RAVENOUS women, one a werewolf another a junk-food freak and a third hungry enough to munch her way through Cornwall's young studs, dominated the week on TV. With Wilderness, Beck and Poldark, it seems as if this season's British television drama is hungry to capitalise on the medium's current craze for food shows. Since midweek, the TV set has been belching.
Little of this eating was in good taste. Poldark, largely because it had been a favourite dish in the 1970s, was the main course. Many of the old ingredients were assembled for its two-hour special but, crucially, Robin Ellis - who 20 years ago as Ross Poldark could turn millions of women to jelly - was missing. So too was Angharad Rees who played his headstrong wife Demelza.
Ellis and Rees were replaced by John Bowe and Mel Martin, a move which apparently caused outrage among them Poldark appreciation Society (no joking!) So, set in 1810 (12 years on from where the original series ended) the next generation of Poldarks - son Jeremy (loan Grufudd) and daughter Clowance (Kelly Reilly) - were allowed to hog most of the screen time. For the new Ross, this proved merciful. Manfully, he tried to smoulder but found it hard not to confuse the appropriate gaze with the pained look of constipation.
The plot, such as it was, involved trouble at the Cornish tin mine, which had produced gold for the BBC back in the 1970s? Clowance falling for the dodgy, if edible, Stephen, who was washed up in the opening-scene; Jeremy getting himself mixed-up with Stephen's brandy smuggling. The backdrop had England at war with France. Anyway, following some ponderous scene setting, the raison d'etre of the series - swashbuckling and bodice-ripping - got underway.
You could have kept up with the buckling and ripping just by listening to the orchestra. Any potentially dramatic moment was signalled by the sort of clamour normally confined to The Last Night of the Proms. Thus when Clowance and Stephen prepare to snack on each other in an orchard, music, may not be quite the food of love, but you re left in no doubt that it is at least, its sauce.
With the orchestra reaching a climax, Clowance's posy drops, in slow motion, to the ground. This is deflowering, Mills and Boon style. But symbolism is as far as it goes. Stevie, a cool cat, had unlaced, rather than ripped, Clowance's bodice to reveal - Quelle surprise! - an obligatory, industrial-strength Wonderbra, - which has become standard nowadays in the costume-drama industry. At that, though, Clowance loses her nerve rather than her virginity.
Perhaps this is what Poldark punters want. Clowance (what, a name.), when she is not bosom-heaving, is usually seen riding a horse. Lest, viewers miss the intended erotic significance of this, there are schoolboyish innuendos about the word - riding to keep the sexual content gallop ing along. Previewers had suggested that the new drama was basically a Son of Poldark. It is, in a way, but with Clowance cueing most of the loud music, it is more specifically Daughter of Poldark.
This two-hour pilot may or may not he made into a series. Chances are that it will. But this is not a good sign. Already, cinema has overdosed on recycling and TV comedy looks set to go the same way. Popular TV drama - especially ratings-hungry hokum such as Poldark - is generally best left at peace in the time in which it flourished. On the evidence of the pilot, resuscitating this 1970s dinosaur is like dusting down a pair of platform boots from the period. Nostalgia in Wurzel accents only adds to the corn in Cornwall even if the scenery of the place starred as brightly as ever.
Beck (Amanda Redman, who used to be Dangerfield's mot) is a different dish. She runs a missing persons agency based in the mean streets of London's Kings Cross: But, boy, can she eat! Where Kojak was satisfied with a lollipop and Morse with a pint, this latest, single-name private-eye is a junkfood addict. Analysts of oral compulsions might make sense of all this munching, - grazing and glossy lip-licking. But, primarily, it seems to be just a cheap device to heighten the gritty naturalism" of the acting.
Not that it's natural, you understand. But, ever since minor players in US cop shows started bellowing for - "salami on rye and hold the pickle", dating on the hoof has been used to suggest intense busy-ness. If you can't act, eat. To be fair to Ms Redman, she can act but-this makes the scoffing all the more objectionable. When, while drinking champagne and relaxing - in a candle-lit bath, she picks up a mobile phone and orders in a pizza ("A large vegetarian with spicy sausage and ham") you've got to suspect that the writers have bitten off more than viewers want to chew.
Still, grub aside, there are tasty aspects to the series. Naturally, the opening episode was concerned with slotting the various character components together. Along with the eating (maybe it's comfort eating - for her, if not for the viewers) Beck has a tangled love-life. A wholesome copper, with the ridiculous TV drama name "Tally" (David Herlihy, who was the dodgily named "Chuck" in Glenroe) and a sleazeball shrink compete for Beck's attentions.
"You always gave great headache," said the sleazeball at one point. The eating theme runs deep in this one. But, given that TV private dicks and dickettes have to have a past, it could have been worse. As in Poldark, the setting is one of the main attractions. Jerky, NYPD Blues camera work makes striations of gaudy neon shimmer in wet gutters and though this can be over done, it hits the mood of an area full of spectral drunks and derelicts.
