FREE TO AIR
Show of the week: Witnesses, SBS One, Wednesday, 9.30pm
Given France is a leading light in world cinema, it’s surprising that very few of the country’s TV productions end up on local screens, unlike, say, the numerous Scandinavian thrillers that have aired on SBS in recent years.The Returned (Les Retournes) and the Britain-France co-production The Tunnel are notable exceptions (the Gallic version of Doc Martin is best forgotten).
Now comes the six-part drama Witnesses (Les Temoins), which is headlined by one of the heavyweights of French cinema, Thierry Lhermitte.Opting for a more restrained tone and pace than the Scandi-noir thrillers to which this will inevitably be compared, Witnesses opens on a note of intrigue and chill (The Returned, anyone?).A man returns to his home in the north of France to find three corpses delicately placed in the living room, a ritualistic still-life tableau that reflects a family that might ordinarily inhabit one such model home in a new suburb.But this isn’t a supernatural thriller.
The corpses are quickly identified as those of three recently interred and possibly unrelated deceased persons.The telling clue that detective Sandra Winckler (Marie Dompnier) picks up while surveying this surreal scene is a framed photograph that the perpetrator (one assumes) has neatly positioned in a bedroom.It’s a photo of Paul Maisonneuve (Lhermitte), a feted former policeman who recently retired after a fatal car smash and a string of personal tragedies. The photo is a calling card that signals an intimate knowledge of Maisonneuve’s life, it’s bait to draw him out of retirement and into someone’s net, while also placing him at the centre of the ghoulish act.No sooner do Maisonneuve and Winckler begin investigating this bizarre case than suspicions arise about the avuncular though reserved cop, his recent past and his connections to the town’s establishment.Other questions arise: Is the selection of corpses accidental or calculated? Why has Maisonneuve cut himself off from the world?Subtle glances and prickly exchanges reveal that Winckler harbours suspicions about Maisonneuve and that the pair have fallen out in the past.Like her counterparts Saga Noren in the original The Bridge and Sarah Lund in The Killing, Winckler also seems to possess unusual powers of deduction and perception.
While she appears to be far less abrasive and combustible and more socially adept than her Scandinoir predecessors, a tendency for obsessiveness suggests that she will sweat the small details, be that the lipstick she finds in her husband’s car or a casually overheard remark that others would disregard. Much like Maisonneuve himself, it seems.Filmed under a chilly winter sky, which complements the ghostly omens that appear before Winckler, there’s a cinematic sensibility and elegance to Witnesses. Its plotting is assured and restrained, yet just as the slow-burning first episode draws to a close, it amps up in a way that suggests this story has some way to go yet. By the end of the second episode that promise is comprehensively fulfilled.
Paul Kalina
The Block: Triple Threat, Nine, 7.30pm
Home renovations are always a challenge. There’s dust everywhere, tradies rushing around trampling stuff and FM radio blaring over a cacophony of cement mixers and electric saws. Tempers are short due to early starts, no one has slept well, there’s a mountain of decisions to be made about fittings and costs, stuff-ups to be sorted and work to get through. This ain’t The Block, either, it’s the Farrer household as I type these words. At least we don’t have a film crew following us around our bomb-crater site. On the other hand, the contestants don’t have a dog and cat underfoot, or have to get a couple of kids ready for school, or a fridge in their lounge room, or a camp kitchen on their front verandah, or no laundry, or ... Never have I felt I could identify so closely with contestants in a reality TV show. Never have I wanted to watch one less.
Winter, Seven, 9pm
Five episodes in and the pieces of this mystery-thriller puzzle are falling into place. The pop-up brothel, the hitman’s death and the shooting of Detective Inspector Lachlan Mackenzie (Peter O’Brien) last week all start to make sense. What doesn’t make sense is why someone didn’t go over the script better and edit some of its annoying inconsistencies. Can the couple who saw Mackenzie’s shooter describe him? ‘‘Nah.’’ Could they give a description to the police artist? ‘‘Yeah.’’ Huh?
Judith Lucy Is All Woman, ABC, 9pm
Judith Lucy is sharp-tongued and a little narky. OK, a lot narky. She trades in sarcasm, wry observation laced with poison and lashings of self-deprecation. It’s a winning formula and when she applies it in this investigation into ‘‘ladies in the workforce’’ it also becomes a potent weapon. Lucy’s lack of maternal instinct is an interesting standpoint for someone trying to understand what women expect and hope to achieve, but having been a woman for most of her life (her joke) she’s well qualified for the job. Tonight she examines the issue of career, chatting to former Queensland premier Anna Bligh about women in politics and to journalist and TV presenter Annabel Crabb about women in political journalism. She also tries her hand at nursing and chats to a couple of female airline pilots. Engaging, entertaining and spot on.
