Arne Dahl

Arne Dahl

BBC4 27 April at 2100

The first thing I learnt about this series is that Arne Dahl is the name of the writer not a main character like a Frost or Inspector Linley.

The action revolves round ‘A Unit’ who are I guess, having not seen the first story, Sweden’s top level crimes team. They are a bit of an NCIS type set up, in that are made up of specialists of one sort or another. There is the female all-rounder, an intellectual Finlander, a brute, a tough guy, a Mexican (I think, his name is Chavez) and a veteran lady-cop who leads the whole shebang.

In this two-parter, the ‘A Unit’ are warned by the FBI that an American serial killer is on his way over to mix things up a bit and do some murdering Swedish style. Swedish style in this case being the same way he indulged his morbid peccadillo in the States, specialist pliers in the throat to keep the victims from making any noise as he goes to town on their genitalia.

It’s an interesting show, after opening with some serial killing and the team descending on the local airport to try and capture the ‘Kentucky Killer’ on arrival, it then segues into the lives of the characters who make up the ‘A Unit’.

This is done extremely well. Which surprised me as in the opening minutes the dialogue and camaraderie between the group was forced and unnatural; very much “we need to show that this is a team who work together and play together, so let’s have some shit jokes and personal references to bring the audience up to speed”.

But, when it actually got going this side developed very naturally and I was sucked in to the slightly depressing lives of the Swedish crime busters. The drama between fathers and family is very much a theme for the story and ‘A Unit’ has at least two Dads with interesting familial dilemmas but it also spotlights some over some over 40’s sexy time, which as a younger man would have hurt my eyes but now, equidistant between my 20’s and 50’s, actually give me some kind of comfort in light of my rapidly approaching middle age.

I could have watched this quite happily but as must happen, by the time the second feature length instalment starts the focus switches back onto ‘Kentucky Killer’. Though this is still very enjoyable it also seems to be a bit far-fetched when compared to the down beat realism of ‘A Units’ private lives.

This clash is my own real problem with what is a very intelligent and carefully paced thriller, with fully rounded characters filmed in a bleak and grizzly style going up against with what the FBI describes as “like 65 psychopaths wrapped up in one body”. It all clashes a bit, especially when it is revealed that there is a second ‘Kentucky Killer’ who wants to kill the first one, the involvement of the CIA and the ubiquitous terrorist story arc.

There is a lot going on and it’s an odd mix but Arne Dahl just about gets away with it.

Men at Work

Men At Work

23/04/13 at 2200 on Fox

Breckin Meyer, used to be sort of famous (go on Google, the sonnuvabitch, you will like totes recognise him from the movies) but now he is not, so he has created what I suppose is called a sitcom, though I am not entirely sure.

It has laughter (canned, natch) but nothing funny happens and there is no conflict, so it certainly isn’t a drama and there is no tragedy, ergo it must be a comedy. It is also half an hour long and has actors who have previously been in sitcoms, playing the same pick’n'mix roles that appear in these things.

We have a so called likeable main guy (played by someone from That Seventies Show), a geek/weirdo (if played by a woman they are known as kooky), a cocky, confident chap who is also good with the laydeeez, though here Breckin Meyer has split this character in two and we have a slick wise arse and a lady killer but they are best mates so we get two for the price of one. You lucky people.

Anyway, Milo (the likeable main guy) has broken up with his long term girlfriend and turns to his group of clichés to help him muddle through this difficult transitional phase, he gets drunk and pours his heart out to some girl, the lady killer has sex with three women (2 at one time), the cocky guy is witty and comes out on top and the geeky guy is geeky…though he does have a surprisingly hot girlfriend.

And that’s about it, it’s the same thing you have seen a million times but you won’t be used to seeing it this badly. The States tends to only export their good stuff but with all this globalism that’s been going on recently we now have to watch their crap as well.

I am sure when Breckin Meyer originally came up with his ‘Men at Work’, it was a brilliant and cutely observed piece on being suddenly single in your mid-thirties, it was probably full of original characters and snappy dialogue that dared show what men are really like (and ladies you may think you know what we are like, but really you don’t).

But then the suits got involved and sanded down all those nasty edges that seemed way too like real life. I bet Breckin Meyer fought every step of the way to keep it true to his vision but no doubt had a kid or something and eventually capitulated just to earn a buck.