Yet, this is a problem too. Ms Redman, even with her past and her voracious appetite (no girly diet nonsense here) really looks too soft and gentle for these mean streets. At times, it seems as though a girl from a shampoo ad has wandered into Cracker territory. Producers want it all, of course - pretty woman and gritty drama. Perhaps viewers do too, but the contrast shows up the series seams as spectacularly as sleazy neon.
For all that, the plot though too busy when all the character-building and gorging had to be accommodated in the first episode was generally credible. There were appalling discoveries at a Fred West-style site, a single teenage mother reunited with her alcoholic mother (cops shows need AA for gritty realism); a father with a dark secret. - Unlike the better US cop shows, resolutions were rather twee and there was too much moralising between junk food courses. But if it can burp these out of its system, the Beeb could be Becking a winner this time.
THE serious gnashing of the week took place in Wilderness. This was much more in-your-face than bodice-unlacing or even sleazy gags about giving good headache. In fact. if was a custom-built excuse for nudity. Amanda Ooms, (a, real name even weirder than the fictional Clowance or Tally) plays a librarian, who, once a month turns into a wolf.
Ms Ooms turns into a proper wolf, mind. None of your daft, Hollywood-werewolf whiskers for her. No. She goes the whole hog, which, naturally, means she has to take her whole kit off when she feels the bristles begin to itch. Aware that very soon. she will have to lock herself, naked, in her cellar, she goes out shopping for provisions. "Fifteen pounds of rump steak please," she says to the local butcher. "£55.14," he replies.
Eat your heart out, Beck. This is the big time. More than a stone of raw steak and Ms Ooms has no problems with her figure. Pizzas, burgers and chocolate biscuits just don't cut it in Wilderness. Neither, mind you, does the psychotherapist. He is not a sleazy as Beck's shrink. He's just ineffectual. Clearly, a lot of today's TV drama writers don't like mind-doctors. Indeed, Ms Ooms's man, who thinks the "wolf-thing" is all in her head, would do well to watch his throat.
The kindest thing that can be said about this drama is that it's different and a change from cops, docs and period frocks is no harm. Ms Ooms (who, in America, might be described as "foxy") is an unlikely-looking gorger of raw meat. Her salvation appears to be about to manifest itself in the character of Owen Teale, a sort of Indiana Jones of Antartica. Mr Teale is an academic, a big, burly bloke, who "prefers the wild to the lecture theatre" (not that there's always a difference). Anyway, - he's an authority on penguins.
Wolves, penguins, foxy chicks - there's probably some heavy Freudian sexual stuff in all of this. Certainly, Ms Ooms, when sheds not dining in the cellar, is hot-to-trot.
She picks up wealthy businessmen in hotels but, always, after just one session of ferocious rogering, she leaves each of them. Knackered, they plead for another go. But she will not have it and always slopes back to the library.
Sometimes, in this gig, it's best to admit defeat. A randy female librarian who, since, puberty, has once a month been turning into a wolf, gives a whole new meaning to the term "period drama". Perhaps that is what it's about. But all that solemnity and shaking in the nude and eating and bizarre jokes is just too much. The shrink is stumped and so am I. It's either marvellous or utter codswallop. When it's funny, it's marvellous codswallop, but really, there isn't enough comedy - no big 15lb dollops of the stuff- to let that be its defining trait. Very, very, weird and most likely, a prime cut of TV offal.
FINALLY, a no-eating, no-sex, no weirdo psychology zone: The Morbegs, RTE's biggest production of the year (Norway had the 1996 Eurovision ) Costing £1 million, it's a puppet show with humans and cartoon inserts, which goes out for 15 minutes every weekday morning, with early afternoon repeats. Aimed at pre-school children, the nearest to a target audience representative that I could find was a six year-old.
He thought them "funny" (in the positive, not the sarcastic, six-year-old sophisticate sense). Good. Clearly, an amount of thought maybe not a million quid worth - has gone, into The Morbegs (does it mean the "Big Littles"?) and themes focusing on elementary verbal and mathematical concepts and on simple social or environmental issues are a fine idea. Overall, if seemed like Wanderly Wagon meets Sesame Street, with a serious nod to The Muppets.
There is a green Morbeg and an orange Morbeg. They get along very well. The green one is called Molly (My Irish Molly?) and the orange one is called Rosa (pronounced "Rossa", which may have nothing to do with Democratic Left). Who knows? So far, Molly has not threatened to blow-up Rosa and Rosa has not decided that for the greater glory of God, he wants to walk all over Molly. Of course, like Poldark, Beck and Wilderness. it's all fiction. But, fair enough, it'll do for pre-school children to chew on. Unlike most green and orange get-togethers, it should succeed.