Gordon Farrer
PAY TV
Show of the week: Cold Fear: Gay Life in Russia, Wednesday, BBC Knowledge, 9.30pm
This HBO documentary looks at the tide of anti-gay violence sweeping across Russia. With church and government vigorously denouncing gays and lesbians as a moral and physical danger to children, ordinary Russians have formed vigilante groups that make a sport of hunting and bashing them.
Director Ben Steele gained extraordinary access to one of those groups, who let him film as they abducted, assaulted and humiliated a gay man they had lured out via social media. The vigilantes film the attack as well – it’s standard practice to put videos of such assaults on the internet, in order to out the victims, get them fired from their jobs and expose them to further violence. The hatred and glee with which the vigilantes carry out their attacks is shocking, but it doesn’t come from nowhere – Steele interviews a Russian Orthodox priest who cuts a grotesque figure as he enthusiastically spouts hateful nonsense about gays. Earlier in the film a man named Dima – who was blinded in one eye when armed thugs attacked a discreet tea party – explains that gays, lesbians and their few brave supporters are almost helpless to fight back. Police aren’t interested in investigating hate crimes, and laws against gay ‘‘propaganda’’ make it dangerous to dispute the widespread misconception that gays are actually paedophiles.
The entire situation is horrific, but Steele eschews sensationalism, letting the people on camera speak for themselves. BBC Knowledge is having a mini-season of documentaries about the persecution of LGBT people. Tonight at 8.30 is part one of Stephen Fry: Out There in which Stephen Fry visits Uganda, Russia, India, Brazil and the US. Next Wednesday is part two, as well as The World’s Worst Place to Be Gay, a documentary about gay people living in the shadow of capital punishment in Uganda.
Justified, FX, 8.30pm
With the wounded but deadly Ty Walker still on the lam – and with Boyd frog-marching Ava to a remote cabin where he might well kill her – Raylan thinks now is a good time to put his feet up and hang out with his ex and their baby. OK, the girls are only in town briefly, and even the most dogged lawman needs a break, but the relationship between Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Winona (Natalie Zea) is a real buzzkill. She needs to cut her losses, he needs a slap for his infuriating Mr Reasonable act, and they’re both getting in the way of more interesting things. To wit: a cornered Walker (Garret Dillahunt) resorting to some shocking violence and Ava (Joelle Carter) reminding Boyd (Walton Goggins) that a man doesn’t need to beat a woman to be an abuser.
Drag Queens of London, LifeStyle You, 9.30pm
There’s drama of various kinds tonight, but it’s all low-key and real. Bobby (drag name Silver Summers) is getting ready to perform in his home town of Glasgow for the first time. His mother can’t wait to see the show but his dad might refuse to go. Drag queen and promoter Ben (aka Meth) stresses out when the big-name American drag act he’s flying in gets detained by immigration officers. Rugby-playing Chris (aka Rosie Beaver) worries that his drag calling might turn guys off him.
Brad Newsome
MOVIES
Dangerous Minds (1995), Seven, midday
There are now so many films about teachers taming unruly or anti-social classrooms that it has become a genre in itself. In this true story, a box-office success despite its critical drubbing, Michelle Pfeiffer’s LouAnne Johnson – a former Marine – takes on some tough Californians.
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Masterpiece Movies (pay TV) 8.30pm
Wes Andersen has travelled from revered cult director (Bottle Rocket) to unexpected mainstream success (The Royal Tenenbaums), from exhausting nearly everyone’s patience (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) to insightful chronicler of Asperger children (Moonrise Kingdom) and now Academy Award-winning A-lister (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Each remains true to Andersen’s auteurist traits: idiosyncratic, fearless, childlike, whimsical. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a delightful romp set in the 1930s that Andersen says is inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig (hard to see), about a dashing European concierge (Ralph Fiennes) and the search for a lost painting. The stellar cast shows prodigious energy in a tale told at scintillating speed, with twists and turns too numerous to count.
Mostly the film zings, but occasionally there are longueurs and moments when silliness triumphs over invention. It is also a bit hard to care for the characters, especially after Fiennes’ exuberant charm begins to wear a little thin. This is easily Andersen’s most successful engagement with a worldwide audience, but there is also a niggling sense that he has begun repacking his quirky takes on existence for greater audience share. It reminds one of Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, which brought Herzog to worldwide acclaim, but was a pasteurised compendium of the extraordinary films that preceded it. Hopefully, The Grand Budapest Hotel won’t prove a retreat from the peak, but merely a pause as a great and individualistic director trims his sails and repositions his rudder while determining what exhilarating course to take next.
Scott Murray
