingle Balls ★★★
What else I’m watching
Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream
(ITVX)
Zoe Ball hosts the final to find the next Sophie and Sky for the West End Abba musical Mamma Mia! For all the cheese, it’s a charming show that seemed hobbled, ratings-wise, by its bizarre early Sunday evening scheduling (presumably to avoid clashing with the Strictly results show?).
Something Undone
(ITVX)
Ten-part thriller about a podcasting couple (played by Billy Campbell and Amanda Brugel). While he examines an old murder in Newfoundland, she deals with a family suicide. Moody atmospherics and suspense aplenty.
Bad Education: A Christmas Carol
(BBC Three)
This comedy has long been the go-to school-based comedy for riotous backchat. Jack Whitehall and Layton Williams star in this shamelessly bawdy festive instalment.
