If you don’t admire Tom Hollander for his tremendous acting ability, you should at least love him for his A Life in the Day contribution to The Sunday Times in 2020.
In this article, should you need a reminder, he said that he wakes daily at 3 or 4am, not to do 100 press-ups or drink a kale smoothie, but because “I need to pee”. Later, he stares at his bald patch and, if it’s raining, he “might masturbate”. It was an excellent, honest rebuttal to those who use such opportunities to grandstand boringly about their gym routines, meditation practices or protein shake intake, which is probably why it proved so popular.
I imagine Hollander had to rein in his natural scepticism a fair bit while making The Iris Affair (Sky Atlantic/Now) because, although it’s a raucous, cerebral and sometimes witty thriller, there are occasions when it is hammier than the Muncaster Sausage Festival.
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He stars alongside Niamh Algar and it’s a good job these two are there because often, due to the jumping time frames and abstruse mathematics, it’s hard to follow. It is only Hollander’s and Algar’s charisma, dry humour and screen heft that keeps me watching. Don’t expect to take it seriously because it is pretty much mad, but you can enjoy the dialogue and the gorgeous Italian and Sardinian backdrops, which contrast with the very ungorgeous violence and grey interior scenes of a James Bondish bunker in Slovenia. Why are futuristic bunker interiors always grey? Can’t someone brighten the place up with some nice pastels from the Dulux chart?
Algar plays a seemingly emotionless genius called Iris who is on the run with a bounty on her head, having stolen a notebook that contains the encrypted activation code to wake up the world’s most powerful computer, sorry “topological quantum device”, which is called Charlie Big Potatoes. I’m not making it up. Cameron Beck (Hollander) is the venture capitalist behind the computer, of which he is very fond and says will “think thoughts that have yet to be thought”. Eh? But thoughts are in your head. How do you know that nobody else has thought them? I imagine Charlie Big Potatoes’ biggest thought is: “Why did you give me a name that sounds like a 1970s porn star?”
But the computer has been developing its own neural pathway — ie, growing its own brain — which is not such great news for humanity. All this taps into our fears about AI becoming too intelligent and eventually our evil overlord.
Neil Cross, the creator of Luther, has written what is basically an action thriller with shades of Doctor Who (if Doctor Who had ever featured Niamh Algar threatening to cut off a man’s penis), and Prime Target, in which Leo Woodall played a maths genius who discovers a pattern in prime numbers that could break all computer security in the world.
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What we can deduce from this is that TV likes to make geniuses very beautiful people, as Woodall and Algar are, and not nerds in poorly knitted tank tops and jam-jar-bottom spectacles. At one point Algar emerges from the sea like Honey Ryder in Dr No, although her bikini is black, not white. She then proceeds to steal tourists’ belongings and open their phones in that way that only happens in TV dramas.
Should you watch it? Well, it’s daft and needlessly complicated, little in the plot would stand up to scrutiny and it features a supervillain who is so comically evil that I quite liked him.
But the dialogue is clever, and it’s a lovely, nuanced turn from Hollander as someone who seems like a total baddie (we first meet him having a police officer beaten to death, a scene I had to fast-forward) but who has hidden depths of humanity.
It’s nowhere near any of his masterpieces, such as his portrayal of Truman Capote, but watching Hollander is rarely time wasted. It’s also a pretty mesmeric performance by Algar as a woman with “a brain the size of a planet” (bit of a cliché, no?) yet whose disguise tactics stretch only to wearing coloured contact lenses and popping on a bucket hat.
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There’s also a good comic turn from Sacha Dhawan as Alfie, a buffoonish YouTuber/conspiracy theorist who is trying to track down Iris, and good performances from Meréana Tomlinson as Joy, the young woman Iris was tutoring, and Kristofer Hivju (Tormund in Game of Thrones) as Jensen, the half-demented genius who built Charlie Big Potatoes. But if you are going to last the full eight episodes prepare yourself to suspend a great, great deal of disbelief.
I love dogs. I love TV shows about dogs. I cried when Paul O’Grady died and I dare not say how I’d punish those lowlifes who beat, starve and dump animals because I’d get a knock on the door from the bad thoughts police.
I also think Pete Wicks, formerly of The Only Way Is Essex, is a true dog devotee. You can’t fake those looks of genuine love or authentic distress at something that you know will make him lose sleep that night. Nor can you feign that willingness to bury your face in a dog’s fur even when it’s stinky from neglect. Some people’s reaction to a big slobbery hound is disgust and a concern for their trousers. A real dog lover immediately wants to kiss it on the chops.
Pete Wicks immerses himself in the emotional world of dog care in For Dogs’ Sake
UKTV
But, oh dear lord, why the hell do the makers of Pete Wicks: For Dogs’ Sake (U&W) ruin their show with the atrocious, honking background songs they play at every emotional moment as if we, the viewers, are such imbeciles that we need to be told: “Wake up, sofa morons! Sad bit now! Time to have some ‘feels’.”
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I do think that the sort of people who tune into a show about the Dogs Trust can work out for themselves that four puppies being dumped in a suitcase in a terrible state by some scumbag does not equal “happy times”. I don’t think they need a wailing musical signpost that sounds like one of those terrible songs on The X Factor to tell them that a gorgeous young Italian mastiff in need of a home has a heart condition giving him 18 months to live, tops, should tug on your heartstrings. Consider them tugged.
Wicks is good at this role, despite saying things such as, “I’m literally obsessed.” He should tell the programme makers to tone down the awful music and let the viewers listen to the actual dogs and the lovely rescuers, which is why we’re here. So, in summary: love the dogs, hate the caterwauling.
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