Troy: Fall Of A City: Beware of ‘sex in sandals’ dramas bearing wooden characters
EXTENSIVE research was required before plunging into last night’s new sex-in-sandals drama, Troy: Fall Of A City (BBC One, Saturday).
I hoovered up all the available Horrible Histories videos from the period and, in the end, found them considerably more entertaining than the £10million-plus drama I was watching.
Two were especially helpful: Helen of Troy, and just to give it a modern context, Historical Wife Swap.
The former portrayed Helen as quite the minx, moving from one Greek soldier in a short skirt (identifying as a woman?) to another, seemingly at a whim. This is mostly how she was presented by Troy writer and creator David Farr (The Night Manager).
So it’s historically accurate. That’s a relief. We would have lost the Elgin Marbles.
Played by Bella Dayne (Humans/Man In The High Castle), Helen – a modern, strong woman and fully aware of the serious choices she’s making (obviously!) – leapt into bed with the visiting Paris (Louis Hunter) moments after her grieving husband Menelaus went off to his father’s funeral.
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It’s another seven hours of angry Aegean warriors in short skirts flailing swords about in a health and safety nightmare
She then secreted herself in a large wooden box for a trip to Troy. Try delivering that with a drone, Amazon.
Because of the writer’s history with The Night Manager, Farr wasn’t averse to showing the Greeks at play.
Within four minutes Paris, skirt flapping in the breeze, was bobbing up and down in a field, clearly doing an ancient Greco workout for two from a 12th-century BC Joe Wicks fitness plan.
There were two further Greco workouts before everyone considered it far too hot to keep up such energetic activity, whatever the health benefits.
But you can’t live on sex alone, even if you’re Greek. There was gore, too, hand-to-hand fighting, swordplay and “wafting among silks”. Pity the characters were mostly cardboard cut-outs.
It might pick up but what really lets it down is the language. It’s a mix of cod formality from court to a modern vernacular with a London accent.
Paris flatly asks his hosts Helen and Menelaus, upon arrival: “How did you two get together…?”
It’s also got Greek gods in it, Zeus and the like. They just make me laugh. In one scene, after a few thunder claps and suitably angry clouds in the sky, Aphrodite stood before Paris.
“Choose me and you will meet the most beautiful woman ever,” she seems to be saying, “with whom you can do your… Greco workouts…”.
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Maybe it doesn’t matter. Younger people would just go: “God, she’s hot. Wonder if she’d go out with me?”
Troy is in the special Saturday night drama slot repackaged by the BBC.
This is the sort of drama, with a big budget and sprinkling of good sets, that can look convincing on Amazon or Netflix; indeed Netflix has partially funded this.
But why? We pay a fortune to the BBC so that they can make drama for us, not for the rest of the world. If it sells abroad, that’s a bonus.
If you think of the 2005 series Rome with James Purefoy, Ciaran Hinds and Polly Walker, or even The Tudors (2007-2010), Troy just doesn’t bear comparison.
The only thing that might save it is an impressively large balsawood horse.
Otherwise it’s another seven hours of angry Aegean warriors in short skirts flailing swords about in a health and safety nightmare.
The latest damp squib was McMafia (BBC One, Sunday), again a co-production with another huge American TV company, AMC.
The result was an overlong series, with less plot than an episode of Percy The Pig.
The final instalment completed James Norton’s Alex “one-expression” Godman conversion into a pure gangster as he executed his family’s arch rival Vadim in cold blood.
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Earlier, older and apparently useless “senior” Godman was responsible for Vadim’s daughter’s murder.
So Vadim and his empire were crushed. All of this was far too easy and too ridiculous.
A “real” Vadim would have been protected by a small arsenal of security, not just a second-in-command colonel from the security services.
There is a clamour to have a second series, which it doesn’t deserve, not least because all the female characters were essentially Russian grid girls with a good line in obsequiousness.
Endeavour (ITV, Sunday) gave us another involving mystery. Morse also had a little bit of fun with Fred Thursday’s niece, which proves that he cannot survive on crosswords alone.
However, the episode ended with one of those portentous lines, laden with tragic irony, with Endeavour thinking aloud to Thursday about whether his fate too was to “end in a flat with no company but a bottle”.
In the most compelling TV battle of the year, John Simm v John Simm, I give the award to Trauma (ITV, Monday – Wednesday) over Collateral (BBC Two, Monday).
Interestingly, both focused on those who don’t feel part of a society for whatever reason.
But in Trauma it was Simm’s brilliantly unstable Dan Bowker who took matters into his own hands – ultimately with a kitchen knife, after the death of his son.
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Writer Mike Bartlett crafted swirling, compelling two-hander scenes between his protagonists, dragging you closer to the edge of your seat.
It was disturbing and superb, with a remarkably satisfying ending.
Three hours of drama that, for a change, actually said something about the world we live in rather than preaching at us about it.
A triumph for all concerned. First Doctor Foster, now Trauma. Writer Bartlett is one of our best.
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