SERIES REVIEW: Mayday

 Having noticeably ended both of their hugely popular BBC One shows, Hustle and Spooks, within months of one another, it was clear Kudos productions must have had something else up their sleeves. That something else, it transpires, was Mayday, the drama that most critics have pegged a curious mix between Midsomer Murders and ‘insert other mildly sinister programme of choice here’ – I’m going to go with Lost.

Set in a small rural town with ‘filmed in leafy Surrey’ all over it like so much luminous yellow police tape, Mayday is a meticulously planned whodunit tracing the disappearance and possible murder of a teenage May Queen in the creepy local woods. (You see what they’ve done there with the title? Clever, eh?) Aired over five consecutive nights, the show introduces us to several male suspects, with very little in the way of subtlety in all honesty, although the damn thing’s so addictively intriguing that it hardly matters. 

They’re all suspicious seeming in their own ways, with the glorious Peter Firth, an epithet I shall ever more refer to him by, reprising his association with the company to play Malcolm Spicer, a property developer whose career was ruined by the missing hippy girl. Peter McDonald is equally shifty as angry policeman Alan with everything to lose, alongside silver fox Aiden Gillen as a convincingly damaged and leery widower. Other suspects include schizophrenic tree hugger Seth, (Tom Fisher), to whom I spent most of my five nights watching the show wishing to donate a reassuring cuddle, and self-proclaimed leader of the search party, Seth’s loutish brother Steve (Sam Spruell).

Got all that? Good.

Convincingly shifty though they are, with Peter Firth, sorry, glorious Peter Firth, especially excellent, it is not with the grown up blokes that the best performances of this programme lie. No, no. I have but three things to say about the best performances in Mayday, and they are these, Max Fowler, Leslie Manville and Sophie Okenedo. Okay four things, I’m going to say Sophie Okenedo twice. Max Fowler is absolutely spot-on in his performance of Everett’s troubled teenage son Linus, managing to give the character a level of pithy confidence, despite his dark and desperate exterior. He also carries off his character’s crippling crush on Hattie’s distraught twin Caitlin-the-plot-device (Leila Mimmack), although there’s no way he looks seventeen. Leslie Manville is completely captivating as Gail Spicer, taking us on an incredible character arc I would rather like to have continued long after the series ended- from put upon spouse to sarcastic and independent, we’re with her all the way. And last but not least, Sophie Okenedo. I’m working on an epithet for her but I haven’t quite got there yet. If Leslie Manville is captivating, Okenedo is practically spell-binding in this role. Quietly put upon by her temper fuelled husband, Fiona finds a new path for herself in this time of local crisis, stopping at nothing to, as her husband Alan terms it, ‘put things right’.

As the series goes on, more and more clue as to the back stories of our suspects are revealed, allowing us to form our own conclusions as an audience, as we are drip fed just enough details to keep us coming back for more, but never quite enough to fully twig whodunit. I apologise for that tree pun, given the circumstances, and indeed the image above. The simplistic format of the show, then, revolves from start to finish around these men, their lives and their potential motive. However, given my previous paragraph about the fantastic performances in the show, I can’t help but wish there’d been just a little more variety in the suspects. The female performances are indeed excellent, but with every male character in Mayday almost wholly without sympathy, it would have perhaps been interesting if there had been a female suspect or two as well. I actually found myself inventing motives for several of them just so that, in my head at least, they could be a little more involved.

That said, the slow reveal of information is done well, although the time commitment of almost a week with little to no answers revealed until around Episode 4 will not be for everyone. And is it worth that time commitment? Well yes, I think it largely is. Although I do also think that with these things, it is patently apparent from about the half-way point whether it is going to end in a glorious (Peter Firth again) conclusion with all answers handed to you on a plate, as well as gasp or two at the truth to boot, and maybe a car chase. Or, whether it will end in a slight fizzle, leaving you happy with the series overall, but a tad disappointed with the ending. It happened with last year’s The Paradise, much as I adored it, and alas it has happened here, too. Having spent four days looking forward to next episode, musing on woods based pagan rituals and small town secrets, the last episode left me with more questions than answers. This is never really what you want from a mystery drama, especially when you’re up against good ol’ David Tennant in a suspiciously similar programme over on ITV.

Overall, good, very good in places, but let itself down a tad at the end.

