29 May 2022 17
scrub” on a reef, Attenborough
tittered, only to be disturbed
during his pedi by another
predator. Cue rollicking
chase sequence and Bruce
Willis-style pounding as the
angel fish scattered.
I’ve heard a lot about how
expensive and lush this
five-parter is, but honestly
it can’t have cost that much.
A lot of the time it felt as if
someone had simply made a
whole lot of fantasy dinosaur
bollocks to entertain us, then
got Attenborough to say it
while adding the usual CGI
and a soaring soundtrack.
It left you mostly wondering
how they knew all this detail.
Attenborough told viewers to
look on the “show page” for
the science behind it, but
even if you had every single
paper, fossil, theory and test,
how do you base a whole
episode on the interior world
of nanuqsaurus, an Arctic
relative of T. rex, when only
half a skull has been found?
The best performance of
the week was Brendan
Gleeson as a steak-eating,
golf-loving, sub-Donald Trump
blowhard in the second series
of State of the Union. If you
asked him what he identified
as, I suspect he would answer
“retired”, which is code, of
course, for “already dead”.
This was another series of
ten-minute shows about a
couple attending marriage
counselling, written by Nick
Hornby and directed by
Stephen Frears. The point
is that you see two strong
characters at their most
searching and vulnerable ten
minutes before their session.
Scott may have been the
one to cheat on his wife, Ellen
(a slightly cheesy Patricia
Clarkson), but is nevertheless
grippingly angry and
dismissive, a true King Baby.
At the fey married therapists
he shouts: “The only male in
the room is me.” What’s the
point, anyway? “The only
thing anyone has ever learnt
about themselves is what
foods they like or don’t like.”
God, I loved that character.
On Sky there was the return
of another terrific invention,
Cassie, played by Kaley Cuoco
in The Flight Attendant.
Almost all of this snappy
comedy’s appeal is watching
Cuoco, in various stages of
spiralling hot messery, gabble
her way through screwball
set-ups in a series of ever
lusher coats. She has a gift for
hamster-wheel physical
comedy, honking out mad
lines while scrabbling with
insane props.
This time she is back in the
skies, but on her first trip to
Berlin she witnesses a murder
by a woman who looked like
she does, right down to her
blonde hair and tramp stamp.
Who can she be?
The best scenes involve the
sloppy Cassie and/or her best
friend, the clipped, uptight
lawyer Annie, played by Zosia
Mamet. Where Cassie is
hopeless, Annie is meant to
be clever and straight, except
when she reminds you that
she’s a former lawyer from
New York who “literally used
to help people wash blood off
their hands”, so is basically as
bent as you can get.
Everything about this show
is delightful, from the brilliant
locations to the minor casting,
including Mae Martin as a new
stewardess. And I haven’t
even yet got to the highlight
— Sharon Stone playing
Cassie’s mother. cT
he actress Keeley Hawes, who
has three children, is saying
something you don’t normally
hear parents admit: “If you’ve
got a child and you wake up in
the middle of the night and
there’s just one of them standing by the
side of your bed in the dark... there’s
nothing more frightening than that.”
It’s a fear that lies at the heart of the
writer David Farr’s retelling of John
Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich
Cuckoos, which starts on Sky next week
as an eight-part series. Hawes plays
Susannah Zellaby, a child psychologist
Farr has added to the original sci-fi
story, basing her on Gordon Zellaby in
the book. She lives in Midwich, a village
plagued by the Cuckoos, stern-faced
nine-year-olds who perform rituals.
Even the story of how they come to
the village is sinister. One day the lights
go out and people start collapsing.
When they come to, every woman of
child-bearing age has inexplicably
become pregnant with these “Cuck-
oos”. The show explores the dystopian
side of having a child — the horrors of
giving birth and what happens if they
are born beyond redemption.
Hawes, who has two children, aged
17 and 15, with fellow actor Matthew
Macfadyen (Tom from Succession) and
another, aged 22, with her ex-husband,
says while filming she thought about
Ridley Scott’s movie Alien. The crea-
ture burrowing out of John Hurt’s chest
made a whole generation think twice
about cooing over a kicking baby.
“There will always be something
to fear in the idea of something
growing inside you and you
don’t know what it is,” Hawes
says. “It’s something coming
out of your body, the idea of
something taking you over.
Even when you know what’s
happening to you, even if it is
your dream to be pregnant, it’s
still a very odd and unique
experience. I have done it
three times — but it is very odd and
frightening. Because it’s a moment
where you’re not in control. I think
this speaks to all of that.”
In preparation for the role she
spoke to a child psychologist. “It’s
fascinating — those scenes where
I’m with the kids in the show
and talking to them as a thera-
pist have turned out to actually
be quite useful in life!”‘BEING PREGNANT IS SCARY ---
AND I’VE DONE IT THREE TIMES’
The Midwich Cuckoos has been
adapted before, most notably for the
two Village of the Damned films (1960
and 1995). Farr, who also adapted the
film Hanna and John le Carré’s The
Night Manager for television, allows the
children to be alien and yet not beyond
understanding or redemption (in the
book Gordon insists they should be
killed). Farr says: “Zellaby has a genu-
ine knowledge and love of children and
an understanding of how they work,
along with a therapeutic belief in the
idea that you can change a child — that
no child is created bad.”
When I joined the cast on set in the
cellar of a disused Hertfordshire
school, though, it was unsettling to see
the Cuckoos — at least until the director
called cut, at which point they all started
doing TikTok dances. The children had
learnt the power of doing less: staying
still, underplaying but doing it as one
(in Farr’s retelling there is a hive-mind
component to these aliens).
“It’s unnerving,” says Max Beesley,
who plays a detective, “because you
don’t know which way they’re gonna
go. But when they are unified as a force
there’s very, very little one can do. That,
I think, is the most terrifying aspect in
these young children’s façades.”
Creepy children standing and staring
is an age-old trope, but being frightened
of your own children is a peculiarly
modern taboo. Parenthood, in modern
culture, is supposed to be both a goal
and a gift. What if it’s not?
“I do think that the bringing up of
children has become a big religion of
our time,” Farr says. “As many of us
have ceased to believe in life after
death, the way in which you achieve
some sense of that beyond you goes to
your child. We are desperate for
them to live beyond us and do the
things that we failed to do.”
Hawes sums up the spirit of the
show: “Children can be quite
freaky. They’re like not-quite-
formed humans and, in this case,
they’re not-quite-formed humans
who are behaving like humans
but not quite as naturalistically
as they should be. It’s all at
odds with any sort of mater-
nal or paternal or human
instincts you have towards
children.” cThe Midwich Cuckoos is on
Sky/Now from FridayIn The Midwich Cuckoos Keeley Hawes lives in a town where
children turn evil — a fear she understands. By Benji Wilson
The kids
aren’t
alright
Keeley
Hawes in
The Midwich
CuckoosSKY UK