NATIONAL TREASURE, C4, 9pm
“WE gave Jimmy Savile a free pass” and so everyone else is paying.
Tonight's episode is even better than last week’s, if you can believe that.
Neither the police nor the lawyers seem very ethical here. The detectives are digging for dirt on Finchley, pressing Dee to confess something to them.
“Do you really not remember anything?” Meanwhile, Finchley’s lawyers assess the backgrounds of his accusers – “She doesn’t worry me. She’s got previous here.” And one is unemployed, so who’s going to believe her? She must be in it for the money!
And we see his primary accuser, the babysitter, in uneasy flashbacks when she looked after Dee. She wears a mini skirt and smokes cannabis, and when she sees Paul’s taxi arrive home she quickly puts on lipstick: innocent behaviours which a lawyer, years later, can feast on. But the focus tonight is Dee, who starts to question her troubled state.
Maybe her dad is to blame, somehow? “Everyone wants to be a victim these days,” snaps Marie, saying her husband is not “an excuse for a life poorly led.”
DAMNED, C4, 10pm
THIS new comedy series is so obviously written by Jo Brand. Even without reading the blurb and the credits you’d be able to tell.
Set in a social work department where they run a helpline for troubled service-users, the comedy slowly and subtly shows the petty tensions, frustrations and annoyances of office life, particularly when your tedious office work involves dealing with deeply troubled people.
It’s similar – you might say identical – in tone to Brand’s recent BBC sitcom, Going Forward, which was also about working in the harassed and undervalued caring sector. So there are no belly laughs. Just gentle little observations and quirks.
The most prominent thing is the cast list, a roll call of comedians like Brand, Alan Davies, Nick Hancock, Morwenna Banks and the furiously annoying Isy Suttie, who seemingly can play only one character, Dobby from Peep Show. And here she is, playing Dobby yet again!
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