Awful acting, dull plot and Oirish cliches… EastEnders spin-off Redwater is bad Moon rising
Regardless of what the BBC say, Redwater is just a predictable EastEnders spin off
WHY do I hate EastEnders so much?
For many many good reasons.
But if you want to reduce it to just one, it’s the fact the BBC’s very PC soap plonks itself at the very summit of the right-on moral high ground yet reduces everyone it doesn’t like, or who lives outside its middle-class, metropolitan orbit, to the crudest, route one stereotype.
If you don’t believe me, ask the good people of Ireland, where EastEnders’ infamous 1997 special went down about as well a visit from the Black & Tans.
Wiser heads might subsequently have avoided the place forever.
Not EastEnders, though.
Possibly by way of a really clumsy apology (but I doubt it), two of the Queen Vic regulars have just arrived back on a long-lost son mission.
It’s Kat and Alfie: Redwater, an odd little six-part BBC1 series starring Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie who’s been very keen to stress it’s NOT a spin-off.
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“Redwater is a stand-alone drama,” he reckons, even though it couldn’t be more of a spin-off if track marshalls were pulling its remains from a pile of Michelin tyres.
The only unexpected twist, in fact, is that the show it’s mainly spun-away from, is Broadchurch.
Title sequences, cliffs, sea, incidental music, atmosphere, the heavy use of symbolism, useless blokes, they’ve borrowed almost everything from Broadchurch apart from the one thing that made the show addictive in the first place. The whodunnit factor.
And we can only guess at the understandable havoc he’ll wreak when he also discovers he’s also related to Big Mo.
Like a couple of million other viewers, I may well have given up on Redwater by that point, though, because quite apart from the fact they’ve given the main game away it’s dull, a bit confusing and horribly familiar.
Just two episodes in and, as well as the Broadchurch stuff and “Oirish” cliches, you’ve also probably spotted bits of Philomena, The Field, Poldark, Local Hero, a Micky Flanagan routine and the mirror scene from An American Werewolf in London.
One of the characters, Agnes the arm-folding matriarch, also speaks fluent Scooby Doo and actually said to Kat, last week: “With all your meddling nonsense, how dare you come here.”
I’d keep your eye on her, if I were you. She’s bad news and may help distract you from some of the acting that’s going on here.
Angeline Ball, from The Commitments, is particularly grim as Lance’s occasionally American daughter, Eileen.
But the two leads, who you’d hope might save Redwater, don’t.
She’s bad and he’s not much better, whenever the action strays beyond the light-hearted.
But she’s reeeeeeeeally bad. Although I don’t think it’s entirely Jessie Wallace’s fault.
’Cos the thing about soap characters is, they’re cardboard cut-outs, impossibly thick and behave like no one you’ve ever met in real life or seen on any other TV show. They don’t transfer.
Indeed you can no more cut and paste Kat & Alfie into a serious crime drama than you can give Hilda Ogden a cameo in Schindler’s List.
That’s why TV channels don’t do it, as a rule, and there was real pathos during the first episode, when Shane Richie said: “I got scared tonight, Kat, like something was coming. Something terrible.”
And it is. Back behind the Queen Vic bar, April 2019, latest.
REDWATER mysteries
How come they don’t have autopsies in Ireland? Why is Kat Moon forever dressed in a vivid shade of canary yellow?
And what the hell happened to the life-changing scars she received in the great EastEnders fire of 2014?
They seem to have healed-up incredibly well.
BGT can bzzz off for good
THE Britain’s Got Talent auditions have finished without me wishing to see any of the acts ever again.
Children’s choirs – Bzzz. Dance troops – Bzzzzz.
Anything involving a Little Mix tribute, dogs, acrobats, singing or contemporary dance – BZZZ, BZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZZ.
In fact, now I think about it, the only acts I might have been tempted to put through to the live shows would’ve been Ant & Dec’s magician, Matt Edwards, Lords of Strut and, just for a laugh, world’s worst impressionist Irshad Shaikh.
A point of view that may strike some of you as unforgivably cynical, but too bad.
I’ve been worn down by the sob stories, rotten acts and deceit on a show which is forever dressing-up seasoned variety professionals as plucky, have-a-go amateurs. With the absolute worst of it being Cirque Du Soleil regulars Angara Contortion, who shoved their heads up each other’s rear ends, quite fetchingly, and left David Walliams asking Amanda Holden: “Do you think we could do that?”
David, David, David. She’s done almost nothing else but that for the last 11 years. Have you not been watching?
