Matthew eats… Unforgotten

A major cast change is always a gamble. How do you handle one or more of your leads going? Glee struggled with getting us to love newer castmates. Death In Paradise meanwhile slips easily from one lead to another.

Unforgotten has had to find a similar success after killing of its lead in series four. Nicola Walker’s character was killed off in a random hit and run. Now Sinead Keenan come along to replace her. We are introduced to her facing a personal crisis because she is that classic female lead of someone who has worked too hard and her husband has had an affair. Poor women. The terrible men they marry either ditch them for being too dowdy or too bossy.

The problem is no matter how much her chippiness is explained, you still struggle to sympathise. Their is little hint of softness to her. She is borderline cruel to the rest of her team, expecting respect whilst also not being part of them. I know we are supposed to see her as someone with too much on her plate, but instead she comes across as someone who lashes out at others.

Of course, it is obvious where this will go. At some point her and her detective partner will unburden themselves to each other, team respect will be found, everything will be resolved. It’s all so obvious for a show that prides itself from being unusual.

And the case itself? It’s decent enough. We have our previously unidentified victim, four potential suspects (all of whom have their own tragic stories) etc. But because everything feels like it is about personal lives, the detection gets lost.

So yes, the case change needs work. The heart of what matters has been lost. Hopefully, with the new lead bedded in, the next series takes us back to this.

Matthew eats… The Masked Singer

Is your greatest strength your biggest weakness? Is your confidence sometimes arrogance? Is your passionate nature sometimes a temper tantrum? Could your easy going nature become laziness in its extreme? To be fair, all that does is show you are human. But is it so endearing in a television programme?

The Masked Singer is a global phenomenon. It is completely cheesy entertainment that is not taken one bit seriously, on the surface at least. Most Saturday night entertainment programmes have over recent years at least put on a veneer of deeper meaning. But not this one. It goes no further than c-list celeb in a costume singing pop hits.

That is its charm. But also, it is at times a grating flaw. There seems to be a competition between the host, Joel Dommett, and the panel of judges as to who is the loudest. The script is deliberately awful, which isn’t a major problem for the target audience perhaps but wearies anyone seeking any form of rigour.

And then there is the filler. If we just had clues and the singing, followed by a brief judging, we could be done in 45 minutes. Yet somehow we end up with double the run time as the space is filled with gimmicks. By the end it isn’t so much ‘take it off’ as ‘get on with it’

This all makes it sound like I hate it. Yet I don’t. I’m hooked by the guessing game and, when it isn’t descending into a shout off, the judging panel is actually fine. They are certainly more life affirming than many of their rivals. And for all the silliness, it never feels like it tips over into cruel.

Maybe I’m wrong audience. Perhaps everything negative I’ve said misses the point. And yes, it might just be the case that what I see as this show’s biggest weaknesses are really it’s greatest strengths.

Matthew eats… The Masked Singer

So I’m not going to lie, I have no idea if I have written on this show before. I probably have, so I apologise if I am rehashing anything, or if I’m even completely contradicting what I’ve said previously. But here it goes anyway.

The Masked Singer has become ITV’s January Saturday night event. It’s ideally suited to that post-Christmas dip. It’s light at a time when people are low and silly when any other kind of fun seems a long way off. If you need me to through the premise, here it is. Celebrities disguise themselves in costumes and perform songs. The aim is to guess who they are via video clue packages and their singing voice, although the latter is often disguised. Each week, one contestant is voted off and their identity is unveiled.

So as you have gathered it is hardly Mensa level entertainment. It is literally designed to take your mind off the dark nights. And it is actually enjoyable, so long as you can handle a large dollop of cheesiness in the presentation of the show. It is scripted pretty much entirely with puns and is, quite frankly, ridiculously loud.

The panel of judges is a fair mix. Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall and Mo Gilligan are all tolerable. Fourth member Rita Ora is less so, and mistakenly thinks being brash equals having a personality. Although to be fair, she is the source one of the shows best running gags, as she tries to make jokes that simply don’t work. I’m not entirely convinced her fellow panelists annoyance at her is fake either.

Joel Dommett is a reasonable host, although also falls into the trap of thinking shouting equals enthusiasm. Again though, he features on a decent running joke of being unable to make it across the stage without slipping thanks to his ridiculously buffed shoes. He could possibly exude more warmth, and his interactions don’t feel as natural as they could. I certainly would be reluctant to have him appear on something that involved dealing with the public. But he leans into the silliness of the show and just about avoids overselling it.

