The week in TV: The Handmaid’s Tale; Diana; Philly DA: Breaking the Law; Feel Good

Elisabeth Moss’s June and co don’t need Trump to still pack a punch; is there anything left to say about Princess Diana?; and on the trail with Philadelphia’s compelling district attorney

The Handmaid’s Tale (Channel 4) | All4

Diana (ITV) | ITVHub

Philly DA: Breaking the Law (BBC Four) | iPlayer

Feel Good (Netflix)

As The Handmaid’s Tale returns for a fourth series, you could be forgiven for wondering what, if anything, could kill protagonist June, played by Elisabeth Moss? Are we at the point where a nuclear warhead would just bounce off her handmaid’s cap, leaving her slightly singed, glaring with her signature intensity, but still very much alive, like a feminist-dystopian Tom and Jerry?

The story has long moved away from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel: June and other handmaids are now hiding on a pig farm, and June, though shot, has once again improbably survived after getting 86 children out of Gilead and safely to Canada at the end of the last series. A new character – bratty, alarming teenage wife Esther (“I am the mistress of this house!”), vividly portrayed by Mckenna Grace – is revealed to have been passed around by her husband to be raped by other men. As Esther is about to execute one of the rapists in the pig shed, June bestows one of her fiercest stares: “Good girl, make me proud.”

Such scenes have led to charges of “torture porn” against Handmaid. Certainly, it’s violent, and usually against women, but is it really torture porn if it’s meticulously contextualised? Personally, I came to series four more concerned about the entire concept flagging: Handmaid undeniably benefited from coinciding with the Trump presidency, which gave it a sense of emergency – could they keep that up now Trump has gone?

So it was great to see such a formidable opener, and to be reminded of the great roles that The Handmaid’s Tale has given women. Who, after all, watches it for the men? No one’s there for soulless Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), with his Velcro-looking beard. Nor even June’s love interest, Max Minghella’s Nick – solemn, sincere, but, let’s face it, against Gilead about as much use as the velveteen rabbit. It’s all about girl power. Not just June, but also glacial, driven Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), and the true, damaged, quasi-Shakespearean monster of the series, Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), observed here beaten and punished by Gilead but still gunning for June: “Bring her to me and a frail woman will sleep better at night.” Handmaid is many things – sickening, poetic, flawed, magnificent – but above all, still relevant.

Diana (ITV), a documentary marking what would have been the people’s princess’s 60th birthday, grappled with the problem facing all such docs: what is there left to say? All credit to documentary-makers Jemma Chisnall and 72 Films (The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty) for not featuring Diana’s ghoul of a butler, Paul Burrell. (If he counted as Diana’s “rock”, I’d hate to have seen her hard place.) This was a valiant attempt to cast fresh light, with less obvious interviewees and material. At one point, eerily, Diana’s disembodied voice is heard on tape, talking about how she’d despairingly thrown herself down palace stairs while pregnant: “The Queen comes out, horrified, shaking. She’s so frightened.”

Otherwise, this was largely standard Diana-fare, chiefly striking for how certain key moments have aged. The nursery-era photo showing Diana’s legs through her skirt looks exploitative. The wedding dress still resembles history’s most overrated bag of crumpled laundry. The young princes walking behind Diana’s coffin looks tantamount to child abuse. Harry and Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview was carefully sidestepped (spoilsports!), though the Panorama/Martin Bashir scandal was touched upon: journalist Richard Kay said that Diana knew what she was doing and wanted to provoke a divorce. I’d already seen the tourist footage from outside the Paris Ritz on the night of her tragic death, but it still proved chilling: “They’re chasing Princess Diana!” cried someone excitedly. While Diana gave British royalty star power, she ended up being its martyr.

The opening double episode of Storyville’s eight-part documentary series Philly DA: Breaking the Law started by following Larry Krasner in 2017 as he went from lifelong public defender (representing everything from Black Lives Matter to Occupied Philadelphia) to running for district attorney for Philadelphia, the city with the highest prison rates in America. Standing against mass incarceration, unjust cash bail, systemic racism and the death penalty, Krasner won a shock landslide victory, both for himself and as part of the nationwide “progressive attorney” movement committed to changing the US criminal justice system from within.

Disarmingly stiff in his suits and demeanour, Krasner nevertheless spoke like a progressive superstar, hurling out such soundbites as: “We’re going to stop spending money on stupid and start spending it on smart.” The second episode (all eight are now available on iPlayer), dealt with police misconduct and you had no doubt that, as one supporter put it, Krasner would “clean house, rock the boat, blow shit up”. Saying that, Krasner’s team looked somewhat heavy-handed as they mass-fired dissenters in the DA’s office. Clearly not everybody wants Krasner’s “social experiment”, which makes this series all the more compelling.

