Cold Feet resurrected

I have not written before about the resurrection of Cold Feet which returned with the same level of wit and asides on the realities of life, the interactions between couples, and their children and each other who remain good friends and supportive over decades and where from time to time reality has its destructive cutting edge and no more so than in relation to the member of the group who has grown into a much-loved actor and personality James Nesbitt.  He wanted to leave after the fourth and five series which ran from 1998 to 2003 and persuaded to stay on for the fifth season only on the basis that he was killed off at its end. In fact, the company decided on a different course and it was his series wife played by Helena Baxendale who dies.  Helena had remained a TV actress since playing roles in some series such as an unsuitable Job for a woman (4), Friends (14) Adrian Mole (6) Kidnap and Ransome (6) and Cuckoo (13) but I believe it is for those 32 with James that both will be remembered.

It was therefore brave for James and the other two couples to return reprise their roles 13 years later in a possibly one off eight-episode series, given the nature of the ending. James is a widower a son and where the fictitious story pregnancy was made real by the second pregnancy of Helena Baxendale. The now adolescent boy is at a public school which he dislikes because being of a different social stratum he does not fit in. The series begins with Adam (played by Nesbitt) returning from Singapore with his young fiancé who has a wealthy international business man as her father (played by Art Malik) who at one level she sees as Adam as her weapon against her controlling and dominating parents.  The relationship does not last as the bride fist accepts an important job opportunity and the plan of the couple to fortnight commute for weekend with each other once a month in in Singapore and once a month in England breaks down. The reason Adams dies not return with her is that his needs a different school environment and to have a base with his father. The boy is uncertain about his sexuality but a relationship with the daughter of one of the other couples appears to settle that and his father appreciate that the boy has found his feet and no longer required his full attention.

Adam takes a short rent lease in a small apartment bock where his land lady lives across the hallway and I think she is also a widow, both finding it difficult not to look for someone identical to their lost loves. The woman Tina is in fact having an affair with a married man whose suspicious wife comes looking and although Tina was aware of the marriage, contact with the wife breaks the spell although the duplicitous husband says he has left his wife for her at one point and moves in. James, in part spurred on by his friends, begins to question whether his friendship with Tina is more profound. At the end of the series there is prospect of their relationship developing, one day at a time, compare to the whirlwind affairs which commenced the series.

There is what had become the nationally known comic sketch involving Ronnie Corbett. Ronnie Barker and John Cleese about the three levels of social class, working, middle and upper and the three couples which form Cold Feet representing the middle class with Adam and Rachel (Helena Baxendale), the working class by Pete (John Thomson) and his wife Jenny (Fay Ripley). Their relationship is Rocky and Jenny begins to turn to an admirer as Pete loses sexual interest   and it is only when he is clinically diagnosed with depression that she and his friend begin rally and attempt to find ways to build up his self-esteem. This is brought about when his son forms a band which plays at a gig to great success and Adam persuades Pete to play the drums which he did when James and he had their own band as young men and Pete shows he still has talent which results in his children thinking of him as cool.  Just when things are looking up the biological father of their daughter who does not know and insists on re-entering their lives to apologise for past behaviour and then works out their daughter must be his. The girl finds out in the worst of possible ways and rejects her care father however he becomes a hero again when he becomes a local hero as a video shows his actions in persuading an armed robber at the round the clock local store where he has gone for extra booze for the 49^th birthday party of Adam is put on TV. The depression is gone and family relations restored Pete and Jen also find their marital relationship also goes back to normal. Fay Ripley is also known for being Mrs Reggie Perrin and more recently for Suspects. She has published three cookbooks. John Thomson began his career as a stand-up comic and made his name in the TV show The Fast Show before Cold Feet and until the past two years his appearances have been limited including Celebrity Master Chef in 2013.

The Public school upper class is represented by David (Robert Bathurst) who has remarried (into money) and where early on his recognises there is no love between himself and his wife when she refuses to take the speeding points to prevent loss of his licence. She sets out to destroy him forcing him out of the house and to seeking refuge with his original series wife and their children Karen who has kept her married name. She becomes the interest of the international business man Eddie Zober (Art Malik) and they have a sexually satisfying affair. Karen (Hermione Noris has made her name and financial security in publishing and walks out when the first is taken over and the new people want to dumb down. She sets up her own company despite offers of a new life as the wife of Eddie and then joins forces with the young owner of company involved with digital marketing and their synergy leads to a new passion in her life.  David who is given temporary accommodation with his former wife also begins to appreciate her value more than ever and she also begins to see him as maturing. (Art Malik admits that instant fame went to his head after his role in Jewel in the Crown and he nearly became bankrupt with his marriage breaking up. He has since settled and gets good work although I suspect not as much as his talent should justify).

