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TV Review: Messiah – The Harrowing (2005)

Helen McCrory and Maxine Peake help elevate Messiah – The Harrowing to arguably the series’ devastatingly effective high point

“See beyond the victim, see the killer”

The first series of Messiah is certainly one of the best, setting the wheels in motion for an effective crime series, but I’d argue that it is the fourth instalment Messiah – The Harrowing that is the best of them all. The arrival of a new writer – Terry Cafolla – releases the show from the baggage of its legacy which seemed to weigh the last series one and produces something that is really, well, harrowing.

Harking back to that first series and its connecting device of people being killed in the style of the Apostles, the murderous connection here ends up being Dante’s The Divine Comedy and its descent into hell. And weighted around the death by suicide of the daughter of one of their colleagues, Red and his team (with Maxine Peake’s DS Clarke now in for a retired Kate) find themselves once again up against the darkest parts of human nature. Continue reading “TV Review: Messiah – The Harrowing (2005)”

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DVD Review: Last Chance Harvey

“Cantankerous I’ve never been”

Joel Hopkins’ The Love Punch was a film that worked far better than one might have expected, a lovely surprise in the cinema back in 2014, so I’ve been looking forward to catching up with his earlier 2008 movie Last Chance Harvey. And once again I was caught unawares, even as I knew that I would probably like it, I had no idea I would love it so completely.

Dustin Hoffman’s Harvey is a washed-up US jingle-writer, finding himself on the fringes of his daughter’s London wedding in place of a beloved stepfather; Emma Thompson’s Kate has found life has passed her by, still single and struggling with an overbearing mother. That the two will end up together somehow is never in doubt but the joy of Hopkins’ film is in making the journey so beautifully, emotionally real. Continue reading “DVD Review: Last Chance Harvey”

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Review: Linda, Royal Court

“What does getting older mean for a woman?”

There was a point in this performance of Linda where Noma Dumezweni’s eponymous character made an actual risotto, and a bowl of pasta and a sauce for her fussy daughter, all whilst performing script in hand and still somehow ruling the stage of the Royal Court. She was on-book because she was a very last minute replacement for Kim Cattrall (who withdrew on medical advice with just two rehearsals left) but even in this short space of time, there’s a magisterial sense of character brimming from this finest of actors (who’s also preparing for her directorial debut early next year in the upstairs theatre!)

And demonstrating just how capable she is fits in perfectly with Skinner’s larger themes – Linda Wilde is a 55 year old determined not to slip quietly into the background as society suggests, and expects, older women should (apart from Helen Mirren that is…). A marketing guru at a top beauty firm, married to the pleasant Neil and mother to two daughters Alice and Bridget, she’s been spinning the various plates of her life successfully for some time now but the centre of gravity in her world has shifted imperceptibly, forcing a reckoning all around. Continue reading “Review: Linda, Royal Court”