It’s extremely tempting to review Channel 4’s timely new reality TV show Make Me Prime Minister.
Think The Apprentice with aspiring politicians instead of businesspeople – with just the line “yes please, make any of them Prime Minister tomorrow.”
Not this week, though, because these are boom times for flagship television drama.
A truly Fife murder mystery
In particular, we can’t fail to mention Karen Pirie (STV), which is adapted from Val McDermid’s 2003 novel The Distant Echo and as Fife as a murder-mystery gets.
Focused on the fictional 1998 cold case murder of St Andrews barmaid Rosie Duff (the ever-excellent Anna Russell-Martin, sadly killed off early), it stars Scottish Outlander star Lauren Lyle as Methil-raised DS Karen Pirie.
She’s appointed to head a present-day case review of the unsolved killing after a Serial-style podcast brings it up again.
Aggrieved by this “woke millennial” podcaster and mystified by its “quite feminist” nature (this last line is her partner DC Jason Murray, played by Chris Jenks), Pirie’s superiors appoint her for political reasons.
Specifically because she’s a woman, but she turns out to be perhaps even more capable than they wanted.
Powerful crime drama
“It’s not been the best time to be called Karen,” mutters Pirie, her struggle uphill but suitably determined.
Adapting writer Emer Kenny’s pacing is crisp and engaging, her dialogue fresh and contemporary.
Perhaps, Shetland-style, we could have seen more beautiful Fife scenery, but the presence of fine local talent like Russell-Martin, Barrie Hunter and Daniel Portman bolster a powerful crime drama.
Inside Man
Elsewhere, sometime Doctor Who and Sherlock showrunner Steven Moffat’s new four-parter Inside Man (BBC One) struggled bravely for its first two episodes to overcome a dismal opening sequence in which young journalist Beth Davenport (Lydia West) was hassled by a sleazy man on a packed train carriage.
The way this played out felt baffling and nonsensical, with plucky maths tutor Janice’s (Dolly Wells) example causing a few others to take their phones out and Facebook Live the whole thing. Which apparently brings the police running en masse.
“If only”, I imagine every woman who’s been hassled on a train was thinking.
Two stories threaded together
This opening split into two stories, which only began to thread together by the end of the second episode.
In one, Janice turns up to teach smoking, sweary vicar Harry’s (the always watchable David Tennant) son, only to end up imprisoned in the basement after a convoluted and credibility-breaking misunderstanding.
That was concerning Harry’s apocalyptically foolish protection of a church worker who’s in possession of images involving children.
Beth, meanwhile, travels to America to interview the perfectly-named Jefferson Grieff (Stanley Tucci).
He’s a criminologist and notorious wife-murderer on death row who offers crime-solving assistance to those victims he deems to be of “moral worth”.
Like two separate shows
Tucci is typically excellent, a suave Hannibal Lecterish mastermind full of pithy sayings (“everyone’s a murderer, all it takes is a good reason and a bad day”) and with an oddly charming – and even more murderous – comrade in Dillon (Atkins Estimond).
It’s like Moffat has written two separate shows and thrown them together. One, with Tucci, is silly but plenty of fun.
The other, with Tennant (and a show-stealing turn from Wells, at least) is illogical, tonally baffling and hard to care about.
Karen Pirie might be a more conventional beast, but it gets it perfectly right at every step. We’re looking forward to more.