Is this amazing groundbreaking TV? No. It is a bit of froth that is in many senses instantly forgettable. But it also works. There is no sadness or anger, no grand point being made, nothing in it even for the winner. It is a distraction from the cold winter outside. And that’s all I want right now.

Matthew eats… In for a Penny

I like to think that my taste in TV is quite broad. I like a decent drama, a simple comedy, even a documentary or two if it tickles my subject interests. Hey, even trashy reality shows work for me. I try not to prejudge too much, but I draw the line at two things: outright misery and the Kardashians. Some would class them as the same thing.

I also thought I would never watch In for a Penny. It seemed just too ridiculous and filled with the kind of people I cross the road to avoid. You know the kind, the ones who go ‘I’m mad, me!” when really they are just loud and poor judges of social cues. And yet I have somehow fallen for this show in unexpected ways.

The premise is simple. Stephen Mulhern descends on a random UK city and challenges the locals to take part in bizarre games to win cash prizes. For example, if you can fill your tank of petrol to precisely the right amount, you win that tank. It all culminates in some individuals being able to play for £1000 by completing five challenges, the final one being the stopwatch challenge of getting the stopwatch to stop at the right number of seconds.

So what is the appeal? Well, Mulhern himself is fantastic, somehow getting away with being quite rude to the public without anyone taking offence. Flies down? He’ll tell you. Dodgy haircut? It will be slated. Questionable fashion? Mocked. Yet it works, because somehow it never comes across as hurtful. Perhaps it helps he is slightly self-deprecating with it.

There is also a charming self-awareness of how naff the show is. Deliberate showings of where things haven’t gone to plan and jokes about the budget are par for the course. It’s the equivalent of football fans chanting ‘we’re sh** and we know we are’ as a form of coping with the pain of loyalty.

Would I change anything? Less challenges that involve wasting food perhaps. But other than that I struggle to think of anything. To polish it would cost it the charm. Although you may want to stick something more cerebral in alongside. No, not the Kardashians.

Matthew eats… Holding

Crime dramas come in all shapes and sizes. At one end you have the cosy daytime crime dramas, with bucolic countryside and simple moral values. The sleuth is often an amateur, with the police either incompetent or arrogant. At the other extreme are the dark and gritty ones, where everything is purely lit, there’s blood everywhere and even our hero is morally questionable.

Holding holds a curious place in the middle. Based on the Graham Norton novel, it is set in a small Irish town where everyone knows everyone else and it feels like no one new has moved in for years. When a body is found on a site that is being developed, it unlocks stories from 20 years ago of an errant young man abandoning women at the altar and leading everyone a merry dance.

It certainly has the scenery of the cosy crime type – although it is a very modern setting there is a degree of being frozen in aspic about the town. But there is also darkness, with alcoholism, infidelity and bitter rivalries all at play. In some respects it reminds me of Broadchurch, albeit with a cold case, in that we have an outwardly close community that in reality is anything but.

Strictly speaking our sleuth isn’t an amateur, seeing as he is a police officer. But in this quiet town he has never had a murder case before, never mind a cold one, so he does get to be the naive yet perceptive one compared to the insensitive professional detectives from the big city.

The tone is also mixed, but not in an uneven way. There’s the foreboding sense of lives unraveling and secrets being unearthed, but at the same time the mundanity of life goes on, with petty squabbles over house colours and housekeepers bickering over ham. It’s a touch of humour that works really well and stops the drama from being too grim.

All the characters are neatly drawn and are believable. You buy into the weight of history that everyone feels and hope that those most scarred get to heal. And the plot is nicely gripping – enough happening to keep you interested but never overwhelmed. I want to see the resolution. And that is all you can ask for from a crime drama.

Matthew eats… Trigger Point

Sometimes misselling of a television programme is deliberate. The trailer suggests one thing and you get something different. Or the comedy puts it’s only decent jokes on the trailer so you get 30 minutes and rubbish. But it can also be accidental and the fault lies with the viewer. We’ve seen a name of an actor or the writer and assume we are getting a carbon copy of what they have done before, even though said star or writer has made no promises.

Trigger Point is a good example of this. People saw it starred Vicky McClure and was written by someone who had worked on Line of Duty and assumed we were getting another police procedural following corrupt coppers. This is despite McClure pointing out in every interview going that she was not playing cop. Cue many viewers being disappointed.

