Comment
ALLY ROSS
BBC1’s The Way is risible, unrealistic, pretentious and will age poorly
It was full steam ahead with BBC1’s The Way, a three-part catastrophe which had been accused of 'political bias' before the first episode aired
BLOODY Chernobyl. It’s nearly 40 years since that monster blew its top.
Yet we still live with the consequences every week.
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Not the nuclear catastrophe itself, but the slew of copycat dramas Sky Atlantic’s brilliant 2019 mini-series has inspired and always involve a captioned timeline since the disaster and a soundtrack farting away ominously in the background.
There were two more this week, but Breathtaking left me completely cold, probably because I just didn’t have any appetite for another Covid drama or ITV taking the moral high ground over Matt Hancock so soon after it had given him £320,000 to take part in I’m A Celebrity.
It was full steam ahead, then, with BBC1’s The Way, a three-part catastrophe which had been accused of “political bias” even before the first episode was broadcast.
Claims that should’ve been met with a collective: “Duh! Of course it’s biased. It’s a Beeb political drama. It’s what they do.”
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Bad acting
I genuinely wouldn’t mind, though, if the drama was realistic and done as well as, say, Channel 4’s GBH or A Very British Coup, which both wore radical hearts on their very brilliant sleeves back in the day.
The Way does neither of those two things.
In fact, I’d almost be tempted to describe it as the most pretentious load of old Welsh toss I’ve seen since I logged on to Charlotte Church’s wellness site , but it’s actually written by an Englishman, the normally reliable James Graham, who appears to have taken leave of his senses and origins with this one.
His drama is, though, undeniably biased and asks us to believe a left-wing Welsh workers’ uprising has engulfed a poorly drawn family called the Driscolls and the whole of Port Talbot following an outbreak of bad acting from management at the local steel plant.
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Correct Westminster response here is: “So what? As long as it doesn’t reach Porthcawl, we should be fine.”
However, there would, in fairness, be no show if that happened.
So instead, they throw everything at it, police, Army, Air Force, MI5 spooks, scab labour, SAS mercenaries, the lot.
The problem here, though, is The Way is one of those dramas with absolutely no limit to its ambitions or ego but a very very tight budget and even at the height of the Port Talbot “anarchy”, I reckon, there’s only about 75 people involved.
Indeed, the rioters are in danger of being outnumbered by the random Welsh dingbats like “Simon the prophet”, who runs around in his pants quoting William Butler Yeats, and Michael Sheen, who as well as directing this mess plays the ghost of a dead miner and patriarch of the Driscoll family.
Someone really should’ve had a word here and said: “Michael, darling, loved your Brian Clough, but I’ve seen more convincing coal miners on RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But they didn’t.
They indulged all his proletarian fantasies and every other mad political whim, with catastrophic results.
Episode one holds itself more or less together until right near the end, when someone shouts (and don’t cheer here, please): “THEY’VE CLOSED THE BORDER!”
All 160 miles of it.
Episode two and three, however, when the Driscoll family try to escape to Cheltenham via Hay-on-Wye, both collapse spectacularly and involve a Masonic sex orgy, a talking teddy bear, someone called “The Welsh Catcher”, played by Luke Evans, of all people, and plummy English border vigilantes who’ve been given strict instructions to shoot Owain Wyn Evans, the drumming Welsh weatherman, on sight.
Or they would’ve been if I’d edited the script.
By this point, though, all thoughts of Chernobyl will have been forgotten, because The Way has actually become more like a weird cross between Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Henpocalypse! and an old Two Ronnies sketch called The Worm That Turned, where Barker and Corbett were fleeing to Wales to escape a female dictatorship led by Diana Dors that had forced Englishmen to dress as women.
Those were very different times, but I suspect The Way will age no better as it’s every bit as risible and would leave everyone in the Principality relaxed in the knowledge that no such political disaster will ever consume them, if it wasn’t for one chilling detail in The Way’s final frame.
“Produced with the support of the Welsh Government.”
Run, my Welsh friends. Run like the wind.
TV bias lost on Sue
IT’S not the grievously misleading title of Channel 5’s Sue Perkins: Lost In Alaska that really irks me.
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It’s the lazy, hypocritical anti-American stereotyping you knew would accompany it, and duly did, within 20 minutes of the first episode starting.
“If you asked people to sum up America,” said Sue, about to attribute her own opinion to everyone, “I guess some people might say ‘Big Apple, apple pie, Star-Spangled Banner, Trumpism, Lincoln, hamburgers’. But what all of us would perhaps say is ‘guns’.”
