Sherwood’s mix of issues and action is beginning to wobble
If Ken Loach and Quentin Tarantino ever got together to collaborate the chances are they’d come up with something akin to Sherwood (BBC One) which, as it reached the penultimate episode of an enthralling, if not always entirely convincing, second run, continued its merry mashup of political grandstanding and clan-mob violence with gritty aplomb.
One minute you get David Morrissey’s reluctant copper, Ian St Clair, using a police press conference as a rallying cry for social action, then it’s over to the blood feud between the Bransons and the Sparras (Sparrows to non-nottinghamshire natives) where, at current mortality rates, it’s unlikely that anyone will get out of there alive.
It makes for an uneasy mix, but perhaps that’s the point. St Clair’s impassioned state of the nation address (“We have lost control, if we don’t admit that we’ll never get it back”) felt eerily timely given the shockwaves from the recent rioting that has rocked British cities. Losing control here means the likes of Ann Branson (Monica Dolan in truly terrifying form) taking the law into her own hands and giving it a good throttling.
There are many plates spinning here and writer James Graham doesn’t quite keep them all in the air. Throwing in a paternity twist courtesy of Robert Lindsay’s self-made millionaire businessman felt like it had been filched out of the Eastenders
waste bin, while the police procedural elements – the discovery of a vital piece of evidence stretched credibility until it all but snapped – gave this house of cards a mighty wobble.
But when it comes down to the human emotions caught up in Sherwood’s thicket of storylines, Graham plays to his strengths. There’s a whole lifetime of anguish in Lorraine Ashbourne’s riveting portrayal of one-time undercover cop Daphne (not her real name) Sparrow, a woman who is a moral maze unto herself. “It never ends, does it,” she snaps at the latest twist of cruel fate. One episode to go Daphne, you might just make it yet.
Everyone has their cultural blindspots. In the interests of full disclosure I’ll own up to Oasis, Las Vegas and F1 as things that, though I’m well aware are hugely popular, I just don’t get. To that list I’ll add, though it’s tantamount to heresy for a TV reviewer, The Sopranos. Yes, the critically acclaimed mob drama that routinely goes toe-to-toe with The Wire and Mad Men in heated “best show of all time” debates. Mad Men for me, since you ask.
Because for all the admittedly skilled acting and sharp writing, there was something so innately alienating about building a show around a violent middle-league New Jersey mobster – and expecting the viewer to empathise with him (and millions did) – that turned me off.
So the prospect of two hours plus of show creator David Chase running us through an exhaustive history of anti-hero Tony Soprano, a character who struck a chord (it felt) with everyone but me, was far from enticing. Which made the fact that Alex Gibney’s two-part documentary, Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (Sky Documentaries) simply flew by, something of a turn up.
Built around an in-depth interview with Chase but packed out with
Sopranos ephemera, true fans would have lapped up the casting footage featuring a host of alternative Tonys, Carmelas and more giving it their best (and worst) Noo Jersey Italian. But this was fun even for a non-soprano diehard as the sliding doors of casting fate played out. Chase had the power to make or break careers in his hands.
And it was certainly make for James Gandolfini, who made Tony Soprano his own. At no little personal cost that became clear, as Chase and assorted cast members recalled the toll the role took on the actor, who died six years after the show ended at the age of 51.
Chase, part-tony, part-puppet master – he earned the nickname “Master Cylinder” from the show’s cast thanks to his iron grip on every word in the script – proved an intriguing if somewhat irascible interviewee. Because it became clear that The Sopranos, full of unresolved mother issues, was all about Chase, who’d poured a lifetime’s frustrations as a journeyman TV hack – he wanted to be Scorsese but ended up on The Rockford Files – into the project.
Did it turn this doubter into a
Sopranos disciple? Not quite. It’s not a world I’d want to linger in. But you had to respect the integrity of all involved.
Sherwood ★★★
Wise Guy: David Chase and The
Sopranos ★★★★