Hermione Norris also performed in two TV series where I watched every Episode Wire in the Blood and four series of Spooks and she continues to appears in TV productions and had a stage run in Blithe Spirit 2010-2011. Robert Bathurst was also in Blythe Spirit but like Hermione his stage roles have been limited over recent years and be has eight films to his credit in addition to ongoing TV roles.  In the 2016 series of Cold Feet his world comes crashing down at every level when an investment he and his firm promoted is proved to be a fraud and looking for scapegoat David is suspended and the focus of a police fraud investigation. Because of a mix up over the whereabouts of his passport which he is required to produce when seeking bail, he spends time on remand and this experience has a very positive effect. Karen is responsible for persuading him to take a firm stand with his second wife and with his employers and both situations work with all the charges against him being dropped and his wife becoming more amenable to a fair settlement. The number of positives at the conclusion made me question whether another series was being planned even though it attracted over 8 million viewers. I have since seen a report suggesting there will be.

Last word is with James Nesbitt whose work I will always watch when given the opportunity. He established himself as a serious actor in the film Bloody Sunday and since played a part in charitable and community becoming Chancellor of the University of Ulster for which has been awarded the O.B.E.  While he was the undoubted star of all the stars in Cold Feet I he is also known for his role in Murphy’s Law and as Bo fur in the Hobbit which meant two years in Australia which impacted on his marriage He has had a role as a UNICEF ambassador

The Fall-the impact of sexual abuse in a children's home and Damned - the present day Children's Department

Although the three series The Fall is about the capture of a brutal serial killer of young women in Northern Ireland as the series reached its conclusion it emerges that the killer had been placed in children’s home where he had been selected to be sexually abuse every day for year until another victim was selected and in a situation where the boys had to strip at assembly masturbate themselves and the staff. I became interested in the series only recently when I recognised that the lead female role was being played by Gillian Anderson who made her name in the over 200-episode TV series the X Files along with David Duchoveny and which led to one off cinema films and a short season (11) resurrection 14 years later of six episodes earlier this year.

Gillian plays an investigative senior police office heading a special task force on the track of  Paul Spector played by Jamie Dorman and from the episodes viewed there is an emotional and psychological intensity which is powerful and extraordinary in the  two lead performances and also the head of special psychiatric unit in which the killer is placed in very secure condition in order to establish if he is faking  short term amnesia allegedly caused by being shot when in police Northern Ireland custody and being transferred. The series is very disturbing and not for those likely to be triggered by scenes of great physical violence. Jamie Dorman is brilliant at communicate a man who is adored by his daughter supported by his wife, able to attract the obsessional devotion of a teenage girl who assaults a young woman claiming to be in a relationship with Spector, who is also able to gain sympathetic attentions from medical and nursing staff who save his life hospital, and sympathetic attention for a female lawyer assisting someone who revels in the opportunity to represent the killer and beat the state. For her persistence in proving he is faking his memory loss he made to inflict physical pain and damage on the senior police woman, kills someone at the secure unit who he manipulates to cause a riot so he can almost kill the psychiatrist in charge who has also penetrated his psychological defences. Spector can cheat years of imprisonment, psychological probing and having to face the reality of himself by committing suicide.

There is no single response in terms of later behaviour by those who have been sexual and physical abuse in childhood with Spector at one end of the spectrum. To be able to get around the alleged memory loss, the team are provided with information about a crime he has committee several years previously and for which someone has confessed and imprisoned. The explanation for this extraordinary behaviour is that the individual in question had been with Spector in the home and when Spector was asked to select the next victim to replace himself he had walked passed and selected another, although the boy new he was the likely target. He owed Spector in a way only victims who have been in similar situations can understand and akin to those in the Nazi concentration camps who could survive by assisting in some off the chores involved in the camp which included harvesting hair, gold teeth, spectacles. and anything of value from the prisoners before their extermination.

In complete contrast, I consider very funny in a healthy kind of way, the Comedy Series Damned set in the Children’s Services Department of the fictional Elm Health Council with Jo Brand and Alan Davies among others coping with the realities of their own lives. Jo’s mother has psychotic severe recent memory loss, there is a receptionist straight out of the Vicar of Dibley, a questionable acting senior and a team head under constant pressure from them above.

