■ Man In An Orange Shirt BBC2, Thu
■ Ballers Sky Atlantic, Thu
■ Public Enemies: Jay Z v Kanye Channel 4, Mon
Period drama is TV’s favourite theme park, a cosy retreat where writers and producers go to escape the complexity of the modern world. By rooting a story in a stylised and sanitised adaptation of the past, programme-makers can indulge the myth that yesteryear was a simpler time and spare themselves the headaches of confronting contemporary reality in all its dizzying mess.
Simplistic drama is always bad drama but there’s still a sizeable cohort of viewers who will forgive almost any narrative shoddiness as long as the costumes and customs on show are sufficiently quaint. Given their inherent staginess, however, period pieces become downright insulting when they’re used as teaching tools. A theme park, after all, is no place for a schoolroom.
Man In An Orange Shirt is billed as the groundbreaking centrepiece of Gay Britannia, a BBC season marking the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts in England and Wales. The two-part saga, written by novelist Patrick Gale, was clearly devised as an educational presentation, offering a comparative study of gay male experience before and after the law change. Monday’s episode was set during the 1940s and 50s, while next week’s unfurls in the present day.
Gale is a smart and dextrous writer so most of the wires and pulleys are hidden away but, ultimately, there’s no disguising the mechanical and derivative nature of the enterprise. The characters are little more than chess pieces while the first episode’s storyline could have been borrowed from a Mills and Boon pot-boiler.
Oliver Jackson-Cohen played Michael, a square-jawed hunk of stiff-upper-lipped Englishness. Michael is a paragon of respectability for whom openness about his sexuality isn’t possible. As a British Army captain on the Italian front he fights valiantly for king and country, and there’s a similar dutifulness about his betrothal to childhood sweetheart Flora (Joanna Vanderham). In the heat of battle, however, he meets Thomas (James McArdle), a war artist, and they become lovers.
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Back home after the war, the couple enjoy a brief fling but soon find that civilian mores can be even more regimented than military service. Thomas tries to dissuade Michael from entering a sham marriage and double life, but to no avail. “If you have either sense or decency, you’ll do the same,” Michael tells him.
Flora’s story is the drama’s most interesting feature. Played in old age by Vanessa Redgrave, she’s the character who unites both episodes and whose visceral distaste for homosexuality proves more enduring and hurtful than any state sanction.
Early in her passion-less marriage to Michael, Flora discovered a stash of love letters from Thomas which gave the game away. Disgusted as well as betrayed, she nonetheless stayed with her husband for the sake of their son and external appearances. But we’re left in no doubt about the emotional damage inflicted on her by the twin traumas of living a lie and loving a liar.
This series isn’t nearly as daring as it thinks it is. LGBT plot-lines are commonplace in soaps and soapy serials, and many of the issues have been confronted with more insight by these supposedly gimcrack dramas. Gale brings dashes and dabs of fresh perspective to his depiction of gay life in post-war London. But, in truth, there is little we haven’t seen before. Monday’s episode was the same sterile, synthetic version of the mid-20th century in which a thousand other romances have been set. What we’re getting isn’t so much history as a history lesson, a trip to a museum masquerading as a trip back in time.
Male bonding of the locker-room variety is the driving force of Ballers, a lightweight comedy-drama about the decadence and folly of the American pro-sports world. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays Spencer Strasmore, a retired NFL superstar who brings his competitive aggression and fleet-footed shiftiness to his second career as a financial adviser to football players.
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Strasmore’s clients are rich boys with dubious habits who want to become wealthy men. Combining inflated salaries with arrested development is no easy trick and most footballers need help to avoid the game’s biggest hazards, from the head-turning to the concussion-inducing. Strasmore relishes the opportunity to serve as a spirit guide but is usually called upon as a babysitter.
Ballers was created by Stephen Levinson, executive producer of the movie biz bromance Entourage. The similarities between the two shows are uncanny, and wearying. Both series began with satiric intent but the hard edge was traded for cheap thrills, the jaundiced eye replaced by a voyeur’s gaze. All we’re left with is cartoon wish-fulfilment for male adolescents, giddy celebration of the brotastic, laddish vacuity it pretends to skewer.
Ballers never made good on its initial claim to be “Entourage with balls” but, now in its creaky third season, there’s no ignoring the show’s weakening legs. American TV’s sharpest and most durable comedies about profession-bred dysfunction (Veep, Silicon Valley) draw their power from deep benches, great ensemble casts, and writing that delivers memorable characters in even minor roles. Ballers is essentially a solo run by a one-trick pony.
Despite his limitations, however, Johnson is an increasingly influential celebrity in America; a former WWE wrestler who made the difficult leap from circus ring to silver screen and is now touted as a candidate for the US presidency in 2020. These days, the only funny thing about Ballers is that some of Strasmore’s pep talks sound suspiciously like manifestos.
White House occupancy was also cited as an ambition for both principals in Public Enemies: Jay Z vs. Kanye, a limp yet excitable chronicle of the long-running rivalry between rap’s biggest egos and loudest mouths. We are living through a strange era but, one day, it’s gonna make a helluva period drama.