Good intentions

If you don’t mind — yeah, like you’ve any choice in the matter — what I thought I’d do for this New Year column is to do just enough TV for the editor not to want to sack me, then move swiftly on to the stuff my hardcore fans prefer, namely the rambling and shameless solipsism.

If you don’t mind — yeah, like you’ve any choice in the matter — what I thought I’d do for this New Year column is to do just enough TV for the editor not to want to sack me, then move swiftly on to the stuff my hardcore fans prefer, namely the rambling and shameless solipsism.

First, The Devil’s Whore (Channel 4). I know it finished a few weeks ago but it was definitely one of the year’s TV highlights. There were many things I liked about it, not least the immense shaggableness of Andrea Riseborough in the title role. The scene in episode one where she wandered pale and naked into an improbable lily pond (the series was filmed in South Africa: God knows how they did all those 17th-century manor houses) was, I thought, artistically essential. I would go on, but my wife sometimes reads this stuff in the bath and might get cross with me.

What I also liked about it — I don’t know whether this was deliberate or not — was that the whole thing looked like the trailer for a longer, much less interesting movie. Normally I loathe too-tight editing. It’s the curse of Hollywood epics — especially during action sequences of films like Gladiator — a low-down, cheaty way of trying to trick your brain into thinking you’ve seen things you haven’t seen. Here, though, its impressionistic paciness worked a treat but not being a drama-series maker I’m not sure quite whom to congratulate.

Peter Flannery, maybe? He was the scriptwriter (also responsible for the great and influential Our Friends in the North) and spent a whole decade writing it.