Trial
BBC1, Sunday
Rating: 
Succession
Sky Atlantic, Monday
Rating: 
Doctor Who
BBC1, Sunday
Rating: 
Trial was one of those gloriously ridiculous, slick thrillers you often see described as a ‘guilty pleasure’ that none of us feels remotely guilty about loving every minute – like Unforgotten, Innocent, and every other drama that’s ever been on ITV on Monday nights (particularly Marcella).
It took only two minutes to establish that the story concerned a pair of students living in Bristol: Hannah Ellis, who had gone missing, and the prime suspect Talitha Campbell (played with insouciant flair by Céline Buckens).
Talitha had been sending Hannah threatening texts and was almost instantly arrested for ‘malicious communication’ by the show’s archetypal, no-nonsense female detective, DI Paula Cassidy (Sinead Keenan).
The story concerned a pair of students living in Bristol: Hannah Ellis, who had gone missing, and the prime suspect Talitha Campbell (played with insouciant flair by Céline Buckens, above)
In the unlikely event that viewers hadn’t grasped whose side we were on, writer Ben Richards spelled it out with subtle characterisation worthy of Cluedo. Hannah was Hannah, the tragic heroine.
She was working-class for a start – so working-class she had called her dog Spam. Although she was offered an Oxford place, she declined it to be near her mother.
As for Talitha, Richards stopped short of giving her a moustache to twiddle but made it clear she was the Baddie – ‘a rude, entitled, little cow’, according to DI Cassidy, not only rich but so posh she was called Talitha.
Her father, Sir Damian Campbell was also a property developer. She is therefore a true rotter.
Talitha was immoral, too, buying drugs from local scumbag Troy and doing ‘a bit of webcam and escort work’, something Hannah condemned (naturally). She was a major sign of her unhingedness, babbling incoherently in prison, and painting her nails a horrendous shade lime green.
As luck would have it, Talitha’s friend Dhillon was obsessed with Hannah and ‘a weirdo’, Talitha said, which was alarming coming from her. DI Cassidy didn’t question him, even after divers had found Hannah’s body dumped in the river in a wheelie bin, inside a sleeping bag weighed down with a kettle bell.
According to the pathologist, Hannah was strangled and gagged with the exact same item: A green silk scarf.
Cassidy found footage within minutes of Hannah’s poor behavior at the student ball. Her more wealthy contemporaries were enjoying themselves.
‘What more do you want?!’ Cassidy declared triumphantly, pointing at Talitha. ‘She’s wearing the f***ing murder weapon!’ Final proof that Talitha looked so guilty she surely didn’t do it.
While it looked like a giveaway, it was most likely an enormous red herring. Except it wasn’t a double bluff. The remaining four episodes are on iPlayer if you can’t wait.
The third episode SuccessionThe story revolved around an amazing series of events in which the Roy families attacked one another back.
Kendall sabotaged Shiv’s first speech as Waystar Royco’s new Domestic President by playing Nirvana’s Rape Me over the speakers. Nice touch. Shiv retaliated, issuing a statement expressing her ‘concern’ for her brother after his ‘many attempts’ at rehabilitation for ‘multiple addictions’ and ‘grandiose’ bids to seize power from their father.
The sight of the FBI swarming into Waystar’s offices with search warrants raised the real possibility that the week’s most Machiavellian manoeuvre had been orchestrated by someone we least expected: Tom (Matthew Macfadyen).
It was apparent that he had played Shiv and Logan. He offered to do the rap for Roys, go to prison and then make a deal to the Feds. It was a victory for English double-dealing!
Doctor Who returned with The Halloween Apocalypse, the start of an unprecedented six-part story written by departing show-runner Chris Chibnall, based around a predictably cataclysmic event called The Flux.
The album sounded more like an extended six-hour prog-rock band in the 1970s. (‘The end of the universe is chasing us’, etc.)
John Bishop was the first episode’s star, playing the role of a volunteer at a food bank who is kidnapped and captured by Chewbacca, a dog. It was like Star Wars directed by Ken Loach, or Brookside invaded by aliens like Swarm, with a Hellraiser lookalike imprisoned ‘since the dawn of the universe’ (obviously) that suddenly escaped with an improbable cry of ‘Trick or Treat!’
Jodie Whittaker’s ‘historic’ incarnation has been historically bad, halving the ratings achieved by Russell T. Davies’s reboot and portraying the iconic Time Lord as an uber-nice netball teacher from Planet Woke.
She and Chibnall hit a new low, though, in The Halloween Apocalypse when she made the ridiculous revelation that the Doctor was effectively an honorary Scouser – celebrating that the Tardis had landed at Anfield during the Jürgen Klopp era (‘Classic!’).
The angels were on my side, I knew that.
The Weeping Angels may be a bunch of terrifyingly ruthless, psychopathic statues that live off their victims’ remaining ‘time energy’ – moving in on them when they blink, then blasting them into the past.
But at least they don’t support Liverpool. It’s #TeamWeepingAngels.