TV review: Murder, Mystery and My Family; Once Upon a Time in Iraq; The Yorkshire Jobcentre; Our Yorkshire Farm
I DO enjoy a good miscarriage of justice. Not the appalling fact of the event or the suffering caused, but the subsequent (hopefully), righting of the wrong. Throw in a scene of the innocent party, beaming with happiness on the courtroom steps and thronged by press and well-wishers, and all is well that ends well.
So it was with keen anticipation that I turned to Murder, Mystery and My Family: Case Closed? (BBC1, Monday, above). The idea was to take a historic miscarriage of justice, have a living relative of the prisoner champion their cause, ask two lawyers to look over the case and, finally, ask a judge to rule.
The first case was that of Florence Maybrick, convicted of poisoning her cotton broker husband in Liverpool in 1889. It was clear from the start that poor Flo had been done up like a kipper, to use the legal jargon, but we had to go through the motions. Barrister read facts out to barrister; expert witnesses were consulted; living relative hoped for the right outcome.
What should have been gripping was convoluted and tedious. Anyone watching could have Googled the case and got to the bottom of it in a flash, but oh no, we were here for 45 minutes, no early release. It did not help that the recreations of scenes made the average nativity play look Tony Award-winning. Nor was there a courtroom steps scene at the end.
Once Upon a Time in Iraq (BBC2, Monday) came to an end with a look at the continuing legacy of the US-led invasion. All five films in this superb series have been about the consequences of the Blair-Bush decision to topple Saddam; this one concentrated on the rise of Isis and their takeover of the country. As one contributor said, Isis made Al-Qaeda look like a bunch of jokers. A “normal” day under their rule consisted of cutting off hands, stonings and executions. Amid the horror, many took comfort in the words of a secret blogger who went by the nom de plume of “Mosul Eye”. This brave soul who exposed Isis’s evil acts to the world turned out to be none other than the softly spoken professor Omar Mohmamed, one of the contributors.
The strength of this series has been the regular contributors: “ordinary” Iraqis, if there is such a thing, and journalists. There wasn’t one wasted sentence, and every observation was sharp, illuminating, and often deeply moving. Tip of the hat to the researchers who found them. There was one final surprise: a member of Isis, who came before the cameras in a detention centre near Baghdad. He looked pathetic and sounded it, proclaiming the Isis policy of lashing and stoning women was “very good”.
Just as depressing was hearing archive audio of Blair saying that removing Saddam would be a “blessing” to the Iraqi people. As for the future, there were no optimists here. Iraq will engage us “forever” said reporter Dexter Filkins.
Yorkshire was much in vogue in this week’s telly. You could take your pick between Our Yorkshire Farm (Channel 5, Tuesday) or, with the current state of the economy in mind, The Yorkshire Jobcentre (Channel 4, Monday). No bonus points for guessing which was the cheerier watch.
The latter featured more than a few people who were, as one adviser put it, “a long way from the job market”, including one chap who reckoned a past conviction for kidnapping and threats to kill might have something to do with his lack of success in landing interviews. You think?
Much of the content was similar to that in Universal Credit: Inside the Welfare State, a recent BBC doc that filmed in Peckham Jobcentre. There was some hope here, but there was sadness and desperation too.
Infinitely sunnier times were being had on Ravenseat Farm, even though it was the bleak midwinter. Amanda and Clive Owen, hill farmers, have nine children, none of them ever lost for a job to do or an adventure to go on.
Clemmie, four-years-old, was helping mum with the sheep, one of which had an injured eye. Unable to see, it could have stumbled into a gully or a post and come a cropper, so action had to be taken. Mum wrestled the ewe to the ground, ripping the knee out of her new leggings in the process, while Clemmie ran to the van, identified the antibiotic and the disinfectant spray, and brought them back to mum. Mum did the injection, Clemmie the spray. Four-years-old.
Later, the pair stopped off in an antique shop to buy a sharpening wheel for one of the boys. Mum, I noted, was still wearing the torn leggings. A woman after my own heart.
Clemmie was in the thick of it again, helping to clear a space in the van for the wheel and under-paying the shop owner (accidentally, I think). She even sang mum a song on the way back to the farm. Every home should have a Clemmie.