Feel Good (now with series one and the new second season on Netflix) is a comedy built around the semi-autobiographical queer love story between troubled, drug-addicted standup comedian, Bafta-nominated Mae Martin (Feel Good co-creator with Joe Hampson), and George, played by Charlotte Ritchie (Fresh Meat; Ghosts). In the second series, Martin (non-binary in real life) and the previously straight George are finally properly together, but it’s all so on-off that even Ritchie’s mother (Pippa Haywood) is driven to sighing: “Piss or get off the pot.” There’s a darker comedy-#MeToo thread, as well as a running joke about lesbian sexual role play. While Martin and Ritchie are the focus, the supporting cast are exceptional, including Haywood, Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Head and Adrian Lukis as the two sets of parents.

Feel Good is somewhat hit and miss, and perma-self-absorbed Martin (think: David Bowie meets Lisa Simpson) is equal parts maddening and hilarious. I liked it that Mae and George are (whisper it) a terrible couple: obsessive, immature, mutually needy. Accused of not knowing the true meaning of intimacy, George tentatively asks Mae: “Do you want to pee in front of each other?” Feel Good may not be everyone’s piping-hot mug of kombucha, but there’s grit, honesty and a daring kind of silliness here.

What else I’m watching

Time (BBC One)
The conclusion of Jimmy McGovern’s harrowing, sensitive prison drama featuring career-best performances from Sean Bean and Stephen Graham. Take away the cell doors and this became about what men do to each other, the good and the bad.

The Glastonbury Experience 2021 (BBC TV, BBC Radio, iPlayer)
Includes classic Glastonbury sets such as Radiohead 1997, circa OK Computer. Something for those missing “Glasters” (yes, even the infamous portable loos rumoured to double as a portal to hell).

It’s a Sin (All 4)
Time to revisit Russell T Davies’s bold, beautiful, devastating miniseries about 1980s gay life. With the culture secretary pushing forward proposals to privatise publicly owned broadcaster Channel 4, this kind of distinctive, diverse, indispensable programming is under threat.

Contributor

Barbara Ellen

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
The week in TV: The Handmaid’s Tale; GameFace; Poldark and more
Women’s mouths were stapled shut in the darkest episode yet of The Handmaid’s Tale

Euan Ferguson

21, Jul, 2019 @7:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: The Capture; A Confession; The Handmaid’s Tale and more
Whether the BBC or ITV prevail in the battle of the new detective dramas, it’s nice to see freedom at last for the Handmaids

Euan Ferguson

08, Sep, 2019 @6:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: The Handmaid’s Tale, Big Little Lies and more – review
Elisabeth Moss blazes back to Gilead, Meryl Streep joins Big Little Lies, and the Women’s World Cup lays claim to the beautiful game

Euan Ferguson

16, Jun, 2019 @6:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: Jamie Cooks Italy; Mama’s Angel; Disenchantment and more
Jamie Oliver learns a thing or two from Italy’s grandmas, while an Israeli thriller offers a bracing lesson in bigotry

Euan Ferguson

19, Aug, 2018 @6:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: Eden: Paradise Lost; Citizen Jane; Utopia: In Search of the Dream; Trust Me; Diana: In Her Own Words
For a year, the Scottish wilderness was lost on the tiresome contestants of Eden, who in turn went unseen by us

Euan Ferguson

13, Aug, 2017 @6:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: The Handmaid’s Tale; The Kennedys: Decline and Fall; House of Cards; Catching a Killer
The long-awaited adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale had some dark and disturbing parallels, as did the returning House of Cards

Barbara Ellen

04, Jun, 2017 @6:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: The Trials of Oscar Pistorius; The Diana Interview; His Dark Materials; Industry
A docuseries on Oscar Pistorius shamefully forgets his victim. Plus, the fallout from the BBC’s royal scoop 25 years on

Barbara Ellen

15, Nov, 2020 @9:30 AM

Article image
The week in TV: Doctor Foster; Tin Star; Safe House; Back; Cold Feet; Diana and I
Dr Foster is back and getting mad with her husband again, while Tim Roth as an ex-London cop finds Canada less wholesome than expected

Euan Ferguson

10, Sep, 2017 @5:59 AM

Article image
The week in TV: Breaking the Silence Live; One Killer Punch; The Missing; Back in Time for Brixton
Two contrasting documentaries showed how lives can be transformed in an instant – and The Missing reverted to thrill mode

Euan Ferguson

27, Nov, 2016 @7:00 AM

Article image
The week in TV: Cheat; MotherFatherSon; After Life and more – review
Great acting drives ITV’s academic thriller, while Richard Gere is wasted in the BBC’s overdone media mogul drama

Barbara Ellen

17, Mar, 2019 @7:00 AM