The Swap ITV
Winter Olympics BBC1 & 2
Crime and Punishment BBC2
Ian Wright: Surviving the Kalahari BBC1
Did anybody else spot the subtle connections between last week's ITV two-part not-quite-thriller The Swap, the same channel's Footballer's Wives and BBC2's gruelling adaptation of Crime and Punishment?
Not a great deal in common on the face of it, admittedly, but if you do know the correct answer you could win this week's special one-off Observer Review Phone Poll! (Incidentally, to speed up the process, 28,000 special BT hotlines will be open during the course of this article, and the winner will be revealed right at the end. So get dialling! You've got about five-and-a-half minutes not to get through... from NOW!).
The Swap was a deliciously watchable load of hokum which succeeded not simply because the acting was infinitely better than it needed to be, but also because it had been quite inspiringly scheduled for a pair of dismal February nights during which even fairly well-balanced souls might succumb to spontaneous, irrational floods of tears, while howling 'oh God why does it have to rain quite so loudly?', or 'how dare you wait six years before telling me you don't like shepherd's pie, you bastard , especially when I made it with organic mince...', and which, likely as not, would culminate in divorce proceedings or, at best, a snuffly chat with a kindly Samaritan called Jean. So well done, ITV!
Not that it was a particularly tough week, just that I have a problem with Februarys; 14 February is, after all, near the top of the Popular Days to Top Yourself chart. Personally I think the entire month should be discreetly removed, just like the 13th floor in high-rise hotels, or perhaps it could be expensively rebranded ('The month formerly known as February is now... Consignia!'). Given the mole-like, mule-ish state of the nation, then, The Swap was a triumph. For a start it gave great house, which is something I look for in a particular sort of middle-class British drama. Though this wasn't the grade-A bodice- ripping stately-house porn of, say, a Brideshead, none the less The Swap featured some aspirational modern bricks and mortar presented in the best possible taste: Miserable marrieds Jemma Redgrave and Michael Maloney and their three offspring lived in an airy architectural pad in what might have been Hampstead or Highgate, while preposterously handsome Antipodean university professor Jonathan Cake owned a wood and glass beach house near Perth, Western Australia. And so, via the internet, they swapped homes for the Christmas holidays, and we went with them.
Of course there was also murder, infidelity and all-round toxic plot misery over the course of two nights and three hours, but fortunately this in no way detracted from the essence of the drama which was, quite simply, to provide S.A.D.-sufferers with a gripping cross between Home Front and Wish You Were Here? Which, alongside the sporting Benylin of the Winter Olympics, is about all I am fit to handle until the clocks go forward.
I accidentally dipped into Wednesday's early evening Olympics highlights on BBC2 only because they abutted Home Front in the Garden (in which the lovely Diarmuid erected another of those extraordinary al fresco steel superstructures that never seem to need planning permission, despite being the size of a house. How does he get away with it?).
The highlights focused on the men's curling in which GBR vied with Norway to shoo giant pucks towards the big icy target assisted only by a combination of earthy anglo-saxonisms and the baffling application of brooms. But the thing I love best about curling is the arcane terminology - 'That was a nightmare End, but now let us take you on to the ninth and final End for the last four stones...' - which might have come straight from Middle Earth.
Still, the truth of the matter is that, what with the curling and Diarmuid, I was doing pretty much anything I could to put off watching BBC2's Crime and Punishment, which aired over two consecutive nights of existential gloom last week. To be frank, I didn't want to even think about watching a Dostoyevsky adaptation in February, even one starring the gifted John Simm as Raskolnikov. What fresh scheduling sadism was this, precisely? Oh - OK, I see the logic: no one would choose to watch Dostoyevsky in July, either.
In the event, Crime and Punishment turned out to be extremely well done but about as gloomy as it gets. The first 90 minutes, in particular, were relentlessly grim and fetid, sweaty and sordid; the cast and St Petersburg shot in a suitably unlovely light.
Mind you, the poor camera had Tourette's so it was hard to focus on the art directorial details. Raskolnikov's murders of the old pawnbroker and her sister were among the most brutal, realistic-looking killings that I can remember seeing on TV. In fact it occurred to me (while cowering on the sofa during the drawn-out bloodbath) that a director might not get away with depicting such wildly brutal deaths in contemporary drama - but perhaps literary costume murders are considered fair game for a highbrow splatterfest. Anyway, my admiration for Simm has in no way lessened - I'll watch him in anything, but I hope he doesn't make a habit of taking too many challenging directions, especially in February.
Now, reader, if you haven't yet voted in today's special one-off Observer Review Phone Poll quiz show phenomenon-thingy, you'd better hurry - there's less than a minute left in which to get through to Ant, Dec (or me) on one of our 28,000 BT Batlines and tell us what you think connects The Swap, Footballer's Wives and Crime and Punishment. Oh, I'm sorry, time's up! Lines are closed and if you'd just bear with me for a moment while we swiftly collate the record-breaking results, here's another quick review...
Ian Wright: Surviving the Kalahari (BBC1) introduced us to Wright: The Big Girl's Blouse. Of course there's no particular reason why a pampered multi-millionaire former striker from south London should be able to cope alone in a desert just because he's the same colour as the Bushmen - but who thought he'd be quite such a brattish, whingeing little pom? 'There's too many flyee [ sic ] things about... I want to go home.' 'Uurgh, I'm used to taste, and stuff like that. I'm not eatin' that!', and best of all, tent-bound during an ickle rainstorm: 'No, I'm not coming out. I need a new sleeping bag. I'm with people more worried about TV than me...'
Aw, diddums! Makes you think that being this particular Footballers' Wife could be even less fun than being married to Earls Park's Jason 'Jase' Turner.
Which brings me to the results of our competition. The question was: what is the connection between The Swap, Footballer's Wives and Crime and Punishment? And the answer is: In The Swap , Michael Maloney's character had a secretary called Emily Brown played by Susie Amy, who plays Chardonnay on Footie Wives. And Maloney's difficult teenage daughter, Lissa, was played by Lara Belmont, who also appeared as Sonia in Crime and Punishment.
And the winner is... Oh why bother? Of course I've fixed it.
