The Devil’s Whore
Channel 4
Wallander
BBC 1
MY GOD, that was more like it. At long last, we got a costume drama fit for grown-ups. The Devil’s Whore, which concluded this week on Channel 4, not only respected the intelligence of its audience, it also proved that respect need not come at the expense of dramatic potential and sheer entertainment. Not only has this drama series set during the English revolution pleased the critics, it has enthralled the public as well, notching up three million viewers even for the opening episode.
It’s easy to see why. The performances of Andrea Riseborough as spunky proto-feminist heroine Angelica Fanshawe, John Simm as disillusioned but faithful freedom fighter Edward Sexby, Tom Goodman-Hill as populist revolutionary John Lilburne and Peter Capaldi as King Charles I have been outstanding – bold but nuanced by turns. Series co-devisers Peter Flannery and Martine Brant were wise enough to choose a classic literary device from the era of bodice-ripping Moll Flanders, giving us the adventures of a heroine battling for survival in extraordinary times.
Flannery’s script also ranged over territory previously ignored by civil war dramas on the big and small screen, rightly including the plethora of conflicting ideas unleashed by the revolution and bringing the diggers, levellers and ranters out of academic obscurity and into the popular domain. The idealistic views of Oliver Cromwell’s leadership rivals were given their fair share of the spotlight, countered by the fear of Cromwell (an ambivalent Dominic West) that a strong, even tyrannical, leader was needed to pull the nation out of chaos. The sense of shock and awe arising from a revolution centuries ahead of its time was brilliantly captured. It all looked and sounded absolutely wonderful, from Riseborough’s perfect 17th-century face to cinematic vistas of the war-torn countryside.
The gauntlet has been thrown down to the BBC now in no uncertain terms. Has it anything better than the insultingly silly series The Tudors to offer as a response? Now that we know you don’t have to dumb down or soup up history in order to entertain a modern audience, will the Beeb find the courage to go beyond safe literary adaptations (which it does beautifully) to embrace strong original drama on a historical theme? We shall have to wait and see. Let’s hope, too, that Channel 4 may be emerging from the reality TV shadows at long last. Personally, I sniff a BAFTA in the wind.
Meanwhile, the BBC has come up with some new contemporary drama in the shape of Wallander, a bid for the thinking person’s detective franchise left vacant by the demise of Inspector Morse. Not only do we get Ingmar Bergman-esque angst from the dramatised novels of Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell (actually Bergman’s son-in-law), we also get high-class acting from Kenneth Branagh, no less, as the detective hero Kurt Wallander. Apparently frustrated by the increasing impossibility of funding British movies, Branagh has returned to television for a while.
Cinema’s loss is certainly our square-eyed gain. An older and wiser Branagh brings tender credibility to his portrayal of a middle-aged cop on the edge of a breakdown, struggling to deal with the devilish crimes of his fellow Scandinavians. So far, we’ve had axe murders, self-immolation, scalping, incest, paedophilia, stabbing, acid in the eyes and trafficking in virgins. How much more of this sort of thing can Branagh’s red-eyed and baggy-faced Wallander take? Already we fear for his health as he mooches about the bleakly beautiful Swedish landscape, his middle-aged spread (let’s hope that’s a prosthetic belly) dangerously exposed. I shall have to carry on watching just to keep him safe.
Helen Chappell
