Monday, August 5, 2013
Southcliffe, episode one, Channel 4, review
I'd heard nothing at all about Southcliffe (Channel 4) before I sat down to watch it. From its one word title I had assumed it was either a) a new series about a grizzled detective without a Christian name, most probably driving a statement vehicle; b) a nature documentary set in the sleepy seaside town of Southcliffe. Or c) a Broadchurch-style made-up place name drama in which a small community is put through some insufferable calamity.
It was c): Southcliffe told the story of a fictional British coastal somewhere having its idyll shattered by a shooting, echoing the Hungerford or West Cumbria murders. It was filmed in Faversham, Kent, and already I pity the local tourist board who got all excited when the film crew rolled in to town promising something like Midsomer Murders. Last night's opening scene will have set them to rights: it went straight in with a lone gunman killing a random woman potting up her geraniums, before moving on to kill randomly again and again. It then cut to a London-based TV journalist, played by Rory Kinnear, who'd grown up in the town and will assuredly be back there to unpick the whys and wherefores of this shocking, cold-blooded mass murder.
But that's to come. Last night's episode was the preamble, if you can call something so profoundly unsettling something so matter-of-fact. From it we learned that the writer and director, Tony Grisoni and Sean Durkin respectively, will not be hurried – Southcliffe was an exercise in poise and pacing, skipping backwards and forwards in time, ramping up tension as we moved inexorably towards the dire outcome.
Much of the opening 45 minutes was spent following Sean Harris, which is a torturous delight in itself. He is perhaps TV's greatest go-to glassy-eyed nutter right now. He managed to make frying eggs, which he did repeatedly to feed his dying mother, look like something hugely sinister. He played a weaselly, deluded ex-squaddie who claimed he had been in the SAS. The soldiers among the townsfolk soon found out that he hadn't, and they goaded and demeaned him until he snapped.
Given we know from the start what happens in Southcliffe, we may assume that the next three episodes will explore the impact of the shootings from the points of view of the people affected. That's been one of the great leaps forward in TV drama since The Killing: crimes touch people other than just the perpetrator and the victim, and now we get to see how.
But it also means that Southcliffe promises three weeks of sustained grimness. Not everyone likes their TV as bleak as this and they may have some complaint that the bleakness started in the first 30 seconds – I tested whether you'd have had enough time to flick to a Mrs Brown's Boys repeat before the woman with the geraniums got it, and it was touch and go. Personally, I love grim. With its muted palette, protracted silences, dank fogs and seething unease, Southcliffe was anything but nice-cup-of-tea and a sit-down TV, but it was a mesmerising tragedy, nonetheless.
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/2f8c7b61/sc/38/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0Ctv0Eand0Eradio0Ereviews0C10A2197390CSouthcliffe0Eepisode0Eone0EChannel0E40Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
