If you remain in any doubt,
after the repeated flashbacks
of Whitehouse ripping his
employee’s knickers, how
sexy and exciting this show
believes rape is, there is, also,
helpfully a picture of the
supposed victim’s bitten
breasts, along with one of
her shredded pants. It’s
confusing: is rape rape, or an
outrageous sexual fantasy?
The show certainly thinks it’s
mostly hot, successful people
who do it. “I always think,”
gasps one minor character,
“when a man is that
handsome — look out.”
I suppose I will have to
plough on with its endless
enviable soft furnishings and
kitchens and spotless camel
coats and deeply attractive
wronged spouses, its scenes
of Rupert Friend hungrily
eating someone’s boobs,
while reminding myself how
impressive it is that this failing
streamer has finally done an
#important and #necessary
show about consent.
On Channel 4, Chivalry
attempted to cover much of
the same ground, featuring
Steve Coogan as a dinosaur
of a producer in Los Angeles
who has hired a female
director, Bobby (Sarah
Solemani), to “reshoot the sex
scene I told you was lame
and you didn’t f***in’ listen”,
says its star, played, again,
by Sienna Miller. Bobby has
become famous for directing
a “menstrual Bible film” in
which she made a sex worker
a star.
I have a huge amount of
time for comedies set in the
airless, spiteful world of
television and film-making,
especially in Los Angeles. It is
a joy to watch foul-mouthed,
drunkard actresses dissing
craven, hopeless money men
like Coogan’s vampiric
Cameron. Bobby has potential
as a pretentious Stella Creasy
type whose first line is literally:
“I had childcare issues.”
But who is the straight man
in the show? Bobby is a
ridiculous comedy character
and so is Cameron. Who is the
person we are meant to root
for, like the baffled English
writers in Episodes, a show
that did this sort of thing
better? And how seriously
can we take a comedy about
#MeToo featuring the
prostitute-loving turbo-
shagger Steve Coogan?
How much did Idris Elba
know about his reality show
Idris Elba’s Fight School
before he turned up on set?
I’m guessing almost nothing
from the baffled and timid
expression the star wears
nearly every time he appears.
At one point, realising the
enormity of what he’s got
himself into — mentoring
eight troubled young people
to stay on “the straight and
narrow” and learn “life skills”
over several months — he
sheepishly says he’s “gotta
make a movie” and will be “in
and out”. Just: what? All this
while lecturing them, in a
script full of horrible clichés,
that they “gotta stick with”
their plans to become
successful boxers and, as
someone puts it, “take
a punch in the face without
looking away”?
To be honest I wish they’d
ditched the self-involved
Hollywood star and stuck with
the young people who are,
to a person, complex, funny,
interesting, mischievous and
touchingly dazzled to be living
in a house with clean sheets
and actual towels. cBe guided by the stars
Never in life, when beset by
a problem, have I thought:
maybe a film star could help?
But there is, of course, a
long-established history of
celebrities using their star
wattage to draw attention to
pressing issues and
overlooked places. This week
we have some starry podcast
entrants to the field.
First, Climate of Change
with Cate Blanchett and
Danny Kennedy (Audible).
“I’m Cate Blanchett. And I’m
a mother of four,” the
megastar begins (which may
not endear her to Malthusian
theorists of climate change).
Cate is in her electric car,
driving to London to meet her
old pal Danny Kennedy, a
clean-technology entrepreneur
and environmental activist,
for their first episode. She is
excited but also apprehensive
— most immediately about
having not charged her vehicle
(“range anxiety” apparently).
But mostly because the very
Aussie-sounding Cate is
“categorically overwhelmed”
by “the tide of bad news”.
“I’ve no idea what to do about
this mess we’re in — I mean,
I don’t even know what
motorway I’m on!”
I wondered at first if this
might be adroitly spoofing
celebrity good intentions —
Adam McKay, who directed
Blanchett in the world-ending
satire Don’t Look Up, appears
in the final episode. But from
the moment her fellow
Australian Kennedy
pedals up on an e-bike
(having presumably
flown from his
Californian base), the
intention feels sincere.
She is overwhelmed by
eco-anxiety; the
“solutions-based
positivist” Kennedy is
here to “hopefully, give
hope”. And he does, with
accounts of pioneering
solar technologies, living
seawalls, gamifying apps to
encourage energy saving, aclean repurposing of defunct
oil wells, and lithium mining
advancements. Fans of the
exemplary BBC World Service
show People Fixing the World
will be familiar with the kinds
of projects showcased. The
podcast also hears from Prince
William about his Earthshot
prize, which funds creative
sustainable solutions to tackle
climate crisis, and “thought
leaders” such as Rutger
Bregman and the eco-
pragmatist Tony Seba, who
argues that we will reverse the
climate crisis because the
alternative is costlier.
Only fleetingly doomy, this
is a thought-provoking,
energetic, uncynical series that
urges listeners to focus on what
they can do as individuals and
communities. Cate and Danny
are likeable presenters, their
Aussie positivity very much
part of the appeal. You would
snaffle a prawn from their
barbie — should such a thing
prove sustainable.
Conflict of Interest from
the Imperial War Museums
opens up discussion about its
collection by inviting a
celebrity guest to explore a
gallery under expert guidance.
A second series, focusing on
the Cold War, has just begun,
with the first two episodes
sending Russell Tovey, the
actor and art podcaster,
around the IWM’s Berlin Wall
displays, and the British-Malaysian comedian Phil
Wang exploring Britain’s
post-imperial Malayan
Emergency. Some minor
niggles about the IWM
assistant director James
Taylor’s narrative bridging
style aside, I found these
enjoyable, illuminating listens;
in the Berlin Wall episode,
mainly because of the fluent
analysis of the curator Paris
Agar, the historian Katrin
Schreiter and, 29 minutes in,
the journalist John Kampfner’s
spine-tingling first-hand
account of being at the
Brandenburg Gate on the night
in 1989 the border opened.
Wang’s episode benefited from
the personal cultural context
he brought, but also the
historian Karl Hack’s and the
archivist Maria Creech’s hellish
descriptions of jungle warfare.
A not dissimilar exercise is
executed in Meet Me at the
Museum, now in its seventh
series, with the Succession star
Brian Cox affably guiding a
fellow Dundonian, the young
actor Ava Hickey, around the
Scottish National Gallery in
Edinburgh, a tour that starts
with a Rembrandt self-portrait
and includes John Singer
Sargent’s provocative portrait
of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw.
On to more personal
problems — suffering from
insomnia? Might the
handsome Northern Irish
actor Jamie Dornan, star of
Belfast, The Tourist and Fifty
Shades, urging you to take a
deep breath, relax and be
transported to “the light-
filled, rugged” Pacific
coastline of Mexico, help? In
Sleep Sound with Jamie
Dornan (Audible), the Belfast
burr of the former model
invites the wearied “to join
him on an escape to sleep”
in dreamy locations,
including a Swedish forest
and a sleeper train from
Belfast to Belgrade.
Huge props to whoever
thought to commission this.
It may cause drowsiness.^
But more likely, I fear, is
the kind of end-of-day
hysteria formerly
unleashed by Tom
Hardy reading
bedtime stories on
CBeebies. cPATRICIA
NICOL
Cate Blanchett saves the world and Jamie Dornan has sleep tips
| RADIO & PODCASTS
LEIGH KEILYCheery Australians Danny
Kennedy and Cate Blanchett24 April 2022 17