To explain, the plot is actually focused around McClure playing a bomb disposal professional. There are rising tensions between radical Islamists and far-right groups, blaming each other for atrocities. But there is a feel of an inside job to it all. Someone close to our lead is clearly double crossing her. Is it her senior policeman lover? Her unemployed brother? A former army colleague? Fair enough, this does sound borderline Line of Duty, but not quite.

To be fair, overall the plot is quite decent. There’s a level of intrigue that keeps you going between the big set pieces. The roundtable conferences have a decent level of office politics and set McClure up as the noble character seeking the truth where everybody else seeks easy answers.

Annoyingly, the only thing that lets the show down is not McClure’s history of work but the writer’s. Because we know they specialise in twists, we can almost see them coming. I won’t do any spoilers, but none of the ‘shocks’ we have had so far have been that shocking. It’s not poor writing, it’s just that we know a little too well that any apparent calm moments will be punctuated by something horrific.

So yes, it is a little derivative, which has added fuel to the critics’ fire. It will never be as jaw dropping as its stablemates in the genre. But it fills the slot nicely and given a fair shot is still fairly decent. Quite frankly, for the most part, any disappointment is the fault of the audience.

Matthew eats… The Masked Singer

There are moments where you just have to give into the madness. You spent so long sneering at it to to no avail so you end up joining in. It’s easier that way, as you no longer have to battle against the tide. So it is with me finally letting The Masked Singer into my life. Blame the fact that I am now required to be sociable with my other half on Saturday evening, rather than just disappearing into a quiet room

The premise, for anybody living under a rock, is that celebrities dress up in elaborate costumes and sing (or ‘sing’ as the case may be for the more vocally challenged). You then guess who it is, aided by clue packages. Each week, one identity is revealed, as the audience and judging panel whittle down their least favourite performers.

There are so many things that really should get under my skin about the show. Joel Dommett is an irritating host, full of cliched puns and scripted comments. The panel are also largely annoying, particularly Rita Ora, who clearly hasn’t got any better forming chemistry with co-stars since her disastrous stint on The X Factor. Add in bizarre audience voting decisions (shows like this will be what historians point to in the future when democracy fails) and the gladiatorial chanting as the celebrity is due to be unmasked then you have something that resembles either a dystopian nightmare or an extreme fever dream.

Yet it works. Dommett is actually the right host for the job, leaning into the show’s weirdness without making a complete joke of it. The panel are secondary on this, and Jonathan Ross does a good enough job of, like Dommett, reveling in the show’s eccentricities without overcooking it to make it enjoyable. It is quite cheesy, yet also somehow you don’t seem to care.

Above all else, you do end up getting involved. There is a weird thrill of seeing a former Wimbledon champion dressed as a set of bagpipes or a quite respectable pop star be uncovered as the real identity of a lion fish or poodle.

This is the sort of programming that makes the Reithian types froth at the mouth. It is silly, pointless and shallow. It does not educate or inform, and you cannot argue it makes you a better person for watching. But in an era of anger and division, 90 minutes of complete froth doesn’t go amiss. So give into it. It may be mad, but it also is the biggest salve to keep your sanity in this world out there.

Matthew eats… Professor T

What do you need to make a good crime drama series? I mean, obviously a crime and some drama, but beyond that? Well, someone to solve it. People who could have done it, the likelihood of which waxes and wanes on what we know of their motive and opportunity. Maybe a long-running sub-plot, either of a bigger overarching crime or some personal problem for our detective to solve.

In many respects Professor T contains all of this. We have the crimes, which to the show’s credit are not limited to murder. We also have our lead crimesolver, the eponymous Professor T. We do occasionally get a multiple of suspects, although more on this later. And there is the personal problem of our lead character, as he deals with his OCD and the childhood trauma of his dad’s suicide. Not to mention most of our supporting cast having something going on as well.

So why does this show not quite land? Well it feels like the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Let’s start with the crime and suspects elements. Essentially, not enough time is spent on the crime. Because of this, we never get any depth, or frankly breadth. We get at most two suspects, one of whom is easily crossed off. As a result, there is a complete lack of narrative tension. The show could learn a lot from Death In Paradise in this regard.

Instead, the show seems to be dominated by the personal issues of the cast. Not only do we have the previously mentioned problems of our lead character, but we also have a ‘will they, won’t they’ between two detectives, one of whom has problems at home of their own, a senior detective who is sliding into alcoholism following the death of his daughter, and a big boss who was formally romantically intertwined with our professor. This is supposed to be a crime drama, not a soap.

It also underuses the hook of the professor being a criminologist. The opportunity to explore this is often missed and reduced to a trite observation. This is a real shame, as we could be hearing lots of brilliant theories, but instead get short changed.