QUIZ show imbeciles of the week. Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “ ‘England expects every man will do his duty’ was a signal sent by which naval hero?”
Penny: “Napoleon.”
Ben Shephard: “What’s the official language of Portugal?”
Hayley: “Spanish.”
Ben Shephard: “In the Christian calender, what name is given to the day before Good Friday?”
Jake: “Shrove Tuesday.”
And 15 To 1, Sandi Toksvig: “The Royal Observatory on Blackford Hill and the former Royal Observatory on Calton Hill are both features of which Scottish city?”
Mike: “Greenwich.”
Italian job has its berks
BAD news. Some idiot’s rescued Paul Hollywood’s Top Gear audition reel from a landfill site near Runcorn and turned it into a three-part BBC2 series.
It’s called Paul Hollywood’s Big Continental Road Trip and teams him up with a variety of high-performance sports cars and semi-engaged locals who must try to prompt the host to say something more profound than: “Cars are in the DNA of Italians.”
First stop, Rome, in a Lamborghini, alongside Bruno Tonioli, who was assured: “If we were driving this in London, you’d think what complete berks. Hood down, it’s not particularly warm, we’ve got shades on...” And you’re Paul Hollywood. So I reckon something a bit stronger than “berks” might be appropriate.
Bruno quickly vanished, though, as did someone called Eleonora Galasso, because it turns out there’s only so much clumsy flirting a foxy Italian woman can take from an overweight, middle-aged doughnut-filler.
Insights from Paul were, unsurprisingly, thinner on the ground (it took him an hour to work out that “Italians are passionate about cars”.) However, comedian Francesco De Carlo did teach him the rude Italian hand gesture for “Your wife is cheating on you”.
Which was all very well, but I can’t help thinking the rude Italian hand gesture for “Your husband’s having it off with his co-host” might have had a bit more traction.
TV GOLD: BBC4’s spellbinding OJ: Made In America series. Television’s best interviewer, Andrew Neil, demolishing that loathsome IRA apologist Jeremy Corbyn, on BBC1.
Ian “Lance” McElhinney’s beautiful reading of My Land, by Thomas Osborne Davis, on Redwater.
“Hands-on gardener” Kelly Brook bringing The Chelsea Flower Show to a standstill with the news: “I love tweeting my alliums every now and then.”
And Tando, in the Mo Farah fat suit, pulling down will.i.am’s trousers at the breathless climax of the Bigheads final.
Give it a second series, ITV, please.
GOOD Morning Britain, Piers Morgan asks: “Could I go to the zoo and demand to be in the elephant compound ’cos I’ve decided I’m an elephant?”
Yes, but only if you cut back on the buns. Whipsnade’s on a budget, you know.
Lookalikes
THIS week’s £69 winner is Nicola Sturgeon and Minnie The Minx from The Beano.
Sent in by B McGuire.
Picture research Alfie Snelling. Please don’t use this as an excuse to send in Nicola Sturgeon/Jimmy Krankie again.
THIS Morning, Thursday, “dream expert” Ian Wallace on Rylan’s Mighty Boosh dream: “Although it seems quite whimsical, it’s about Rylan’s search for a deeper identity, and the gold tooth in the dream about Jazz Man is about letting Rylan’s special talent and power shine through and not being afraid to conceal it from other people.”
So come on, Rylan, show us your special talent. God knows, we’ve been waiting long enough.
RANDOM TV irritations: That deathly moment at the end of the BBC News when they say: “Now back to the General Election.”
The collective failure to ask Jeremy Corbyn “How’s Venezuela going, dough-ball?” Anyone but Bobby Darin singing Don’t Rain On My Parade. BBC2 pretending White Gold is a “comedy” when it’s clearly just another excuse to express its loathing for Britain’s aspirational working class. And BGT’s Simon Cowell telling Riverdancer David Geaney: “I think the idea’s better than the execution.”
’Cos, when it comes to Riverdancing, I’m of the firm opinion execution’s better than the idea.
THIS Morning, Peter Andre’s World of Weird: “If reincarnation is possible, could I have lived a past life?”
You’re still bloody here after 60 Minute Makeover, aren’t you?
GREAT Sporting Insights
Michael Owen: “United are at the top of the tree but they need to move up to the next level.”
Mark Robson: “Both teams have been thoroughly consistent with their consistency.”
Tony Pulis: “When people say Jermain Defoe’s a free agent, effectively he’s a free agent.”
Arsene Wenger: “It’s a straight fight between Liverpool and Arsenal, but City are in there as well.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)