Secret Agent Selection: WW2 (BBC2) | iPlayer
Living with the Brainy Bunch (BBC2) | iPlayer
Class of Mum and Dad (C4) | channel4.com
Deep State (Fox) | foxtv.co.uk
Lost in Space (Netflix) | netflix.com
Among the savageries of war, one of the first casualties, along with truth, is surely always going to be the simple idea of “niceties”, of thinking one can promote any conflict with a glance backwards to the gentlemanly – ha! – wars of yore. The RAF still thought, within living memory, that dropping assassins in plain clothes into enemy territory was “unethical”. They had to be brutally persuaded, in 1940, shortly after Churchill had vowed to “set Europe ablaze”, to carry the spies of the fledgling Special Operations Executive into the many darknesses of occupied territory, ie most of the continent.
It wasn’t just the RAF that got a stiff breeze up its skirts. That necessary war also necessitated the dismantling of a great many snobberies and prejudices in all the armed forces. Gay men, who had spent a lifetime dissembling, were found particularly useful for the SOE, and it was remembered (most probably by a man, of course: give that man a medal) that women could possess remarkable combinations of brains, bravery and pain thresholds, bless ’em. Ethnic minorities; the wounded/disabled; the SOE party was thrown open to all, like New Labour with cordite and switchblades.
This and more we saw in Secret Agent Selection, a wholly new and surprisingly successful exercise that came, naturally, in the guise of a “reality” show, in which 14 modern Joes and Janes were put through a fierce-enough recreation of the training plan for the SOE. I don’t think the programme suffered in the least by combining the two formats – reality and informative flashback (all rather pleasingly narrated by Shetland’s Dougie Henshall). Those who had a penchant to learn could learn, and the rest could warm their hands at the embers of downfall and hubris.
There are, already, the heroes and the villains – frenziedly posh Dan with his entitlement and his bum-fluff little ’tache; plucky, tiny Lizzie, scaling the 10ft wall with an upper-body strength denied to most of the males – and a few daftnesses (such as the lass who complained “but we don’t as a group have any raft-making skills”, as if that’s even a thing), but, in general, it was just such a relief to have 14 reasonably competent, cogent, more-or-less sane souls on a reality show. Psychologically bombproof, as the SOE would have demanded, and who weren’t likely to strop off in tears at the drop of a harsh word, or preen, or laze in the sun for three days picking grossly at their feet while looking to take niggling offence, and yes I’m looking at you The Island With Bear Grylls.
In a way, it was a week of such surprises, of suddenly letting us remember that, despite headlines telling us daily that we live in a shaken globe of snowflakes and knife gangs prowling for our livers, we actually… um… don’t. Some people, quite a lot, just set about their lives every day, resolutely failing to obsess about vogueish Twitter spats. Getting on with the job – or going to school.
My heart had sunk a smidgen at the opening to Living With the Brainy Bunch, in which we were sonorously informed that a Department for Education study had shown that parental influence was a “key factor” in determining a child’s achievements at school. I may have uttered: “No shit, Sherlock” out loud.
But, in the end, this was a wholly rewarding programme, in which two serious 15-year-old underachievers were mentored by overachieving classmates to the extent that they moved into their homes, their rules, their parents. I felt both infuriated at and deeply sorry for Hollie, struggling hugely with confidence, in tests and in life, moving in with the relentlessly middle-class family of classmate Holly, a prima achiever, who like to test their brood at supper with fun Shakespearean word games. But Hollie ended up bonding with Holly, and six weeks later her exam results were ridiculously improved.
Naughty-but-clever Jack, across town, had moved in with Tharush and his strong mother, Priyanka, and wobbled quite a bit, but after Priyanka told of her terrified flight from Sri Lanka he had something of a Damascene moment. Jack realised that he didn’t, after all, have that much to sulk about and upped his game, his life, in extraordinary fashion.
These were good tales, but surely it’s not always that easy? I also felt a little for the real parents of Jack and of Hollie, who allowed themselves to be filmed with no apparent sense of opprobrium, just a genuine desire to see the best for their offspring, and if that meant a faintly desperate reaching out to other parents, other rules, so be it. Jack’s and Hollie’s parents were exceedingly normal, borderline lovely, but I’m not sure that many parents of underachievers would be anything like as generous with their reputations.
Class of Mum and Dad promised much, and generally failed to deliver, but it’s only the first of the series so there’s hope. Fiftysomething mums and dads go back to primary school, year six, to sit the exams and potter with putty and learn new rules etc, but so far it’s a light disappointment, slow and repetitive and a little too sweet. Above all, what I took from the two school programmes was what rude health our education system appears to be in. I’m doubtless naive, and await enlightenment, and these were only two schools, but I saw rules, rigour, a sharp desire to learn on behalf of the teensiest littles, robust mental health, lack of panic at exams, much wise and humorous teaching. Almost the opposite of what I’m being daily told then.
Deep State, currently getting fast into its stride on Fox, is a marvellously moreish conspiracy scene-chewer. It borrows heavily – from The Night Manager, from pretty much every Langley-as-baddie CIA thriller ever made – but still manages to rise above and become something greater than the sum of its parts. Mark Strong excels, and writing and filming likewise, as we move between Tehran, Beirut, the Tajikistan border and other locales not generally notable for their TripAdvisor thumbs-up emoticons. Get watching now.
The revamped Lost in Space is an oddity. Gone are all the camp madnesses and nonsense plots of the 1960s series, replaced by seriously impressive computer graphics and, astonishingly, a none-too-loopy plot. Unhappily, despite sterling and eager work by young Maxwell Jenkins as Will, and Parker Posey, the series – about, remember, a family being lost – in space – still feels Americanly anodyne, safe, and, even for something aimed at being “family-friendly”, tedious to the point of catalepsy, and no amount of CGI can or should fix that.
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