Apart from those who’d say: The moon landings, rock ’n’ roll, Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, the iPhone, the aeroplane, the electric light bulb, motion pictures, The Battle of Midway, Iwo Jima, the liberation of Buchenwald, victory in the Cold War and the 3.75billion US dollars that kept Britain afloat after the Allies defeated Nazism.
None of which ever gets mentioned because luvvie broadcasters are always too busy telling the rest of us we’re racist to notice their own stupid, blinkered prejudices.
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the week. Mastermind, Clive Myrie to Aaron Evans: “I know your mum is going to be very proud of you.”
Big Show, Michael McIntyre: “It was a very beautiful song, Eric (Cantona).”
And Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “Hello Maisie Adams, now one of the biggest names in comedy. You are, you are, you are.”
She’s not, she’s not, she’s not.
FILTH Corner. BBC Scotland, Raith Rovers v Dundee United, Michael Stewart: “It’s a sore one there. He gets Dick right in the mouth.”
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “In pop, which singer, who had a No1 single You’re The First, The Last, My Everything, was known as The Walrus Of Love?” Jenni Murray: “Paul McCartney.” Romesh: “Which daily newspaper has been nicknamed The Grauniad due to misprints and typos?”
Shanequa Paris: “The Sun.”
Limitless Win, Ant: “The character Big Brother is introduced in which George Orwell novel?” Becca: “The BFG.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “A groomzilla is someone who is obsessive or overbearing in planning his what?”
Mel: “Hair.”
Random TV irritations
THE Traitors’ Aaron Evans revelling in his own ignorance and appalling bad manners on Celebrity Mastermind.
Nick Mohammed making David Tennant look like Billy Crystal with his mortifying Mr Swallow turn at the Baftas.
Made In Chelsea’s Miles Nazaire referring to Sunday’s Dancing On Ice turn as “The greatest moment of my career”. (Your what?) And Eric Cantona’s “Dirge Gainsbourg” routine on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show which, if his 1995 assault on the Selhurst Park crowd earned him an eight-month ban, should ensure he’s forbidden from appearing on all light entertainment formats until the 2055 Royal Variety Performance, at the very earliest.
TELLY quiz.
What is Lost In Alaska’s Sue Perkins referring to here: “In my head she may be ten kilos and was immediately going to fall in love with me. Instead it’s like 200lb of nostril coming at you with an intense force?”
A) A moose calf.
B) A bear cub.
C) Mel Giedroyc.
Great sporting insights
MARTIN KEOWN: “If Burnley are going to get better, they need to improve.”
Peter Drury: “Thiago is back so soon, he’s been away a long time.”
And Harriet Prior: “QPR have not won a game since 1999.”
No, Harriet, it just feels like that.
(Said with feeling and compiled by Hoops fan Graham Wray).
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WITH the world on the brink of nuclear armageddon, Channel 5 supplied what the planet’s really been crying out for this week.
A woman called Beth Lee Crowther who, simply by closing her eyes and putting one hand to an ear, can communicate telepathically with the animal, or just have a damn good guess what’s wrong, depending on your own grip on reality.
First up? Petal, a middle-aged chicken who’d suddenly stopped laying eggs.
Beth thought it might be “fox anxiety”.
I reckoned it was more likely the henopause (you’re welcome), but after she’d reassured the bird and predicted “Petal’s going to lay some beautiful eggs for you”, the show’s own closing credits cocked their leg against Beth and her powers in the most brutal fashion possible.
“Petal, 2018-2022. If you have any concerns about your pet, please contact a professional.”
TV Gold
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THE exact moment Eric Cantona stopped groaning on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show.
The Space Shuttle That Fell To Earth, on BBC2.
The triumphant and defiant appearance of Michael J Fox at BBC1’s Baftas.
Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Larry David hitting deaf actor Troy Kotsur with a golf drive “because he wouldn’t have heard me shout fore”.
C5’s Pet Psychic getting bitten by Misty the ferret (you didn’t see that one coming, did you?).
And Unwind With ITV, the modern equivalent of the test card, which may offer nothing more than moving images of Edinburgh city centre or swaying poppy fields, set to ambient music, but it’s still better than 98 per cent of the network’s output (ITV, today, 3.50am).
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Lookalike of the week
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THIS week’s winner is Eric Cantona “singing”, on Michael McIntyre’s Big Show, and Bob Hoskins during his Mussolini And I period.
Sent in by John Davies, South London.
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