You can watch the whole of Mayday here, on BBC Iplayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01r6kzz/Mayday_Episode_1/

Jen

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NEWS: Hustle Finale

After 8 series, 48 episodes, one BBC three spin-off series, two exits and two new characters, Kudos Productions’ Bafta nominated con-men drama for BBC One, Hustle, will end tonight. I have waxed lyrical regarding my love for this programme on the blog before but I feel that, tonight being something of a special occasion for the show, I am well within my rights to do so again.

It has long been a brilliant means of escapism for grumpy BBC viewers, and particularly Londoners, as it created an alternate version of the city where a gang of five people could do precisely what they liked to earn their money, whilst still playing fairly of course, and no one, not even the Old Bill were going to stop them. And in a world plagued by financial recession, terrorism and ancient apocalyptic predictions - it was very welcome.

Not only was it well timed and well intentioned, but well made, too. Slick camera work, post-modern audience addresses and plot twists worthy of Arthur Conan Doyle, it has been thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

There are rumours afoot of the return of a familiar character tonight (well, they’re more the rumours, we’ve seen the photos) – Jaime Murray’s Stacey Monroe. Her interaction with characters both old and new is set to make fascinating viewing for long time fans of the show. It’s also clear, from the tiny snippets of information we were fed from both the teaser trailer at the beginning of the year as well as the preview at the end of last week’s episode, that this will be the gang’s biggest con yet, and that the episode will feature an alarming looking rooftop scene, gangsters and guns.

Other than that, we don’t really know anything. Will they all die horribly in a clash with Russian mobsters? Will only some of them die? Will they all walk away at the end just like always? I really don’t know. What I do know, is that Hustle will be sorely missed.

The finale of Hustle airs tonight, on BBC 1 at 9pm.

- Jen

TV REVIEW: Hustle, Series 8, Episodes 1 and 2

After a slightly shaky start, the final ever series (sob) of the cheeringly escapist con-artist drama, Hustle, appears to be very much back on top form.  

Episode 1, by comparison, wasn’t fantastic. It was a fair attempt at a series opener, there were plenty of twists and turns, a typically comic-strip villain, relatively good dialogue and slick editing. It wasn’t bad by any stretch. But we’d seen it all before. The ‘Robin Hood’ speech in particular, shoe-horned into many an episode over the past eight years, felt particularly contrived. You could almost hear the scratches of biro as the boxes of trademark Hustle features were ticked off in production.

The second episode did, admittedly, open with another tried and tested Hustle feature- the classic to-camera piece, but my god was it done well. The first thing we’re shown is the oddly pained looking face of Ash Morgan, the fixer, played fabulously over the years by Robert Glenister. Normal enough, apart from the pained expression. However, and I don’t want to spoil the episode here if anybody hasn’t caught up with it on Iplayer yet, he’s upside down. Suspended from the roof of a warehouse, talking directly to the camera about how, occasionally, as a con artist, you have to do business with people who are “for want of a better word…criminals”. This is Hustle at its very best.

The concept for the con itself is witty and self-referential, with the gang accidentally selling a forgery of a stolen painting back to the very mobster it was stolen from in the first place. It is at this point that the episode departs from the norm, and is all the better for it. Because here, we see gang leader and all round smooth guy ‘Mickey Bricks’, played by the wonderful Adrian Lester... well to be honest we don’t really see him at all- he’s locked in the boot of a car for the majority of it, used as ransom until the team return the painting. As well as giving the team a time scale to work to, a device which has historically produced both the best Hustle episodes, as well as some fantastic Spooks moments (also by Kudos Productions), the lack of Michael Stone meant a very much Ash-centric episode. This is not something we’ve seen before, and it allowed for some excellent character development, as well as some superb dialogue, the very best of which is in the last ten minutes or so.

Not only this, but, and I think for the first time in eight years, we do actually begin to wonder whether Mickey might actually be in some danger.  In danger of having parts of him chopped off. We being to wonder that everything might not work out perfectly for the gang as it normally does, that this time it might not all be all right after all. Of course it is, and we’re still happy in a James Bond can never die sort of way when it does, but we’re briefly taken into new territory with the show, and, as far as I’m concerned, anyway, it worked.

Both episodes clearly used the tick box method of including all the usual Hustle devices, but I think the crucial element here is that Episode 2 took them all further. That elusive, tiny little bit further. And it really has made all the difference to a format which was in serious danger of growing tired.

I wholeheartedly look forward to seeing what Kudos Productions have done with the rest of the series, although I will be very, very sad to see Hustle go.

-Jen