The week in TV: Troy: Fall of a City; Collateral; Trauma and more

Troy: Fall of a City BBC1 | iPlayer
Collateral BBC2 | iPlayer
Trauma ITV | ITV Hub
Shetland BBC1 | iPlayer
Two Doors Down BBC2 | iPlayer

Those whom the gods would destroy, first they convince that they have a TV drama in them just itching to get out. This week they came for the playwrights. And, while undoubted madnesses and hair-tearing lie in the haruspices of days ahead (I know, pedants, Roman not Greek: so sue me), this week at least the playwrights didn’t do half badly.

Most recently – the big prime Saturday BBC1 slot, no less, and there might now be reason for the unStrictly of us to stay in that evening – was the stylish production, a joint and thus lavish venture with Netflix, of Troy: Fall of a City, from the pen of David Farr. The associate director of the RSC, who also adapted The Night Manager for our screens two years ago, has given us an intriguing, relatively faithful version of the Iliad; older viewers can marvel at the silked lushness of the sea scenes while revelling in an old tale well told, younger ones can learn a little, about the names of the gods, and the fire-haunted dreams of Cassandra, and about mankind’s ancient rush towards betrayal (and ancient rush to blame it all on their being mere playthings of the gods); and both can hopefully expunge any residual memories of the 2004 Brad Pitt epic.

It’s been spoken of as one answer to Game of Thrones, and there are broadly commensurate (if very BBC) levels of blood-letting, and humping, and veiled intrigue, but far more grounded, being in essence one author’s (Homer’s) historically based creation rather than the competing imaginations of a galaxy of showrunners trying to manage a runaway behemoth.

Wisely, I think, the makers have chosen to go with relative unknowns, other than David Threlfall as Priam, complete with beard and helmet and flashing eyes and a Manc accent refreshingly unknown in those parts back then. Aussie Louis Hunter plays Paris, the rediscovered Prince Alexander of Troy – it’s a very Troy-heavy tale this, featuring less of the Greek/Spartan gang than we’re normally used to – with dirty cheekbones and a heart-shaped birthmark, which necessitates his baring his muscled breast quite a bit, and a borderline insane drive to do precisely the wrong thing, for ever.

Young German Bella Dayne is Helen, and given many strong lines: no passive victim she, and the performance might go some way towards righting the excruciatingly mimsy beauty of Diana Kruger in that 2004 film. Even when Dayne’s in a sealed box, smuggling herself out from under the noses of her husband’s guards, she’s doing better acting. This brief scene, incidentally – the guards wilfully ignoring a huge heavy (temptingly person-shaped) ornate box – will obviously have parallels at the fall of Troy. For all their warrior might, what was it about the ancients that rendered them so appallingly unable to grasp the concept of people “fitting into things bigger than themselves”? If that’s what the producers managed with one simple box, I look forward immensely to the horse…

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And two playwrights with two of the best thrillers of the week. David Hare’s Collateral made the first of its four appearances, and not at all quietly. Indeed, the opening scene – pizza delivery drivers jostling frantically for their orders in some under-archway steaming south London hellhole, grime music pounding, scooters roaring – was such a toxic cacophony of sound and vision that Hogarth would have struggled to do it justice: it was almost a relief when the gunshots came, and brought blessed silence.

Being David Hare, this will turn out to be a clever state-of-the-nation thing, about (surely) under-the-counter people-smuggling, the woeful and wanton and random judging of “good” and “bad” immigrants, and the general bastardness of military spooks. John Simm pops up as a Labour MP; Nicola Walker as a lesbian vicar. As such it’s shaping up tremendously nicely, though it had to cram in perhaps a little too much exposition in the opener – as in one copper, on recognising DI Kip Glaspie as an ex-champion pole-vaulter or some such, having to spout such clunking shoehorned dialogue as to curl the toes, but perhaps playwrights with a lot to get through always have, a little, to do this. Hare somehow gets away with it, and, despite my rather glib summary of his work, is rarely unoriginal: expect many surprises, but chiefly expect him to be ahead of the curve once again. Carey Mulligan, as DI Kip, excels, as does Billie Piper as the louche posh drawling lovely: one struggles to tear the eyes from any scene in which either appears.

But it was Mike (Doctor Foster) Bartlett’s Trauma that, oddly enough, made the greater impact, being not about high-vaulting Themes but about one single incident, a surgeon’s minute blunder, which leads to a son’s death and a father’s descent into madness and, almost, murder.

As with Doctor Foster, Bartlett made this all about one lie told, and the awful burrowing way in which it can, unresolved, have the power to wield catastrophe – in this case to John Simm (again), whose grieving father takes all his anguish, his class-envy, his sense of disappointment at self, out, not on the jealous brat who stabbed his son but on the doctor who had fought hard to save him.

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Much of this was watched, metaphorically at least, through tight-squirmed fingers, as Simm’s Dan Bowker, twitching from reasonable-guy to unhinged sociopath often within seconds, stepped, tremulously at first then with breenging abandon, upon his chosen path. In hindsight, some of the story was daft: and the ending stretched credulity. But this niggle was made redundant by the sheer quality of the acting – Simm was mesmeric, yet Adrian Lester had the harder task, as comfortable unflappable surgeon Jon. Somehow he conveyed, never in words but in tone of voice, and eyes, whether or not he was telling the truth: Dan had realised this very early on, and we were allowed to catch up, to see what he was seeing, in every soft-voiced smile, every dubious gesture. I could have watched acres of this: it still lingers.

And two hugely welcome returns from north of the border. Shetland retains the ability to delight and shock in equal measure, and while the plots might possess a certain predictability – oil company cover-up, girl goes missing – the series never stales, and nor does Douglas Henshall in the part he was arguably born to play. What a very different beast is Two Doors Down, yet thrillingly – to a Scot – well observed, in its mix of daftness, guile and bite, and probably the most exportable comedy to southern ears since Rab C.