The Secret, Landscapers, and The Thief, His Wife, and The Canoe

When you write a screenplay about a real life criminal case (not that I've ever done it!) you have to make choices about how you handle the material. Choices about style, tone, the extent of fidelity to the facts, and so on. Will the story be told chronologically, or in some other way, for example with the discovery of the crime or the arrest of the culprit? How you tackle these questions will determine, to some extent, the success of the end result.

A case in point was The Salisbury Poisonings, which I reviewed a couple of years back. That show was much acclaimed, and it did have plenty of merit but I think that with time, its limitations are increasingly evident. In retrospect, its failure to address the reasons for the crime and the Russian background seem, arguably, symptomatic of the attitudes in the West that prevailed prior to the recent invasion of Ukraine. Society didn't look closely enough at what was going on.in Russia.

I've recently watched three very different TV dramas based on real life crimes. One was The Secret, a 2016 series which took a relatively 'straight' approach to the material - a conspiracy by an Irish dentist and his lover to murder their respective spouses. It's an extraordinary case and I felt the writers handled the material very well. The performance of James Nesbitt as the homicidal dentist with supposedly strong religious convictions was especially fine.

Landscapers, starring Olivia Colman and David Thewlis, takes a very different approach. This story of another couple who kill is treated as a black comedy. Again it's been greatly praised, but I must admit to finding the episodic handling of the story as unsatisfactory as its tone. Colman and Thewlis are excellent actors, but I seem to be in a minority in finding the way the crime is handled to be far from appealing.

Rather better, I felt, was The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe, Chris Lang's version of the John Darwin fraud case. It's a fascinating story of a Walter Mitty character, played by Eddie Marslan, and his wife (Monica Dolan: excellent). I once listened to an account of the case by a police officer who was involved with it, and I think that this version owed quite a bit to Chris Lang's imagination. But the characters seemed to be treated with greater respect than in Landscapers and I enjoyed it. 

Match Point - 2005 film review

Match Point is a film from fifteen years ago, written and directed by Woody Allen. Apparently he originally intended to set the story in the US, but funding issues prompted him to come to Britain. The result is a film that seems to me to be rather untypical of his work, but not wholly unrecognisable. There are touches of Dostoevsky and Dreiser, yes, but also a hint of Ruth Rendell. For this film is a psychological thriller, although its true nature isn't apparent until the later stages of the story.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is Chris Wilton, a charismatic former tennis player, who at the start of the film introduces us to the central theme of the film. It's about luck - does the tennis ball that touches the net drop on the right side or not? The script (which was nominated for an Oscar) plays with this notion rather cleverly. Chris becomes friendly with Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode, very smooth) and is introduced to his very wealthy family. Tom's Dad (Brian Cox in benevolent mood) is a rich tycoon, his mother (Penelope Wilton) is a charming meddler and his sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer) is instantly smitten with Chris.

The snag is that, once Chris meets Tom's fiancee, he is smitten with her. Scarlett Johansson plays Nola Rice, a glamorous American actress. She and Chris have a fling, but Chris marries Chloe and Tom splits up with Nola. Trouble is, Chris subsequently bumps into Nola and the affair resumes. You just know that it isn't going to end well. And for some of the characters, it doesn't.

The lead actors are terrific, and the impressive supporting cast includes Margaret Tyzack, James Nesbitt, Mark Gatiss, John Fortune, Steve Pemberton, and Alexander Armstrong. It's a long film, but it doesn't really sag prior to the dramatic events of the last twenty minutes. The characters may not be loveable, but they are interesting, and cleverly presented so that their unappealing attitudes aren't as much of a turn-off as perhaps they ought to be. Overall, a very enjoyable film.

The Missing - BBC One - final episode review (no spoilers)

The Missing came to an end on BBC 1 tonight, after eight weeks of mounting tension. I don't intend to say anything in this post that amounts to a spoiler, which limits the scope of my comments. But one thing I can say is that, for me,this series was second only to the superb Happy Valley as British television crime series of the year. I said when reviewing episode one that I intended to watch the following week, and soon I was completely hooked. It became must-watch television.

A great deal of credit goes to the writers, Harry and Jack Williams, as well as to an excellent cast. James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor were brilliant as the parents whose five year old son goes missing during a holiday in France, portraying with great sensitivity the trauma of such a terrible experience,and also the different ways in which their characters struggled to deal with an almost unimaginable calamity.

I say 'almost' unimaginable,because I suspect many, perhaps most, parents have found themselves contemplating, at one time or another, what it would feel like if such a catastrophe tore their lives apart. But it's not the sort of thing one wants to dwell on for very long. For me, the emotions portrayed in some scenes of The Missing were almost too much to bear.

That's not to say it was a perfect story in terms of plotting, and I had mixed feelings about the one or two aspects of the final episode, and the final scene in particular. Some viewers, I know, have found the switches between events surrounding the disappearance and those of the present day quite hard to follow, although I felt the transitions were done quite smoothly, given the complexity of the story structure. Overall, this was a powerful and affecting drama, and one that will stay in my mind for a long time.   

The Missing - BBC One - TV review

The Missing, which began on BBC One this evening, is an eight-part serial, like The Intruders, which started twenty-four hours earlier. Also like The Intruders, it benefits from the presence of a strong and charismatic lead actor, in this case James Nesbitt. But the similarities end there. Whereas The Intruders was cryptic to the point of confusion, The Missing is (on the surface at least) a relatively straightforward story, written, and acted by a talented cast, with real assurance. And this story really does grip.

Part of the reason why it is so powerful is that it deals with a deep human fear - the parent's dread of the loss of a child. Surely one of the most terrible, almost unimaginable, crimes is that of abducting a small child, who is defenceless and innocent. Yet these crimes do occur from time to time, and some of the most harrowing cases of recent years have been of this type. The script, by Harry and Jack Williams, handles this emotive material very effectively. The pair are, incidentally, the sons of Nigel Williams, an excellent writer. I enjoyed his The Wimbledon Poisoner years ago, and also a TV crime serial that he wrote back in the 80s - it was called Charlie, and it was rather good.

Nesbitt and his wife (played by the equally charismatic Frances O'Connor) were on holiday in a small French town eight years ago when their five year old son Oliver went missing. His dad took his eye off him for a moment, and that was long enough for the worst to happen. What parent cannot empathise with this nightmarish situation? The events of eight years ago are intertwined with events in the here and now. Nesbitt, who is drinking too much, remains obsessed with finding his missing son, and finally stumbles on a clue. His marriage has ended, and his wife is now married to a police liaison officer (Jason Flemyng) - but in her way, she remains equally tormented by the loss of their son.

The switches between past and present worked well, and there were some tantalising glimpses of future plot complications. Something mysterious had been going on between Nesbitt and his father-in-law, and one of the French cops seems to have a secret to hide. The mystery is engrossing, but the human drama is even more compelling. I'm really not sure about The Intruders, but I'll definitely be watching the next episode of The Missing.