Or maybe he so hated being sort of famous that he created the most vanilla and forgetful series he could think of just to burn any bridge that might take him back to Lala Land.

Or he thought anyone can write a sitcom. Ed. Hello Leverage fans! What do you think?

Ice Cream Girls

Ice Cream Girls

19 April on ITV at 2100

The last three part ITV murder-drama I was asked to review was ‘The Town’, it was about a young man who returns to his home town after a long absence following the sudden death of his parents and uncovers a mysterious past.

The ‘Ice Cream Girls’, a new three part murder-drama from ITV, is about Serena, a woman who returns to her home town after a long absence to help support her dying Mum and uncovers a mysterious past.

Where ‘The Town’ was enigmatic and funny, with writing that showed a sophistication way beyond what is necessary for a run-of-the-mill crime thriller, Ice Cream girls is, judging from the opening episode, pretty standard stuff.

Based on the book of the same name by Dorothy Koomson and adapted for the small screen by Kate Brook (co-writer of recent period production, Mr Selfridge), ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ focuses on the aforementioned Serena, who has returned home to be with her family and her contemporary Polly, who quite remarkably has also just come back to the small seaside town after completing a bit of time in stir for murder.

Though Polly did the time, did she really do the crime or was it Serena? Or both? You would think I would care but I really don’t.

The victim of the crime, who we meet through the power of flash back, is not very nice. He is a womanising and slimy young bounder with a penchant for the manipulation and deflowering of young women.

There is great play made of how unpleasant he is. He takes advantage of his position as a teacher; he calls women bitches and openly flirts with one young girl whilst in the company of another. He is so abhorrent and corrupt that at one point he uses rape as a tool to best demonstrate his love and future fidelity.

I suppose this is layered on so thick in order to give a good reason for the two young women to kill the odious little fart and remain sympathetic. Which, to my mind, is a massive cop-out. Add some layers of ambiguity to the villain and you automatically add some complexity to the motives of those that did him in.

So, unless the plot suddenly pulls the rug out from under us, the remaining two parts will be who really did the crime one, the other or both together.

Now, maybe I am being harsh, this could be interesting if it just wasn’t so depressing. The two protagonists wander about looking at objects from their past with sad and pensive expressions as a particularly mawkish strain of cello music tells you to feel sad but inquisitive.

Even if the plot is weak and the music heavy handed, it could still be good if the dialogue had some layers and nuance. But it ain’t; it’s just all on the nose, there is no sub-plot at all, just what is happening or has happened. There is nothing enigmatic about any of the characters or their motivation. We know why and what they are about because they tell us directly.

At the end of the first instalment of ‘The Town’ I knew nothing about what had really happened (though I had my ideas) but I was intrigued and excited and hungry for the next episode. With Ice Cream Girls on the other hand, I feel like I know exactly what happened and why but don’t even care enough to watch more to have that confirmed.

Two nice girls killed a bastard, one got done the other didn’t. Life sucks. Whatever.

Endeavour

Endeavour, Episode 1,

14 April on ITV

Lewis may have gone for a rest, but the third opera of the Morse cycle is back for a full series – and it’s not just marking time until ITV can get away with commissioning Hathaway. But rather than following the next generation of deductive minds, we’re skipping back one – to Morse’s first days in Oxford CID.

The constants are here: the opening montage, classical music and academic allusions. The franchise has always been ‘intellectual’ in a very ITV way – the characters must be educated because they listen to classical music, use Latin phrases and went to a natty university – but that’s also its strength.

The atmosphere is one of intelligence, but the mysteries are solid and don’t sacrifice plot in favour of high-mindedness. It’s a Sunday evening, this is ITV and you want a good mystery – not Swedes having crises of masculinity. Leave that to BBC Four.

Morse the character is a conduit for this. An Oxbridge dropout, he has the capacity for intellectual engagement but is not divorced from the common experience of life. It’s what sets him apart from so many of those he investigates: the dons, doctors and poetic undergraduates whose analytical or poetic mind-sets frame all life in the vernacular of Homeric odysseys, periodic calculus or Lewisian fantasy.

To any guest cast in Morse, Lewis or Endeavour, the rigours of justice look like the crude demands of a philistine. That it is these people who so often form the cadre of suspects is a satisfying twist on the Promethean archetype of the hero: Morse is the fallen god come back to burst some Olympian egos.