So can it be saved? Debatable. The show seems almost proud of being too dense to be a cosy crime drama but too lacking depth to be anything meatier. Ben Miller looks like he is only working on 70% of the character he could be working on and the supporting cast for all their dramas even less so. There is a lot to fix. There is one solution, which is a longer run time; literally another 30 minutes would suffice. Without that, it has no shape. And that is truly criminal.

Matthew eats…Cooking with the Stars

The ‘Celebrity Learns Skill’ genre of show is endlessly popular, although for me I can’t often see why. I don’t buy into the ideas of journeys or that it really is their ambition to learn something. It is pretty much always a case that their agent has turned around and said ‘pay your mortgage for the next six months by learning how to dance/ice skate/dry stonewall’.

This level of cynicism could be behind my vague dislike of Cooking With the Stars. The premise is eight celebrities, all supposedly terrible cooks, are paired with a professional chef. Each week there is a theme, e.g. Indian cookery, where they must learn how to reproduce a dish of the chef’s choice. The weakest chefs go into an eliminator where they must produce a previously unseen recipe and, after a blind tasting, the worst of the worst goes home.

The format as detailed above causes me some problems. The editing is suspiciously scant on the celeb’s journey as chefs, with all the focus on the reproduction of the dish in the studio. Now that wouldn’t be so bad, but as result we don’t believe in the relationship between chef and celeb. I’m not saying we need a new curse of Strictly, but at least have me invest in whether or not the contestant gets their own chef’s approval. Not only that, but where is the yardstick of how much a celeb has improved?

The problems don’t end there though. We also have the issue of the presenting team. It is co-presented by Emma Willis and the now ubiquitous Tom Allen. Fundamentally, there is no chemistry between the two of them, with both of them (but Willis especially) looking like they would be much happier flying solo. The styles don’t match either, with Willis going for the ‘how much would this mean to you?’ approach (and I’m assuming here she isn’t referring to the contestant’s pay cheques or possible post-show endorsements), whilst Allen would much rather just have fun and wind everybody up. Neither really works, with Willis coming across as asking for an emotional investment that we just don’t get and Allen too frivolous for an otherwise sulky ‘audience’.

In essence, the clash of presenting demonstrates the neither fish nor fowl problem with the show. If this is meant to be one where something really rides on how well a naan bread turns out, gives us the story of why it matters. If it is just a bit of light-hearted fun, the let everybody off the leash a bit more.

As it stands, I struggle to see a second series being made. Viewers can surely spot the stilted nature of the show and those still watching like me are probably just hanging around to see if the declaration of the winner is worth it. The show is neither a spicy curry nor a smooth creamy sauce. It is a tepid, lumpy mess. I pay no compliments to the chef.

Matthew eats… Unforgotten

All crime dramas have their own rhythm. Some like to introduce us to the victim before they die, perhaps even give us some potential motives and then bump them off. Others prefer just to start with the body and unpick they whys as the story progresses. Generally, I prefer the latter as it feels the mystery element, which is the point of a crime drama, gets going quicker.

Unforgotten has its own pattern. It starts with the discovery of a body linked to a cold case, and then we gradually meet the suspects, all of whom have moved once since the crime was committed and have built lives that the investigation brings crashing down. It’s perhaps one of my favourite set ups, not least the reveal of how they are all connected to the victim.

This season is no different. A body from a missing person case 30 years ago is found in a freezer of a man who has recently died. Our suspects are all tied to this recently deceased, and therefore in turn to the body. I would say more, but I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone who hasn’t seen it. Needless to say, the first episode ends on a compelling twist.

Of course, while all this is going on, our lead detective has to have a complicated personal life. In this instance, DCI Stuart is dealing with a father rapidly sliding into dementia, whilst she is also trying desperately to recover from the outcome of the last case so they can reach retirement. Nicola Walker, who is one of those actors who falls into the ‘brilliant in everything’ categories, plays it perfectly. She shows both the character’s vulnerability and repressed rage hidden underneath a stoicism and professionalism.

As of yet we are still fleshing out our suspects, but we can already see what is at stake. The successful woman undermined by her geriatric mother. The family man supporting his disabled son. The family counselor faced with the hypocrisy of not practicing what she has preached. And the dad-to-be who is respected by his community. The costs of the past coming back to haunt them is all too clear.

This feels like the final season, which is sad as this is a gem of a programme. But it also feels fitting. It is still as strong as ever and ending now will keep it preserved that way. Catch it while you can.