Cinema Verite (Sky Atlantic): the birth of reality TV

Here's another quick review for Orange.

Way back in 1971, before "fascinating social experiments" like Big Brother were even a glint in a producer's eye, American film-maker Craig Gilbert put us on the road to TOWIE with An American Family – the fly-on-the-wall documentary that largely invented "reality TV". 

Cinema Verite, produced by HBO Films, dramatised the filming and aftermath of the series, starring James Gandolfini (Jim Royle on steroids) as Gilbert, and Tim Robbins and Diane Lane as Bill and Pat Loud, the heads of the wealthy Californian family that went under the microscope.

As the family struggled to get used to the constant surveillance, the caustic script by veteran screenwriter David Seltzer made it clear that the relationship between the philandering Bill and the flinty, abrasive Pat was already close to breaking point.

The Fades (written by Jack Thorne), BBC Three

A bit late, but here's a review of BBC Three's new fantasy/horror series, The Fades, that I wrote a couple of days ago for Orange.

I didn't get chance to mention it in the review, but one brave choice that I really appreciated as a writer was having Paul wet his bed.

It was just a small character detail, but one that you'd never expect to see in a teen hero and something that highlights the compassion and insight that runs through Jack Thorne's writing.

Award-winning writer Jack Thorne might not be a household name, but having come up through Shameless, Skins, Cast Offs and This is England '86 in recent years, he's a man whose time has very much come. His new show, The Fades, is a fantasy horror series that proves you don't need a big glossy production to come up with some very effective chills.

The Body Farm (BBC)

Here's a quick review of last night's The Body Farm I wrote for Orange.

Waking the Dead had enjoyed a pretty good innings when the BBC laid it to rest earlier this year. However, it didn't take long for Auntie to exhume its mouldering remains for this spin-off series. So, did it leave a good-looking corpse? 
 
The Body Farm sees Tara Fitzgerald reprise her role as forensic scientist Dr Eve Lockhart, who runs a remote research facility where she studies the way corpses decompose.

However, the real world came a-knocking again in the form of grisly copper DI Hale (Keith Allen), who'd made a gruesome and puzzling discovery in a tower block – something only the body farm's boffins could decipher.

My friend Janet

Last month my beautiful friend Janet Ellis died of cancer, aged 45.

She wasn't just my friend: she was also my sometime writing partner. She was a very experienced child-protection social worker, and she wanted to use her experiences as the basis for a drama series.

We talked about it extensively a few years ago, but then I got sidetracked by my MA. When I graduated in 2008 we got stuck into it properly, and eventually came up with the pilot for a series called Care and Control.

As a characteristically garrulous Yorkshire woman, Janet had a fantastic ear for language and dialogue and a keen observational eye; the raw material she came up with just sang off the page.

The Field of Blood (BBC One)

Here's my Orange review of the first part of The Field of Blood, a very watchable thriller set around a Glasgow city paper newsroom in the early 1980s. It's written and directed by David Kane, based on a novel by Denise Mina.

I'm very surprised it didn't receive more promotion (having been broadcast in Scotland earlier in the year). It's definitely worth a look on iPlayer.

Set designers must make quite a few bob these days from recreating the murky world of the '70s and '80s – after Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes and Red Riding, we're now back to the smoky fug of an early '80s news room for The Field of Blood, a grim and gritty two-parter. 
 
Adapted from a novel by Glaswegian crime writer Denise Mina, it revolves around Paddy Meehan (Jayd Johnson), an ambitious (female) copy boy on one of the city's newspapers who aspires to becoming a fully fledged journalist.

Page Eight (David Hare), BBC Two

Here's a quick Orange review of tonight's upmarket spy drama Page Eight, written and directed by David Hare.

While Page Eight is a spy drama produced for the BBC, the similarities with Spooks end there. As you'd guess from a cast led by Bill Nighy and Michael Gambon, these spies, ahem, rock it old skool. However, after taking a while to warm up, David Hare's film eventually cranked up the tension in a satisfying way.

Nighy carried the piece as Johnny Worricker, a veteran MI5 officer who became drawn into a dangerous game when his boss and lifelong friend (Gambon) gave him a file revealing that the Government had been colluding secretly with the US to use intelligence gained via torture.

Meanwhile, Johnny's alluring neighbour Nancy Pierpan (Rachel Weisz) started to butt her way into his life. With Nancy being the daughter of an Arab activist and angry over the covered-up killing of her brother by Israeli soldiers, we were invited to wonder if she had a hidden agenda.

The Man Who Crossed Hitler (BBC Two)

Another quick review for Orange - The Man Who Crossed Hitler, last night's drama on BBC Two.

Last night's drama shone a little light on a remarkable but obscure moment in history. It depicted the occasion in 1931 when ambitious German lawyer Hans Litten called Adolf Hitler to the witness box in an attempt to scupper his rise to power.

However, that summary highlights the main problem with the film: we know, sadly, that Hitler wasn't ruined by his court appearance, so the biggest question in the drama was – for all Litten's moral courage – how glorious a failure his attempt was going to be.