Madden magnetic as bodyguard shrouded in mystery

The six-part BBC thriller Bodyguard finally appears on free-to-air at a time when a dependably good binge is most welcome.

Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes in Bodyguard

Winner of numerous high-profile television awards last year, six-part BBC thriller Bodyguard finally appears on free-to-air at a time when a dependably good binge is most welcome. This is a compelling, tightly scripted and genre-bending thriller that yielded the network its highest viewing figures in more than a decade.

Travelling by train back to London with his two primary school children (Matthew Stagg, Bella Padden) after visiting his family, police sergeant David Budd (superbly played to great acclaim by Richard Madden) prevents a would-be suicide bomber from carrying out her mission in a gripping and visceral face-to-face negotiation.

The encounter sets an important tonal note for the drama to follow: an inscrutable, hypervigilant and somewhat tortured former soldier deployed to Afghanistan, the perpetually clenched Budd tells Nadia Ali (Anjli Mohindra), the young and terrified Muslim woman to whom the device is strapped, the two of them are simply the foot soldiers in someone else’s fight.

“You and I,” he says with chilling conviction, “we’re just collateral damage.” As a result of his heroics and as a seeming reward for his actions, Budd is assigned to protect conservative Home Secretary Julia Montague (Death at a Funeral’s Keeley Hawes). “It’s a step up,” points out his boss, CSI Lorraine Craddock (Pippa Haywood).

In the wake of the failed terror attack, the hawkish Montague, who has been a vocal proponent of the deployment of troops, seeks the introduction of draconian government security measures.

At the same time, Budd’s mental state slowly but surely begins to unravel as he becomes a lightning rod for trouble in the form of a failed assassination attempt on Montague and a suicide bombing outside his children’s school. Thus begins a delicate and intense dance of high-level duplicity and shifting power in an alternate Britain that feels all too of-the-moment.

Bodyguard was created by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty), himself a former soldier. He’s also the showrunner and wrote all six episodes, which gives the story a level of clarity and urgency that hooks viewers. “Rather than just making him a square-jawed hero protecting the politician,” he told one interviewer of Budd’s ambiguity, “we injected the possibility … he might be involved in the conspiracy to do her harm. It added a whole new level of tension and jeopardy to the plot that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”

But the show is refreshingly free of backstory exposition, particularly when it comes to Budd himself. This serves to accentuate the mystery surrounding his motives and, in a step away from the typical roster of character types, the protagonist is surrounded by complicated, intelligent and racially diverse women.

If the storyline seems over-complicated and implausible in retrospect, that’s because of the momentum it builds and the magnetism of its breakout star. Bodyguard will be presented in double episodes over a three-week period, which is just the kind of configuration that will increase the viewership of a show that begs for a second series it must inevitably be given.

Bodyguard, Wednesday, 8.45pm, Seven.

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Bites

The Dog House, Saturday, 7.30pm, Ten, WIN Network, 10 Play

For those unfortunate enough to be without canine companionship during self-isolation, Ten provides programming that will enchant the animal lover and serve as persuasive conversion therapy for the fence sitter. The eight-part and very British reality series The Dog House is shot at the Wood Green Animal Charity Rehoming Centre in Godmanchester, Cambridgeshire. Within this elaborate and very green compound, a dedicated and seemingly all-female staff work to match abandoned and otherwise bereft dogs with new owners. People from all walks of life, single, couples and families, are interviewed by a pair of staffers and then ushered to a remote and leafy Meeting Pen to bond with a pooch. In the first episode the hopefuls include a couple struggling to conceive, a divorced mother and her two nearly grown kids newly arrived from Portugal and a single woman. Producer-director Anna Llewellyn takes a measured approach to these delicate dances; there’s no competition, no prizes, no bells or whistles, just the real and unvarnished drama of watching humans as vulnerable as the animals they’re matched with sometimes — but not always — made whole by the union. Episodes will be posted to the 10 Play website as they’re broadcast.

