Yahoo Finance The week in TV: The Morning Show; Manhunt; Bake Off; Never Mind the Buzzcocks
The Morning Show | Apple TV+
Manhunt: The Night Stalker (ITV) | ITV Hub
The Great British Bake Off (Channel 4) | All 4
Never Mind the Buzzcocks | Sky Max
Now back for a second series, The Morning Show reminds us that television about television can be a hard sell. It can work: I still miss Aaron Sorkin’s exhaustingly loquacious Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, even though I needed a drip to get to the end of some of the one-liners. Less happily, it can end up as self-absorbed characters repetitively bickering about career arcs and personal agendas, exuding all the dramatic intensity of jammed cue cards. So it is here with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, who return as co-presenting arch frenemies caught up in the morning TV hellscape of bruised egos, helicopter traffic reports and miracle shapewear. The first series ended so powerfully; how did we get back here?
To give it credit, the last series of The Morning Show, Apple TV+’s first mega-launch, evolved from a pedestrian treatise on the status-hungry machinations of a US breakfast show into a tense #MeToo drama. Spoiler alert: co-anchor Mitch (Steve Carrell) was revealed as a full-blown sexual predator; even after the suicide of a coerced conquest (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), he was hideously puffed up with the self-righteousness of the misunderstood man. It all led to a climactic scene where Alex (Aniston) and Bradley (Witherspoon) called out the enabling workplace culture live on air. Nicely done, you thought – audacious! – what next?
The answer seems to be: not much. Perusing three of the 10 new episodes, it’s back to the relentless soapy clashing between Alex-Kong and Bradley-Zilla. Watching them bang on is like eavesdropping on a row between two co-workers: fun, until it gets boring. In the opener, Mitch has yet to reappear, while Alex is holed up in Maine tapping out a memoir on a – natch! – Apple laptop (Apple is so hilariously shameless about product placements, I’m only surprised Aniston didn’t exclaim in a sultry voice: “Gosh, this keyboard delivers such a precise typing experience”). Back at The Morning Show, Bradley is struggling, and studio executive Cory (Billy Crudup) is wildly scheming. Cory is overacted, but at least Crudup’s Joaquin-Phoenix’s-Joker energy livens the place up. Is all lost? Maybe not. As Covid creeps into the series’ timeline, you wonder whether, like last time, The Morning Show will pull off the trick of developing into television-about-television that matters.
If you want to feel old, watch a music panel show where no one recognises Buck’s Fizz in the lineup section
The 2019 first series of Manhunt (ITV) was a superb dramatisation of the police capture of Levi Bellfield, the murderer of French student Amélie Delagrange, who also killed Milly Dowler, among others. Martin Clunes was a revelation as real-life detective Colin Sutton, whose understated decency and puddle-hued anoraks initially made you wonder whether it was possible for the human soul to be double-glazed, but who turned out to possess piercing police instincts.
This time, in Manhunt: The Night Stalker, also based on Sutton’s memoirs, the real-life case, played out over four consecutive nights, was the horrific series of rapes, assaults and burglaries carried out by the Night Stalker, or “Minstead rapist”, on elderly people in south-east London between 1992 and 2009. Some of the traumatised victims died not long afterwards, leading one detective to say: “As far as I’m concerned, he’s a serial killer.”
This series is not as compelling as the first, but it is still eminently watchable. Clunes is just as good as the unshowy hero masquerading as a dull plodder, whether shrugging a practical rucksack over a shoulder, or keeping a fearful eye on his impending retirement (his own “killer”, one felt). I appreciate how Manhunt sticks to being a gritty old-school police procedural, though this can go too far. Certain settings (crime scenes, police station corridors) could be old sets from The Sweeney given a quick vacuum.
Talking of the police, I think it’s time for The Great British Bake Off team to be routinely drug-tested. Whatever they’re on, it’s not just frosted icing. Or, as the Channel 4 show returned, was it me on powerful hallucinogens? Did judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood, and presenters Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas, really open proceedings by performing a cake version of Achy Breaky Heart (“My achy flaky tart”)? Was it absolutely necessary for them all to dress like hard-living Wurzels roadies? Some things are just too arousing for pre-watershed.
The glorious madness continued into the fabled tent – still a pastel-hued monstrosity that resembles a Cath Kidston-themed nervous breakdown. One contestant was disarmingly overimpressed, likening entering the tent to “that feeling you get when you walk for the first time into the Sistine Chapel”. From there, it was Bake Off business as usual: mini rolls, antigravity cake, malt loaf, some of which worked, some of which reminded you of the scene in Chernobyl when they were clearing the radioactive ash off the roof. Twelve series in, I’ve had my moments of disapproving of Bake Off (the spirit of Brexit immortalised in sponge, and all that), but when it works, it’s a reminder that a certain strand of not just British, but human eccentricity is alive and well and sweetly obsessing over the quality of its cake batter.
I still can’t get over the fact that Noel Fielding – such a brazen goth! – presents Bake Off. Last week he also returned as one of the team captains on Sky’s fresh spin on the long-running music quizshow Never Mind the Buzzcocks, alongside new host Greg Davies, new team captain Daisy May Cooper (This Country) and regular contestant Jamali Maddix. The guests were Jade Thirlwall (ex-Little Mix), singer Anne-Marie and Mash Report comedian Nish Kumar.
If you want to feel old, watch a music panel show where no one recognises Buck’s Fizz in the lineup section. Elsewhere, it was entertaining: Cooper, in particular, channelled her own rock star to the point where she started reminding you of everyone you’ve ever seen stealing other people’s drinks in a backstage area. If I have one criticism, it’s that the music content is now almost jarringly mainstream. With previous Buzzcocks personnel, you got the impression that they knew and cared enough about music to descend, if necessary, into an unseemly row about Fall lyrics. Comedy is crucial, but don’t (completely) forget the music.
What else I’m watching
Hawking: Can You Hear Me?
Sky Documentaries
This documentary on the life and career of the physicist Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, is a clear-eyed account of brilliance, disability and disruption, via the perspective and memories of his family.
Nowhere to Run: Abused By Our Coach
BBC Three | iPlayer
Charlie Webster’s documentary about joining a girls’ running group aged 12. The coach was eventually jailed for abusing her and others. A disturbing tale of young athletes preyed upon.
Vigil
BBC One
I’ve been finding this submarine murder mystery rather an overcooked trudge. That said, the penultimate episode was grimly thrilling, leaving Suranne Jones in peril in a dark torpedo tube fast filling up with seawater. Final episode tonight.