But in Endeavour we have a Morse who is yet to fully realise that ability. He is less certain in his questions, but already has the streak of individualism that makes him equally ill-suited to the hierarchies of the police as academia. He wants to listen to Wagner and solve murders, and doesn’t want his ‘superiors’ telling him what he should be thinking about either.

Those high-ups take the form of Roger Allam and Anton Lesser. Both have the sort of demeanour that can play rough-but-acceptable or posh-but-relatable depending on how you frame them: here, Allam goes for the former, while Lesser takes something approaching the latter.

Perhaps Lesser’s ruthless superintendent works a little too hard to mark the difference between the imagined, proper postwar period and the far-from-revolutionary revisionism the murders themselves present; The decade of Up the Junction, Cathy Come Home and The L-Shaped Room is quite capable of critiquing itself.

That is, however, a minor quibble. The vintage cars and choice LPs add period flavour – and gives ITV a replacement for Heartbeat as well as Lewis in these belt-tightening times – but Endeavour is comfortingly familiar. Sticking to the formula has paid off in this case and Morse is a franchise that is very happily extended. Oh, and he stills gets his obligatory moment of inadvertent revelation – “LEWIS!”

Security Men

Security Men, 12 April at 2100 on ITV

Some things in life amaze you because of their brilliance. For me that has included the first real, naked boobs I encountered; finally seeing the Pixies live after nearly 20 years of live Pixies virginity; the first time I received the special endorphins that are released into the brain during long distance running and the birth of my child.

Well not the last one, I don’t actually have any but I am hoping that my reaction is going to be nearer to the condition of amazement than that of my own Father’s to the news of my birth, which was to grunt and carry on watching television.

There are also feelings of amazement that come with being out and about in nature. A gorgeous view from a hill, the feelings of awe sent down from the heavens during a thunderstorm. I even once caught site of a Golden Eagle swooping down on some prey before it launched back up into the sky, all from 20 feet away.

You can also be amazed at human athletic prowess, like Usain Bolt’s magical 100 metres in Beijing, the scuttling skill of Lionel Messi or the grace of Roger Federer swiping at tennis balls on a grass court.

Basically, what I am trying to say there are lots of positive ways to be amazed. There are of course horrible ways to be amazed, but I want to keep this thing I am writing light hearted so I won’t go in to into those.

And then there is ‘Security Guards’, a new one off comedy commissioned by ITV from the pen of award winning writer and performer Caroline Aherne and it is amazingly shit.

I am not that into Aherne, she was great in ‘The Fast Show’ and ‘Mrs Merton’ had some moments but I hated ‘The Royle Family’ as it was too middle brow, stylised and frankly too northern for my tastes.

However I do appreciate it was well written and understood its popularity but with my poncey southern outlook and feverish addiction to the new and the novel it just wasn’t for me.

But WOW, Caroline, WOW. Security Men is disgraceful.

You have taken your remit of writing populist rubbish to levels of such sheer redundant mediocrity that I had to keep slicing into the skin between my toes with a vinegar soaked Stanley knife to keep myself from completely flat lining.

Described as “comedy drama”, you would expect some laughs and if not actual tears then at least a bit of tension to provide that knot of discomfort in your chest that even an episode of the drabbest game show is able to rustle up.
But no, none of that. The only way I knew at what point I was supposed to laugh was through the laughter of the characters themselves.

Drama should have conflict but this just had the titular Security Men encounter a potentially disastrous problem and then immediately come up with a rather smart plan and hey presto! Problem solved.

If any suspense could have been rinsed from this pathetic and unimaginative plotting, it would have all been scuppered by the running time. When there is only 4 minutes left of a show and only then it decides to finally throw the most un-curvy of curve balls, you know it ain’t going to make a jot of difference to the shiny happy outcome that has been signposted throughout.

Sorry Miss Aherne, without the gags and without any conflict of character or story a COMedy draMA becomes a…COMA

The Sex Clinic

The Sex Clinic

Thursday 11 Apr, 10PM on C4

Cashing in on the success of other STI-based factual shows like Unsafe Sex in the City and Embarrassing Bodies, The Sex Clinic is a new 4-part series on Channel 4, chronicling the day to day events of a handful of sexual health clinics, and the lives of some of the patients.

Quite why close-ups of diseased genitalia is such a ratings-grabber is unclear. All I know is there’s been more shots of urethral swabs on telly in the past 12 months than there’s been in the previous 50 years of broadcasting history. Clearly someone’s watching these shows.