In Search of …, Monday, 8.30pm, SBS Viceland

In 1977, post-Star Trek the TV show but pre-Star Trek the movie, Leonard Nimoy parlayed his popularity playing the half-human, half-Vulcan science officer/first officer Spock into a hosting gig for the weekly hour-long survey of the paranormal, unusual and unique called In Search of …. His fan base made the show a hit, and the first of six seasons was broadcast here in the 1980s under the title Great Mysteries of the World. In 2018, somebody at the History Channel had the bright idea to hire the new Spock, Pittsburgh-born Zachary Quinto, to beam into Nimoy’s shoes. In this first of the 10 episodes in the revived series, Quinto goes to Philadelphia in search of Bob Renning, an average guy who pulled a man out of a burning car by prying the door nearly in half. Continuing the inquiry into the existence of superhumans, he meets Shaolin warrior monk Venerable Shi Yan Fan, who has trained his body to endure pain, and Steve Pete, who suffers from congenital analgesia — the inability to feel pain. Quinto has all of the gravitas, if not the natural charisma, of Nimoy, and his upcoming inquiries include aliens, deep-sea creatures, artificial intelligence and sinkholes. Fascinating.

Have You Been Paying Attention?, Monday, 8.30pm, Ten, WIN Network, 10 Play

The coronavirus and its impact on Australia and the world at large dominate the news cycle at present, and this is particularly true in the eighth season of this current affairs comedy game show. Yet, two episodes in, it’s abundantly clear that over and above the consistently clever writing and exuberant irreverence that has earned the program five Logies over the past three years, the comic timing that makes it work remains triumphantly intact because of the remarkably seamless deployment of technology to preserve the format (for a cautionary look at the alternative, take a look at any of the disjointed Saturday Night Live episodes produced over the past few weeks). Thus, while host Tom Gleisner returns to the studio set, regulars Ed Kavalee and Sam Pang, with guests, appear from their homes in their usual positions via studio monitors in which they’re centred against matching blue backdrops. Upcoming, Kavalee and Pang are “joined” by Kitty Flanagan, Glenn Robbins and Amanda Keller. If laughter is the best medicine, HYBPA? is the well-stocked chemist every suburb in the country can count on. When this is all over, let’s hope Ed and Sam haven’t gotten too comfortable with social distancing.

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Pay TV

Rafe Spall and Esther Smith in Trying

For the early adopters just keep trying

The title of the comfortable and gently illuminating new eight-part Apple TV+ comedy, ­Trying, the streaming service’s first British prod­uction, may at first blush strike a tone of effort. It does indeed follow the bittersweet adventures of a mid-30s couple in contemporary Camden Town who realise they can’t conceive and embark on a quest to adopt.

Yet taken either in half-hour chunks or as a bright and fast-paced whole, this is an easy watch that touches just enough on the complicated topic of adoption while positioning the close bonds of love and laughter at the forefront.

Though they’ve been a couple and living together for a number of years, Nikki Newman (Esther Smith) and Jason Ross (Rafe Spall) haven’t married. They’re comfortable in their relationship and clearly devoted to one another.

Effervescent and open, she works the phones at the call centre of a rental car firm.

Jason, who has taught English to foreign nationals for many years at a local school, is more subdued and thoughtful, his extensive collection of Ramones T-shirts notwithstanding.

Despite their comically determined efforts to do so, shortly into the first episode the couple are told they can’t conceive. They then wrestle with the options for the rest of their lives, with Nikki mournfully wondering “how can I miss something I’ve never had?”.

Researching the adoption process, they’re shocked to learn that it takes around a year and involves in-depth interviews with friends, family and ex-partners. In their case, that includes their best friends, Erica (Ophelia Lovibond) and Freddy (Oliver Chris), who are stressed out enough with one child even as they await the impending birth of their second.

Meanwhile, Nikki’s desperate older sister, Karen (Sian Brooke), is involved with profoundly tiring pseudo-intellectual Scott (Darren Boyd), while Jason’s well-meaning attempt to ensure the co-operation of his former girlfriend, Jane (Cush Jumbo), hits a snag when he discovers she holds a significant grudge over their break-up.

Events take a more positive turn with the arrival of eccentric social worker Penny (dependable stage and screen veteran Imelda Staunton), who, despite the couple’s desperate attempts to appear more together than they feel, takes an immediate liking to them and becomes an unlikely yet effective advocate on their behalf.

