Reckless
The Times; London; Feb 7, 1997; Matthew Bond;
The Guardian; Manchester; Feb 7, 1997; Adam Sweeting;
The Times; London; Feb 14, 1997; Matthew Bond;
The Guardian; Manchester; Feb 28, 1997; Maggie Brown;
The Times; London; Feb 7, 1997; Matthew Bond;
My loyalties are so divided it's beginning to hurt. The problem? How to review Reckless (ITV), last night's new drama that just happened to pair perhaps my least favourite actor in the world with one of my all-time, top-ten actresses? Well, carefully - that's obvious. But carefully is also no fun.
Sulkily remains a possibility. After all, said top ten actress, Francesca Annis, has apparently reached a romantic understanding with Ralph Fiennes, an actor who has committed the unpardonable sin ... of being much the same age as your critic. Yes, there's merit in sulkily. Serves her right if she spends the rest of her career co-starring with Robson Green.
Or we could go the whole hog and try angrily. Not difficult - just mention the words Unchained Melody and I get very cross indeed. Combine that with the fact that Green's new series has one of the most irritating musical soundtracks in television history and we're approaching real rage. I blame Jimmy Nail. If he could put country and western into Newcastle, what's to stop Green bringing slide guitar to Stockport?
Alas, it did not stop there. As romance took its first hesitant steps, we had some cool bass accompanied by artfully brushed snare. And when things progressed a little further and our putative couple celebrated by taking her senile mother for a drive in the Lake District, some larky honky-tonk piano went with them. I thought that sort of thing went out with silent movies. So yes, there a case for angrily.
But, as the plot unfolded (youngish surgeon moves back north to look after sickish dad, falls in love with older woman who just happens to be his new boss's wife) a case for warmly gradually emerged. Reckless may be yet another medical drama (the one patient we saw had exactly the same ailments as the elderly woman in Peak Practice , but it is new and original drama and has some very good actors. Apart from Annis, there is Michael Kitchen, playing the sort of consultant that you would expect Michael Kitchen to play; David Bradley from Our Friends in the North , playing our father in the North; and Daniela Nardini from the splendid This Life , who hasn't done a lot yet as the hospital administrator but I rather suspect will.
Did I leave somebody out? Just joking, Robson. The truth is that on the evidence of this early showing Green isn't at all bad. Sure, as Owen Springer he's a bit over-reliant on ticks and twitches (that's what comes of working with Michael Kitchen) but there's none of that twinkly-eyed nonsense that got him through Soldier Soldier . Even the fact that he's the least likely-looking doctor since Dr Attwood drove into Cardale was neatly accounted for. "You're the first woman in my entire career who has actually thought I looked like a doctor," he told the as yet unsmitten Anna (Annis): "It's bin- man, more often than not." Clearly someone else who wants to be in Common as Muck .
The Guardian; Manchester; Feb 7, 1997; Adam Sweeting;
Although TV doctors spend a lot of time moaning about lack of resources, TV hospitals always look paradoxically clean and efficient. For example, consider St Gregory's hospital in Manchester, focal point of the new medics-in-love drama Reckless (ITV).
Budgets are allegedly shorter than an England cricket-lover's temper, yet the floors are not knee-deep in bloodstained bandages, nor are the corridors choked with convulsing, unattended patients. The protagonists' complaints about overwork are belied by the steady hum of administrative staff working at pristine computer work-stations. Senior consultant Richard Crane swaggers through with the lordly disdain of Sir Lancelot Spratt in Doctor In The House.
Plot-wise, writer Paul Abbott had served up platefuls of disbelief for us to wash down with an intravenous drip of gullible nitrate. Would Owen Springer (Soldier, Soldier's Robson Green) really have given up his post as second-in-command at a prestigious London teaching hospital merely because his cantankerous old dad was a bit under the weather? Why do the dad-and-son scenes mimic that lager commercial where man and boy play football on the eve of the son's wedding day, in an ad-agency farrago of sepia working-class cliches? Can this six-parter's central premise, that a strutting lad from Sunderland with an Alan Shearer hairline would fall instantly in love with aloof management consultant Anna Fairley (Francesca Annis) who also happens to be his boss's wife, hold any vital fluids whatsoever?
Yet it didn't really matter, because director David Richards had concocted a balance of action, character and situation that sparkled with wit and charm. As Richard Crane, Michael Kitchen is arrogant, sarcastic, and hugely watchable. Green plays Springer like a cat on porcupine-quills, a man with a rational core being alternately boiled and frozen by emotional demands.