As an STD-TV aficionado myself, this is nothing like the similar shows that clog up BBC3 schedules – there’s not the same gross-out, comedy element. The Sex Clinic is full of dominatrixes, sex workers, escorts, people living with HIV – it’s much more serious, and occasionally, fairly gritty. There’s certainly none of the usual twentysomethings who talk about ‘forgetting’ to use condoms, with a nod and wink into the camera.

This naturally makes for a better TV show, but it’s not quite as grown up as it seems. The Sex Clinic could have been an interesting, straight-faced documentary about the sorts of problems like the clinic’s patients face. Unfortunately, if often strays into ‘ewwww, look at these weird people and their horrible diseases’ territory.

Thankfully, it’s not all Embarrassing Bodies-esque exploitation, there’s actually a lot of interesting stuff in here. A segment about an HIV-positive guy talking about the huge advances in treatment he’s experienced over the years is fascinating. Transgender escort Tomisha and her pre-op friend Damien are featured heavily, and they deserve a show all to themselves.

The look we get into Mistress Jezebel’s dungeon is… an education. It’s probably not best to watch this show with your parents, put it that way. No-one needs that awkwardness, especially when she starts talking about watersports, or when we see her piercing her gimp-suited client’s nipples. I guess you could say this is pretty groundbreaking stuff to be showing on TV, but it feels more like shocking for the sake of it.

I’m not really sure what to make of this show. It’s alternately immature and enlightening, fascinating and boring. If anything, it really sums up the difference between BBC3 and Channel 4. C4 may look more grown-up, but underneath, it’s basically the same thing.

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Revolution

Revolution

Sky 1 29 March at 9pm

Revolution deals with a topic that has previously only been the subject of rhetorical questions like National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers – Am I Nuts or Are You?

The struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment where electricity and the last two hundred years of technological development no longer functions is a fascinating hypothetical. One which leaves enormous scope for narrative development: the return to a hand-to-mouth existence, adaptation to a socially and geographically smaller world, or how previously inalienable rights exist and evolve without a formal legal structure.

But Revolution has none of that. It skips all the necessary and interesting ways that a society would evolve in those first months and years and instead focuses on the search for a lost relative fifteen years later. Someone who might (read: in Series 2) have a partial answer to a question posed a decade and a half ago.

Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad’s Gus Fring) and Zak Orth occasionally break through the tedium, but it’s never for long enough to engage with the rest of the cast.

Beyond bad acting, Revolution is beset with simple inaccuracies: middled aged women with perfectly blonde hair from tip to root, clean white and vividly coloured clothing predominates, paths everywhere are neatly cut through shrubbery like a National Trust property, the grossly overweight remain spherical in world where high sugar and high corn products aren’t available and nobody looks even slightly malnourished.

Yet by some distance the most laughable error is one which defines the course of the first episode. Charlie, the insufferable lead actress, befriends a Taylor Lautner imitator called Nate and despite her companions’ warnings, she allows him to accompany them on their journey to find her uncle.

Until it’s revealed that Nate is a member of the Militia tracking her uncle was only using her to track him down. A threat which could’ve been avoided simply by asking Nate to reveal whether or not he has a “Militia” tattoo on his left wrist. Something every single member of the government forces hunting Miles is obliged to have, even when working undercover.

The greatest risk with taking a court case to the Supreme Court is that if your side loses, it can be decades before the court is willing to revisit the subject. The television and film equivalent is when an initial book-to-screen adaptation goes badly and the writer or topic is written off as “unfilmable.”

Conversely, if a subject or author proves successful, commercial development can and will continue indefinitely. This is why we have a surplus of vampire fiction, Debra Messing is somehow still getting work and why Stephen King can auction the film rights to his next departure lounge novel before he’s put pen to paper on page one.

Revolution’s concept deserves better than this and it would be a shame if this blundering attempt were to doom a niche which has enormous potential.

JJ Abrams is the biggest name in Hollywood who has done nothing to deserve it. A director that once had the same potential as an early Spielberg now consistently underwhelms like M. Night Shyamalan. He may have once delivered Lost to critical acclaim, but doesn’t appear to have learnt any lessons from the disaster it turned into.