Following a comically disastrous family get-together and a near-tragic misunderstanding between the two, they’re summoned to the review board that will decide their future.

Himself an adoptee, series creator Andy Wolton began writing comedy a decade ago because, as he says in at least one online bio, he was “rubbish at jobs”. His life experience informs the project: “he began plotting the show when he was three months old,” continues the profile, “shortly after he himself was adopted by two lovely people who chose him because he was the chubbiest baby at the foster home and they thought he might need protecting from the bullies.”

It’s the next line that tells the tale, summarising “his interest in adoption stems from that act of kindness”.

While the philosophy and process of adoption have passionate advocates on both sides, in Wolton’s world the warmth and laughter come at least as much from the bureaucracy and logistics of the process as the human complexities of the arrangement.

Such a gambit wouldn’t work without a tangible chemistry between the leads, and it’s in the warm and very human interplay of Smith’s Nikki and Spall’s Jason that Trying finds its heart and soul.

Smith confirmed recently a second series has been commissioned by Apple, though the English summer shoot may well be affected by the coronavirus. No matter how long it takes, here’s hoping they keep trying.

Trying, streaming on Apple TV+.

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Bites

WWII: Battle of Crete, Tuesday, 7.30pm, History

On May 20, 1941, the Germans launched an airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete, parachuting 14,000 men on top of the 42,000 combined Australian, New Zealand, British and Greek fighters defending the key Mediterranean base. Now, 79 years after the 10-day battle, former ABC foreign correspondent and London-based Australian producer Ian Cross has marshalled a fascinating three-part series that dives deep into both sides of the campaign and the four-year German occupation that followed. It was an American writer who first described what the Germans did as a blitzkrieg, and it was a term Hitler liked: nearly a thousand aircraft supported the troops and, with few heavy weapons and virtually no air defences of their own, the Allies were forced into hand-to-hand combat with the invaders. In all, the Germans lost 4000 of their troops, half in the first day alone. In next week’s part two of the series, Cross examines the Allied evacuation following the battle, while the climactic hour details the German and Italian occupation of Crete. “It’s an incredible story on so many levels,” says Cross, and this riveting series reflects the filmmaker’s ongoing fascination with the subject.

Never Have I Ever, Streaming on Netflix

One of the most popular comedy series on Netflix, Never Have I Ever is a buoyant Indian-American take on the stateside high school experience co-created by Massachusetts-born actor, comedian and writer Mindy Kaling (born of a Bengali mother and Tamil father, her given name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam). The autobiographically tinged story follows effervescent smart-alec Devi Vishwankumar (Tamil-Canadian Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) as she begins her sophomore year at a Sherman Oaks, California school following the death of her beloved father, Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy). As she navigates her feelings and learns to cope, she pursues hunky classmate Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet) and bickers with her nemesis, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison). The show is improbably but appropriately narrated by former tennis bad boy John McEnroe, which makes a modicum of thematic sense given his own cocky attitude and a last-episode cameo. The 10 half-hours overcome their high snark factor primarily through the sunny appeal of Vishwankumar, whose guileless vibe propels the story to an uplifting denouement alongside mother Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan). Virtually certain to be renewed for a second series, Never Have I Ever is appropriate for more worldly teens and a satisfying watch for adults.

Prop Culture, Streaming on Disney+

Burly collector and TV producer Dan Lanigan has been a key player in the buying and trading of props from iconic Hollywood movies for years, and has been trying for some time to sell a show that would celebrate the fascinating cultural aspect of the hobby over the eye-popping prices regularly paid by deep-pocketed boffins. In the Walt Disney Company he found an enthusiastic partner, and Prop Culture was born. Over the course of eight half-hours, Lanigan pokes around the meticulously curated warehouses run by Disney and interviews craftspeople and actors to find elusive items and reveal their stories. He learns that the Mary Poppins snow globe was rescued by a janitor from a trash can after filming, goes in search of Fozzie Bear’s Studebaker from The Muppet Movie and spends some time with the manic actor who voiced the lead in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Other movies profiled include the original Tron, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Watch this with the kids in your life, then show them the films.