Francesca Annis does nothing you haven't seen before: that arched eyebrow, that Siamese cat smile intended to denote oceans of experience unknown to mere boys aged 30-something, and those expertly-backlit glimpses of shapely calf. How fortunate that this slight bag of tricks is exactly right for her role. Reckless could easily have been dross. Now get out of the way while I watch the next instalment.
The Times; London; Feb 14, 1997; Matthew Bond;
There'd been no sex at all so far in Reckless (ITV), in contrast to the above and certainly to all the fevered hype that preceded this series. But we did have just a little bit right at the end of last night's episode two. "Take off your clothes, please," commanded Anna (Francesca Annis). So Owen did, offering us in the process a brief glimpse of the Robson Green bottom.
This was a crucial episode for Paul Abbott's new drama, the one that would determine whether we would last the distance. And despite it being underwritten (whole minutes went by as our highly qualified, professional hero went looking for his out-of-work dad so he could borrow the money to buy a new suit) and occasionally unbelievable (if you had been unfaithful would you really confess all to an answering machine?) the answer - in my case, at least - is I shall be. I think.
On the plus side the music didn't annoy me until well into part two. On the minus side, Owen Springer (Green) did, which was worrying as unless I'd got the plot entirely wrong he was supposed to be our hero. Abbott, however, is playing a clever but dangerous game and the main reason for sticking with the series (apart from Annis, of course) is to see whether he's clever enough to write himself out of the tight corner he wrote himself into last night.
Last night, you see, was the night the dramatic conventions of eternal triangles were turned on their head. It was the night when the hero regressed to being a tiresomely obsessed adolescent ("I don't go for older women, I just go for you") and the so-called baddie (Michael Kitchen, playing Anna's husband and Springer's boss) was revealed as witty, clever ("from Socrates to plastics in 50 words or under - that's why you married me" ) and rich. As Anna said to her best friend: "Would you jeopardise it all for a man 15 years younger, who looks like a boxer?"
Well, you would if your witty, clever and rich husband also turned out to be an adulterer and your jealous admirer secretly ensured you found out about it. All of which meant that when Owen and Anna finally got to do the bonobo thing, she was out for revenge and he was feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself. What chance true love now? With four episodes to go, clearly better than you might think.
The Guardian; Manchester; Feb 28, 1997; Maggie Brown;
What's the best thing on television at the moment? The programme best designed to take your mind off dreary pre-election squabbling? Easy. I'm addicted to the ITV drama Reckless, a series neither the critics, nor my friends for that matter, are watching, but which just happens to be bewitching 11 million ordinary viewers. I'm even recording episodes and replaying the videos before the series has ended. Can't remember doing that since Pride And Prejudice.
Reckless (Thursdays, 9pm - there are two episodes to go) is that rare TV treat, a bitter-sweet romance with plenty of tasteful heterosexual sex between grown-ups. It is scripted to the highest Granada standards by Paul Abbott, who won a Beta for producing the gritty second episode of Cracker, but learned his craft story-lining Coronation Street. In other words, you can relax on the sofa, safe in the hands of a top professional who knows how to keep you entertained. Humour, smart dramatic devices using answering machines and mobile phones, pacey guitar music Reckless has the lot.
But its real feat lies in the way it brings together two unlikely co-stars, Francesca Annis playing an elegant older beauty, Anna Fairley (that is to say, herself), and Robson Green as a dishy rough diamond medical doctor Owen Springer, with a Sunderland accent of course.
Springer is a youngish surgical registrar who moves from London to a new job in Manchester, to be `near me Dad'. But he is also one of those rarely sighted creatures, on TV or in real life: namely a real man, as opposed to a new man. He plays football in his Newcastle United strip, makes jokes with the lads, bobs his head around like a boxer, but also sends gorgeous flowers to the woman he has fallen head over heels in love with. He doesn't play hard to get either: he blurts out his feelings, and from the discreet evidence on the screen, he would seem to be a wonderful lover too. Oh yes, he is also compassionate to his patients and to his dad, played by that screen villain professional, David Bradley. Springer even arranges a trip to the Lakes for Anna's mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's.
The story is simple. Owen falls madly in love with Anna, whose firm is employed to assess him for the job before realising she is married to his new boss, tetchy consultant Richard Crane (Michael Kitchen). Cue a triangle. The fact that Annis is engaged in a fling with younger hunk Ralph Fiennes only adds to the watchability factor.
This makes hope spring eternal in millions of ageing female breasts. On screen the characters are currently locked in a passionate dispute, with husband and lover slugging it out for Anna's attention. But that's as violent as it gets. I am glad to luxuriate in a drama without murder, psychopaths or psychiatrists stealing the scene, just people flinging their clothes off and going with the flow of messy passions. Catch it.
Many thanks to Deb for digging out these reviews.