Revolution is a high concept show with low ambition and middling production values; Revolution’s directors Steve Boyum and Charles Beeson have biographies that reflect this. Unsurprisingly, much of their previous work overlaps with JJ Abrams production credits.

Revolution starts exclusively on Sky 1 HD on the 29th March 2013 at 9pm

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Doomsday Preppers – Am I Nuts or are You?

Doomsday Preppers – Am I Nuts or are You?

National Geographic, 20th March, 9PM

Everyone’s fascinated by the idea of the Apocalypse, but most of us stop at enjoying zombie movies and quietly worrying about nuclear bombs. In ‘Doomsday Preppers – Am I Nuts or are You?’, three different, slightly unhinged Americans have taken this fascination to a whole new level, devoting their lives and thousands of dollars on equipment to help survive various Armageddon scenarios, like nuclear war, economic collapse, or bio-terrorism.

The slightly clumsy title is obvious trying to pose the question – who’s really crazy? Me, and my total reliance on electricity, running water and shopping for food, or them, who will be prepared in case one day we don’t have access to these things? It’s an interesting question, but it’s pretty clear from the start that they’re the crazy ones. Come on, this is Nat Geo – you didn’t really expect the producers to select a bunch of level-headed pragmatists, did you?

Honestly, this programme is really bad. At its core, it’s the usual faux-documentary crap that you expect from channels like this. However, occasional moments of hilarity save it from zero stars. When we first meet ‘Big Al’, a musician from Tennessee who’s building a bomb shelter, he’s in the studio, producing a rock-country jam called ‘What Would You Do?’, in which a fellow prepper sings about societal collapse over bluegrass banjos.

Even better is when Big Al tells the audience about the thousands of gallons of water he’s set aside, clarifying “I am not going to drink my own urine. I’m just not.” You and me both, Al.

Inbetween making ‘bunker stew’ (a vile-looking concoction of various canned foods boiled together in a pot) and chopping wood, he’s watching footage of nuclear explosions and researching the news, to see if the Russian nuclear attack that he’s convinced is going to happen is getting any closer. If Brass Eye came back tomorrow, they could just broadcast this and no-one would know any different.

Also in a starring role is Jason Beecham, a 15 year old who’s convinced the USA is about to dissolve into anarchy following an economic collapse. Since he has no independent income, most of his survival supplies are ‘borrowed’ from around the house. Him and his buddies go out camping, and almost burn down a derelict building and kill themselves along the way. His mother’s constant eye-rolling at her son’s obession with the Apocalypse is actually quite sweet.

However, it turns sinister when we learn that Jason plans to leave his family behind should the shit hit the fan. Honestly, given Jason’s camouflage camo pants, black shirts and extensive arsenal of weapons (including a baseball bat with nails in it), I’m more concerned about the survival of James’ classmates than the survival of Western Civilisation.

Each prepper is graded by a panel of ‘experts’ on their preparedness, and we get to see what changes they’ve made a few months later. It’s sort of like The X-Factor, but for conspiracy nuts, and it’s as entertaining as that sounds.

Essential non-viewing.

Person of Interest Season 1: Review

Person of Interest Season 1 is available to own from March 18th on DVD and Blu-ray

CBS’s Person of Interest first popped up in September 2011 and was immediately euthanised. Well, not euthanised, exactly, but chundered into the sweaty murk and questionable odour of Channel 5’s schedules, the place where average crime dramas aimed at idiots go to die.

“From producer JJ Abrams!” parped its barely audible bugle-snort of fanfare, “From Dark Knight writer Jonathan Nolan!” squeaked another, to no-one at all. Even this behind-camera pedigree, coupled with the involvement of semi-pro Jesus, Jim Caviezel, failed to elicit the nationwide attention courted by other high-concept TV premieres; viewers’ bottoms possibly still sore from the aimless and amateurish fondling of Flash Forward and Heroes.

All of which is a shame, because there’s something very likeable about Person of Interest, despite its most valiant efforts to convince you otherwise.

Caviezel plays John Reese, an ex–Government operative now, ostensibly, pursuing a career as a bum, dedicated to drinking himself to death, beard cultivation, and challenging traditional hygienic norms. A ding-dong with a gaggle of subway hoodlums – and the expediency with which he reduces them to quivering, whimpering stacks of wobbly joints – reluctantly brings him to the attention of the Law, and to the mysterious Mr Finch (Cornetto-eyed Lost alumnus Michael Emerson).

