From right clockwise: The Innocence Project, Standoff, The Sopranos, The State Within, Tripping Over
Reviews
MUSIC DOCUMENTARY YOUNG-@HEART
More4, Mon 6 Nov, 9pm 0000.
It’s easy to poke fun at or get annoyed with the old, what with their doddery, drooling, deaf ways and their less than exemplary table manners. So, it will come as a major shock to the most hard-hearted anti-senior that this two-hour film about a US OAP choir called Young@l-leart should have you weeping big baby buckets by its conclusion. Not that the guy behind this oldies choir isn’t having a mild dig at his pensioner singers himself; why else would sprightly fiftysomething Bob Cilman ask them to clamber out of bed in the morning to belt out numbers such as ‘Staying Alive’, ‘Road to Nowhere’, ‘Fix You’ and ‘Schizophrenia’?
As rehearsals for the choir’s Alive and Well tour grind into action, Cilman has creative problems with singers not being able to learn their lines or spot their cues. But the biggest shadow over the group is their own mortality and the fact that none of the current singers were in the original 1982 line-up says it all. And sure enough, the grim reality of their advancing years takes its toll upon the choir. But troopers that they are, they know that the show must go on and a rendition of ‘I Feel Good’ needs some creases ironed out of it. And should you feel bad about having a bubble at this documentary, you're in tough guy company as the inmates of the local jail clearly well up as the choir perform ‘Forever Young’ in the prison grounds. Totally life-affirming. (Brian Donaldson)
REMOTE CONTROL
Brian Donaldson finds some dramas are better at handling a Crl3l3 than. others.
While Channel 4 may have uncovered its new West Wing with Commander in Chief. and Sky One thinks that Bones has exercised its X-Fi/es ghost. every network on the radar is after its own 24. The State Within (BBCI, Thu 2 Nov, 9pm coco ) is the closest anyone's come yet to replicating the high voltage. low-trust aesthetic moulded by Kiefer and co. As conspiracy thrillers go. this joint US/UK production could be the daddy of them all as a flight bound for London goes down over American soil and with West Virginia's Muslims being summarily rounded-up, it transpires that the alleged bomber was British- born.
None of which pleases the US seCretary of defence played by Sharon Gless and the British ambassador to Washington (Jason Isaacs). while you just know that some diplomats on show are not to be trusted. Meanwhile. a Falklands hero (Lennie James) is languishing on Death Row and resisting all attempts to have his case revisited. Are these disparate
92 THE LIST 2—16 Nov 2006
events in any way connected? What do you think’?
If y0u're looking for more easy comparisons. then The Innocence Project (BBCQ, Thu 9 Nov. 8pm 00 l is very similar to Hustle. We
have a bunch of disparate folks brought together for a cause they believe in (this time it's overturning wrong convictions instead of turning over rich folk) and they've borrowed the same smoky blues seiindtrack. But it's hard to have faith in a show which looks like some Big Bret/tar housemates have been let loose on a Scooby Doo script. while I'm not sure that finger—clicking hepcat sounds are really justified in a show about miscarriages of justice.
They're equally young and beautiful in Tripping Over (Five, Mon (5 Nov. 70pm 000 l but this is one show which has quickly claimed an identity all of its own. A couple of episodes in and it's achieved an unsettling and odd atmosphere initially triggered when Ramon Tikaram met a dastardly end on a freak boating accident in Thailand. Before then. we were threatened with the all-too familiar sight of some travellers indulging in
bog standard backpackery leisure attractions. Suddenly. it was something much bigger and much darker as friendships ruptured and futures (and pasts) are cast into murky doubt.
There's little deubt about the way Standoff (Sky One. Thu 76 Nov. 70pm o. ) will go every single
week. A male and female hostage negotiation double act will swap between bickering and bedding while still getting the job done despite the reservations of their snooty boss and
the FBl's more gun totin' employees. In the opener. Our man succeeds in calming down a trigger-caressing guy in a traffic jam while she gains the confidence of a suicide bomber who wants revenge because his mommy didn't love him enough. Tedious and predictable.
While prevrous series of The Sopranos (E4, Thu 16 Nov. 70pm «ml have concentrated on the colour of money or the commitment to family/Family. this one has been all about escaping. Way back in episode one, Tony's refusal to allow Eugene's relocation to Florida resulted in a horrifically realistic suicide scene while the boss' own coma dreams hinted at a wish for a less mob-like identity. We've had Vito the gay captain bolting for New Hampshire antiques fairs while Christopher's distancing from the memory of Adriana has led him into a quickie marriage and on to a reckless affair and drug relapse wrth Julianna Margulies. Quite what the grand finale of eight episodes next year will bring is anyone's guess. But it surely won't end well.