Damned is shown well after the watershed at 10pm which is welcomed and deliberate because of the understanding Jo has about triggering.  Jo Brand is the daughter of a social worker and she studied for a combined social science degree with mental health nursing and practiced for ten years before becoming a stand-up comedienne, writer and starring in TV shows, a personality and a minor national institution for her acerbic put downs of those who take themselves too seriously in terms of attempting to project an only one sided presentation of themselves. Her republican views and open support for the Labour Party means she is unlikely to graduate into a major institutional figure. She visited South Shields before David Miliband decided to leave Parliament and the UK to give his annual” lecture” to Party members.

She is perfectly partnered in the series which ends this evening (November1st) by her co-writer Mokwena Banks and Alan Davies, another with stand-up comedy experience, best known for his role as Jonathan Creek and a permanent member of the QI team.  I was reminded that their strength is acting as mirrors to funny side of human frailty while watching a splendid TV biography of the Mr Stand-up himself the unique and brilliant Peter Kay, another who writes, plays and directs his work and continues to live in the lace(Bolton) where he was born with his family.

However, the short series of damned is unlikely to change the need for a radical think again about how we provide child protection on behalf of the state but is does gently draw attention to the dangers of overreaction and the limitation of the case conference with its inherent problem of bring together people with a range of abilities, understanding and training and whose everyday focus is very different and at times incompatible.  In one episode, a teenage girl admits to having made up accusations against a teacher for media cash while the police want to engage the anti-terrorist squad when girls disappeared and it is the Vicar of Dibley innocent who works out the that the text of a note found t at the home of one of the girls is that of a current song of band and where the girls are identified from CCTV waiting to get into a concert after Alan Davies uses the Internet. There is a splendid last series episode with a wonderful outburst at the impact of a hundred George Osbornes on the ability of the department to cope with all the demands being made. The boss scares a teacher at the son’s school who texts him inappropriately and the mother forgets where she puts down her child in the supermarket from tiredness is given a warning (being middle class).

Code, series two and a dark net paedophile auction for the abduction and sexual use of children

The Code is an Australian drama series taking over the Saturday evening BBC Four slot usually reserved for a drama in another language than English. We are now midway through the second series of six programmes which features a computer technocrat genius on the autism spectrum, Jesse and his journalist brother Ned. Both series cover the same basic issues of government complicity and duplicity, turning the blind eye and cover up, as officials engage in crossing the line activities to protect the interests of International corporations who are not opposed to using, often at arm’s length, killing, violence, intimidation, blackmail, corruption and cover up to protect and further their commercial interests.

I am including the Code at this point because the first three episodes of the four shown to-date of the second series involves a dark net service in which children are kidnapped and trafficked for sex. The computer code break skills of Jesse is demanded by the Australian government when two of three male Australian citizens are murdered in West Papua, New Guinea, controlled it is alleged by the Indonesian Government through the tactics of a police state, opposing demands by the indigenous people for independence and freedom from exploitation by an international mining consortium with Australian, British and USA financial interests and where the ability of outsiders, particularly journalists to visit is strictly controlled.

This aspect of the fictional drama series is accurate as in the early 1960’s the Netherlands gave up its control of New Guinea with West Papua absorbed by the Indonesian Government during a period when Indonesia conflicted with its enforced involvement in the proposed new Malaysia. The conflict resulted in the defeat of the left of centre political movement and decades of right wing military dictatorship during which time the population has more than doubled to over 200 million with nearly 60% on the largest of its 13000 islands, Java, and to becoming one of the more prosperous world economies (16^th). There is no political freedom of expression allowed in West Papua with anyone opposing exterminated and the rest of the world tolerating because of its capitalist interests, including arms sales.

The Australian government coerces the involvement of brothers with the threat of agreeing to extradition to the United States because of  the hacking involved  in the first series but then gain the willing participation of Jesse when he learns that the survivor of the three men attacked by the militia is the fugitive founder (Roth) of a dark net site part of which includes the children kidnapped on demand and trafficked for sexual purposes and that a male adolescent has been kidnapped and was available for the right price. Jesse contacts the service with help of the government cybercrime chief and team and offers to provide Roth with the encryption key to the Government’s internal network which enable Roth to find out the names of the undercover intelligence people after him. There is agreement to meet in the far north of Queensland  and Jesse is accompanied by his girlfriend Hani Parende, a student computer expert who in the first series is blackmailed by the national cyber unit to befriending Jesse to protect her father (whose visa is under threat and where a return to his homeland would mean torture and death) and where he was and remains opposed to her friendship with Jesse and a proposed marriage.

