Derry Girls (Channel 4) | All 4
Endeavour (ITV) | ITV Hub
James Bulger: A Mother’s Story (ITV)| ITV Hub
Flatpack Empire (BBC Two) | iPlayer
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (BBC) | iPlayer
Written by Lisa McGee (who also wrote London Irish), Derry Girls was commissioned for a second series after just one episode, and you can see why. While the initial idea – the antics of 1990s Northern Irish schoolgirls, juxtaposed with the Troubles – doesn’t sound too promising, the series has managed to drag giggles out of chip shops, sullen Ukrainian visitors, fake Virgin Mary miracles and more, with the Troubles mainly relegated to a grim background hum or even, sometimes, a mere traffic-related inconvenience.
The result is a fast-paced comedy flipbook, evoking the likes of The Inbetweeners, Father Ted and Bad Education, with a soundtrack featuring everything from Madonna to Vanilla Ice. While the Derry Girls actors range in ages from 20s to early 30s, they and the lone British schoolboy (Dylan Llewellyn) look the part, and you don’t have to suspend disbelief as they clatter about like the Irish St Trinian’s, led astray by delinquent, foul-mouthed, boy-crazy Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell).
In the last episode of the series, elastic-faced Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) took over the school magazine (proposed cover line: “Shoes of the world”), her earnest sidekick, Clare (Nicola Coughlan), came out as a lesbian, and fey Orla (Louisa Harland) was declared “gifted” at step aerobics. Other characters include menacing Granda Joe (Ian McElhinney), weary Da Gerry (Tommy Tiernan), intense Ma Mary (Tara Lynne O’Neill), eccentric Aunt Sarah (Kathy Kiera Clarke) and acerbic headmistress-nun Sister Michael (Siobhan McSweeney). Derry Girls isn’t perfect – sometimes the manic, fizzy-pop energy veers too far into ice-cream headache territory – but there’s plenty to justify that second series.
Endeavour returned for yet more Murder, He (Laboriously) Quotes amid the Oxford spires. Now in its fifth series, Shaun Evans is firmly convincing as the young, brooding Morse, continuing to exude the cheerless demeanour of a man who’s lost a British Library card and been fobbed off with a crumpled copy of Tit-Bits.
This time he navigated an overwrought plot involving a Fabergé egg, an abused, vengeful young woman, and a gentleman’s club called the Berserkers that was so obviously a sly nod to Bullingdon, they even had a restaurant owner complaining about “what they did to the pig’s head centrepiece!” Another great line went to Roger Allam’s DI Thursday, a man who regards villains with the same uncontrolled disgust he presumably has for the haslet and pickle sandwiches I like to imagine he eats for lunch every single day. “I’ll have your cobblers for a key fob,” he brilliantly raged at a wrong ’un; stealing that.
This is Endeavour all over. You’re watching it lolling on the sofa on a Sunday night, slightly concerned that it’s slowly turning your brain into coagulated Ovaltine, when it suddenly throws out a subversive gem. “What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?” asked a man of the ludicrously named WPC Trewlove (Dakota Blue Richards). “My job,” she drily replied.
A quarter of a century after the murder of James Bulger, the CCTV images of his 10-year-old murderers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, leading him away still retain their sickening power. In James Bulger: A Mother’s Story, Trevor McDonald, interviewing Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, and others, observed that the crime “traumatised Britain”, and arguably, it continues to do so, with many still polarised and conflicted about how the case was handled.
Venables and Thompson were the youngest children to be convicted of murder in the 20th century, and listening to their high, nervous voices on the police interview tapes, it makes clear ethical sense that they were rehabilitated and given new identities, even if things did go wrong (Venables has just been jailed for possessing child abuse images again, after a previous offence in 2010).
While this documentary attempted to cover all sides, ultimately the focus was on Fergus, who is still convinced that justice was not done, and, if anything, her son’s killers were “rewarded”. Even if you couldn’t completely agree with her, you could admire her dignity, courage and tiger-fierce devotion to her son. Showing McDonald the place she still sets for James at the dinner table, and the picture of him on the wall that never gets moved, even when they’re decorating, Fergus said: “The day I stop speaking about James is the day I’m going to join him.”
The first of three documentaries about Ikea, Flatpack Empire, was enlightening – I had no idea that Ikea viewed itself as a kind of Google of self-furnishings. At times, employee loyalty erred on the cultish, with chief designer Marcus Engman declaring: “I’ve always seen Ikea as more of a movement than a company.”
With the recent death of founder Ingvar Kamprad, there was an added pathos to delving behind the public facade of this still-booming, multibillion global design behemoth. Along the way, there were creative differences with collaborating British designer Tom Dixon (he wanted to make a “bed-sofa”, while Ikea wanted a “sofa-bed”), a visit to the first-ever UK store in Warrington, and Ikea catalogue dilemmas (would humans be allowed on the front cover? A sinister-sounding “catalogue council” would decide).
At one point some employees were programmed, sorry, chosen, to make a pilgrimage to Älmhult in Sweden, to tour the Ikea design hub, Ikea museum, Ikea factories and everything else Ikea (for anyone out there who’s really into flatpack furniture and is stuck for an idea of where to go on their hols this year). This was a fascinating documentary with one glaring omission – maybe forthcoming episodes will explain why their stores are designed along the lines of a meatball-themed retail Devil’s Island – as in, once you’re in, it’s impossible to get out?
The day before the official opening, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics resembled a beautiful, sporty Narnia, but this didn’t stop the Alpensia ski-jump ramp looking terrifying. Some of us would feel safer being pinged into space by a giant elastic band.
Realising I wouldn’t be able to see or hear the jumping through my balled-up fists and hideous screaming, I switched over to the curling, where a new “mixed doubles” category was set to cause quite a stir, or sweep, whatever you prefer. Some people may mock curling as the “quick tidy-up on ice” of winter sports, but the rest of us know our limits.