Finch – a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, surrounded by a sharp suit and hogtied with an unconvincing limp – tells Reese he’s responsible for building the Government a machine which uses surveillance, data-snoopery and whatnot to predict terrorist attacks in the wake of 9/11. Only, the machine also predicts smaller crimes, ones the Government deems ‘irrelevant’, and Finch needs Reese’s help to prevent these.

If it all sounds a bit credulity–stretching then that’s because you can read. It’s also cornier than the corniest part of Corn Mountain in Cornwall* (* fictional): both our good guys have “lost someone… (said while pining mournfully into the distance – or ‘acting’)”; there’s lots of quick-phone-chatter about “finding these KILLERS” and “RUNNING OUT OF TIME”; and there’s a fair bit of chinwag about Trust. It also seems to take itself really rather seriously for what is, essentially, Castle in clown shoes with a very tiny, very secret boner.

Nevertheless, the first two episodes zip by more effortlessly than perhaps they should; the first a wriggling and diverting yarn concerning a threat to a state prosecutor, the other concerning a murdered family. There is the impression of a very loose arc, peeling back the shrouded pasts of our guys, but, for the most part it’s Monster of the Week stuff, each individual case bringing with it a tad more personal exposition, and Trust.

This will put a lot of people off – those who kept watching Lost despite the fact it got very shit, perhaps – but it does mark Person of Interest out as something a little different than the current swathe of American genre TV. Much less good perhaps, but certainly different. And, in a guilty pleasure sort of way, it’s all the better for it.

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The Mimic

The Mimic

Channel 4, Wednesday, March 13, 10pm

Impressionists’ shows have varied a lot in quality over the years. Some, like Spitting Image and Bremner, Bird and Fortune, used their powers of caricature to satirise the unending fallibility of the ruling class. Others, such as Alistair McGowan’s Big Impression, or The Impressions Show, simply mugged it up as celebrities so stupid they barely needed anyone else to make them appear laughable.

One thing’s for certain though: the impressionist sketch show is a pretty tired format. But as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon demonstrated so admirably in The Trip, impressions are still as funny as ever. Fortunately The Mimic steers clear of the former while still containing much of the latter. Much like The Trip, it is a sitcom that features impressions, although the impressions are far from the only reason why it works so well.

For a start, The Mimic does not attempt to copy the tropes of most sitcoms that the networks ply us with these days. There are no larger than life characters, goofballs, people saying or doing ridiculous things or blasts of loud music between scenes. It has a sedate, almost contemplative pace and nobody shouts, gurns or ˗ praise the heavens above ˗ falls over.

At its heart is Martin Hurdle, a site maintenance worker (painting over graffiti and picking up litter) for a drugs company, who is every bit the ordinary man living an ordinary, if not particularly remarkable life. He isn’t an extrovert, nor is he particularly down about his slightly meager circumstances. Instead he does impressions, often to an audience of just himself, as a means to escape the mundanity of his existence.

Some of these (Wogan, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan) are spot on, others (James Earl Jones) less so. They are used for maximum comic effect in more public settings, to trick three ‘yoofs’ who have never heard of Ronnie Corbett that the pint-sized comedian is stuck in a letterbox, and to prompt an Al Pacino-loving newsagent (played by Neil Maskell, last seen as the terrifyingly brutal assassin in Utopia) to stop worrying about Daily Mail scare stories and look for a model magazine.

Much more important, though, is the underlying sense of pathos and focus on existentialism at a micro level. Apart from the overt signal of naming Hurdle’s employer as Celpharm (as in self-harm, geddit?), The Mimic is a wonderfully subtle observation of how people stumble through unfulfilled lives, without ever having to revert to histrionics or high drama. The final scene, in which Hurdle stands atop an office block and adopts David Attenborough’s calm tone to muse on the absurdity of the life below him, reveals nothing hugely profound, but still acts as an acute reminder of how we can become lost in the race to keep our heads above water.

Aided by a delicate script from former Russell Brand sidekick Matt Morgan, the performances here are all effortlessly charming, and if the episodes that follow are as perfectly formed as this, The Mimic could become something of a surprise classic. A certain comedy writer/performer would certainly be advised to stop listening to sycophants on
Twitter who persist in telling him Derrick is the best thing since sliced bread and watch this instead. It might even remind him how good he used be.

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