From riveting Hitchockian melodrama to bigoted drivel: BBC’s Unprecedented reviewed

Back to the West End at last. After a four- month lay-off, I grabbed the first available chance to catch a show in central London. I joined 20 enthusiasts at the ‘West End Musical — Silent Disco Walking Tour’, which convened outside a Fitzrovia pub. We were given a pink bracelet and a set of headphones that pumped musical hits into our ears. Our cheerleader, Sean, introduced us to his helpers, Tiny Tom and Sticky Vicky, who taught us a quick dance move.

It transpired that we were the performers as well as the audience. We set off across the West End like a military convoy of unemployed choristers. At Old Compton Street we belted out ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’ from Mary Poppins. We halted opposite the Dominion Theatre and invented a bum-wiggling routine to the tune of ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’. We reached the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, where a Michael Jackson musical ran for more than a decade. Sean lined us up on the kerb and got us to sing ‘Billie Jean’. ‘Now moonwalk backwards across Shaftesbury Avenue,’ he ordered. We did so, sustaining no injuries.

The BBC is broadcasting more lockdown dramas under the label Unprecedented. The results are patchy. Romantic Distancing by Tim Price, and directed by Jeremy Herrin, is about a girl who dumps a boy online. The creative team should have tried harder.

Safer At Home by Anna Maloney features a kindly mother (Geraldine James) who phones her married daughter and discovers that her relationship has soured since the virus took hold. Hardly worth the trouble. A similar lack of ambition affects Everybody’s Talkin’ by Chloe Moss, in which Sue Johnston plays a gran who chats with her three adult daughters via Zoom.