The couple are taken by Roth in his boat to his base hideout in the jungle of West Papua where they meet up with Roth’s indigenous wife and daughter and whose brother in law is an activist in the freedom movement. The purpose of Jesse’s visit is to plant a programme which opens the back door which all computers have and which enables direct control of content with permission, which I had once agreed and witnessed, and which can also enable authorised government operatives to use, even when devices are turned off, to turn on and monitor content. 

The two brothers, the elder Ned, are first contacted at the funeral of their mother and where the funeral also brings contact with their estranged father who previously had abandoned his wife and children. A feature of contemporary TV and film series is the dysfunctional family as the norm of family life, and which together with the increasing worldwide mobility, as much for work as leisure, means that the several generation of care and support family networks used to provide have broken or are breaking down further at the very time public service provision is being shrunk and the availability of other forms of community support is very much a lottery of geography and who you know.

Ned whose required support role for Jesse throughout the first series has been replaced by Hani, is nevertheless concerned about the disappearance of his brother who fails to return from the North Queensland meeting and starts his own investigation with the help of an estranged former girlfriend who works within the government structure. Obtaining the names of the two murdered men he notes the connection with a photographer and activist who is in fact working undercover to expose the role of external governments, the Indonesian government and the Mining Company.  She lets Ned know that Jesse is on the island and safe. Although this may have been true at the time, Roth, the undercover journalist, Jesse and Hani go into town to view the body in the morgue of a colleague who has been killed and framed for the murder of the two Australian citizens thus officially closing that aspect of the case. As they leave they are attacked by gunmen on a motor cycle but escape unharmed.

However, Jesse is psychologically affected and it is Roth who gets him back to his encampment safely. Therefore, Jesse discloses the purpose of his mission and Roth appears to be horrified that his services are being used for the paedophile network and offers to help by returning to Queensland where an associate looks after a mirror/branch server on Roth’s family farm. As they are about to arrive the boat is intercepted by the Australian border patrol and they jump overboard to go in search of the missing kid. The second episode ends.

The third episode begins as the two survive the swim ashore, recover and make their way to meet up with Roth’s associate who has effectively kidnapped the boy through grooming using a non-existent female friendship and has taken him to a property where the buyer is arriving to rape and murder and which appears to have been the fate of other children in the past. When Roth meets up with his partner he rages about his server being used for paedophilia, demands to know the location of the boy and then brutally murders the man in front of Jesse who runs off in horror and panic but can return to Canberra, the seat of government and assist in locating the premises and rescuing the boy who is reunited with his parents, and the buyer having been identified is arrested on arrival at the airport.  At this point, everyone should be congratulating themselves over a job well done. Certainly, the Foreign Minister is reassured that a politically difficult situation has been sorted.

Then three actions by the government change everything. The visa of Hani’s father is revoked and he is taken into custody. Jesse and Ned are told that the extradition to the USA is back on the agenda. The leader of the West Papua freedom movement and his family are arrested and deported from the island and the only chink in what appears to be a cover up process by the government is that Ned with visual information provided by the undercover friend on the island (Meg Flynn) is able with the help of his former girlfriend to gate crash a meeting and make direct contact with the female Foreign Minister.

Ned Jesse and Meg flee Australia and go to West Papua by plane where they head for the Roth compound. Forces who do not want the Foreign Minister making further inquiries arrange for her daughter to be given a university scholarship when all the Minister has done was to plead with the university to be flexible when the girl misses the registration date. At a subsequent meeting between the Minister and the cyber unit head, knowledge of the scholarship is mentioned and we interpret this as one other measure to stop investigation to what is going on.  Back at the compound Roth is surprised by their arrival but accepts the reasons and after getting Jesse stoned gets Jesse to break the Code for a USA security programme which enables them to affect the digital system including cameras operating in the prison where his brother in law is being held. Roth heads off to town to rescue the brother in law whose wife is already there with Ned and his daughter protesting at the imprisonment.  A motor cyclist then arrives shooting indiscriminately at protestors and Ned witnesses the shooting of Roth’s daughter as the episode ends. I will complete the review after the conclusion and say more about the first series and more about politics and big business in land of Rupert Murdoch