Review, Leanne, Netflix - old school comedy, new attitude

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

These fabulous creatures used to be everywhere in television, often with their names in the title - The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Grace Under Fire, Roseanne, Cybill - and then just like that they disappeared. Invisible at home, work, and in film and television too.
That has changed recently with Hacks, the much garlanded tale of a veteran stand-up on the comeback trail. With the arrival of Leanne, I'm now officially declaring this 'a thing'.
Produced by Chuck Lorre, whose CV includes The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men, Leanne Morgan stars as a Tennessee belle whose husband has left her after 33 years.
It's not the hippest comedy you will ever see, and the larger than life performances take a bit of getting used to, but Morgan is immensely likeable and there are some genuinely funny lines. Eight episodes in, I could easily have watched the same number again.
Destination X (BBC1, Wednesday) has been called the new Traitors, but what hasn't? The BBC hit has generated so many wannabes, I half expect Songs of Praise to be next for a Traitors makeover.
Hosted by Rob Brydon, the game is simple enough. Players are given clues about their location, and at the end of each episode have to guess where they are. Whoever is left at the end of the ten weeks scoops a very nice £100,000. Take that, Race Across the World with your measly 20 grand.
There was a catch, of course. Producers controlled what the players saw via goggles that could be switched on and off, and coach windows that went from clear to opaque. Added to this was some faffing in a big box and a dash of Traitors-like skulduggery.
The most exciting moment was the arrival of two luxury coaches: one for travelling, one for sleeping. Though kitted out nicely enough, a coach is still a coach (complete with a predictably small, shared toilet). Compared to Traitors HQ at Ardross Castle, this was roughing it.
Every reality show relies on a few 'characters' emerging from the mix. Among the contenders here were a London cabbie who had climbed Kilimanjaro and rowed the Atlantic but who took 14 years to do The Knowledge; a nuclear engineer; a pilot; a historian; and a multiple-marathon runner.
Deborah the crime writer, 62, looked like a possible winner till it emerged she doesn't like lying. Once the friendliness of the first week is over, that could prove a drawback. Dawn, a 34-year-old care assistant from Northern Ireland, whose prep for the series was buying a children's atlas from TK Maxx for a fiver, was another to watch.
It wasn't much of a vote of confidence in the show when one of the younger contestants quit because he missed his mum's cooking. Will there be others?
Not if Brydon has anything to do with it. Though sporting a navy blazer, Uncle Bryn went full Butlins Redcoat early doors and did not let up. If there was a Bafta for wanting to be liked, it would be his, no question. In the meantime, I don't think The Traitors has much to worry about.
If there is one thing television doesn't need, it is more celebrities going on holiday. But in the case of presenters Helen Skelton, Jules Hudson and JB Gill, so often up at horrible o'clock in all weathers, we can make an exception.
Coastal Adventures with Helen, Jules and JB (Channel 5, Tuesday) found the trio scattered to the winds. Skelton started the ball rolling with a video selfie on the beach. 'Have a look at this,' she said. 'It looks almost tropical, but I'm not in the southern hemisphere, I'm just north of the Scottish border in Dumfries and Galloway.'
The coastline was close to where she had lived and worked for years in Cumbria, yet she never thought of it as a holiday area because it was on her doorstep. Not any more.
'This is landscape that rivals the kind of thing you would go to New Zealand for.'
While she headed for Bainloch Deer Park and JB was dispatched to the Suffolk coast, Hudson was shown around HMP Peterhead by someone who had worked there for 27 years. The former guard could still remember the smell of the chamber pots waiting to be emptied when he arrived to start his shift. The scene was described so vividly I could almost smell them myself, and I fear Hudson was the same. The prison was defunct, and had been since 2013, but not defunked.
Banners from the 1980s riots hung on the walls, telling their own story, and the guide filled in the rest. It was a fascinating if grim tour, with the prison, dubbed 'Scotland's toughest jail', not changed much since it was built in the Victorian era. If misery has a smell that must have been evident too.
Skelton took an tour of the 860-acre deer park. All the animals, some 600 of them, were brought to the park, some after road accidents. 'I've never been close to a deer,' said Helen. 'I don't know why but it makes me quite emotional.'
She was sent to look for an antler to take home as a souvenir, a task she thought akin to being asked for a tin of tartan paint, but one was found, no bother.
In Johnshaven in Aberdeenshire, home to The Lobster Shop, Hudson was trying lobster for the first time. 'Delicious,' he said, demolishing the stuffed roll in a handful of bites.
Skelton had the last word. 'The most perfect landscape,' she said, looking out to sea. 'I can try to think of something profound to say but I don't think words do this justice.' If only more presenters showed such restraint.
With the Sunday politics shows off on holiday the way was clear for Sunday Brunch (Channel 4) to clean up. A mix of celebrity chat, cooking, and anything else the producers could throw in the pot to fill three hours of live television - including a competition to guess the age of expired food - this was the old 'zoo' format revived. In short, too many guests talking over each other. When not gabbing they stuffed their faces with whatever came out of the kitchen from a procession of chefs. Not an appetising sight at the best of times, never mind 10am on a Sunday.
Irvine Welsh was there to flog his new book, Men in Love, and accompanying album. All was well until he referred in less than flattering terms to the vocal styles of some singers today. It was enough that the presenter, Tim Lovejoy, felt he had to apologise. The joys of live television.
Contrast this with Katie Razzall's Irvine Welsh: The Next Chapter (BBC2, Monday). This was an old-school, pre-recorded sit-down, largely consisting of Razzall lining up a subject and allowing Welsh to talk at length. It didn't always work.
On Scottish independence, for instance, Razzall asked if he thought 'the steam had gone out of the fight'.
'The steam's gone out of every fight now,' said Welsh. 'People are very despondent about the mainstream political institutions and their ability to change and adapt. Whether it's supporters of Scottish independence or supporters of anything, whether it's any kind of radical or revolutionary change or any kind of political change, people are just waiting for the system to fall apart rather than push it.'
What did he think about the current political landscape in Scotland, or the swell in support for Reform UK? Detailed follow-ups might have produced tighter, more interesting answers.
The chat occasionally wandered, at one point ending up in Alan Partridge territory. After footage of Welsh in a boxing gym, Razzall asked if the sport was useful to his writing.
'Boxing keeps me thin,' he said.
'Does that make you a good writer?
'Yeah, being thin does make you a good writer, because you have to be comfortable in a chair. If you're sitting down and you're overweight, it must be quite uncomfortable.'
Was he being serious? It was hard to tell.
Irvine Welsh discusses his new novel, Men in Love (Image: BBC)
Never mind, Razzall was on a roll. Should Trainspotting have won the Booker prize?
'Emphatically no, it would have been the kiss of death. Because I would just have been another writer, another writer who won the Booker prize. Because I became the anti-Booker prize writer, I was pushed into a different category, and it gave me a radical, anti-establishment cachet that I maybe didn't deserve even, but I'll take it anyway.'
Nor will he be accepting a knighthood any time soon, or ever. 'I've no interest in that kind of thing. They've got nothing I want,' he said. I expect the Palace will be crushed.