Madeline Holtznagel Carries Baby Jaegar After Seaplane Arrival with Billionaire Justin Hemmes
Madeline Holtznagel looked every inch the doting new mum this week when she was spotted with her precious new bub in Sydney. The model, 28,…
THE NIGHT CALLER
My5
So, who is your favourite Glenister? Philip (Life On Mars, Outcast) or Robert (Hustle, Spooks)?
I’ve interviewed Philip (albeit quite a few years ago now), but not his lower- key big brother who, for all I know, is as swaggeringly Alpha Male off-screen as his sibling.
Either way, both brothers invariably take on interesting roles and are hugely watchable. Robert (great as DI Salisbury in Sherwood not too long ago) in particular has a calm, furrowed intensity that’s explored to the maximum in Channel 5’s dark four-parter.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a camera linger closer for longer on someone who is by no stretch of the imagination pretty – and indeed is often bloodstained.
In The Night Caller, Glenister R plays Liverpudlian night-shifting cabbie Tony, a former teacher whose sad and sorry back story is eked out so slowly that we only get the big reveal (the why-is-Tony-like-Tony?) right at the end.
You’ll be rooting for a Happy Ending in My5’s The Night Caller, says TV writer Kathryn Flett
Whether or not you chose/choose to get that far will depend on your taste for stories about lonely (and Tony is bafflingly unencumbered by either friends or family) men in their 50s ‘taking the law into their own hands’ – in the words of Tony’s local late-night talk radio host Lawrence Brightway.
Brightway is a perfectly cast king-of-the-voiceovers Sean Pertwee. His famously dulcet tones keep Tony company on his night drives, and so he becomes someone Tony both trusts and confides in.
However, when the latter’s life stumbles into a metaphorical badly lit cul-de-sac, things turn darker and the potential for Tony’s life to be leavened by an evolving romance – and cuppas – with the local all-night café waitress Rosa (Suzanne Packer) appears to be a non-starter.
Before long there’s a death and a hostage situation, with a knife, and close-ups of bloodshot eyes and popping veins… and, suddenly, Glenister is in an altogether different movie, which may (or may not, no spoilers here) be a Scouse talk radio version of Play Misty For Me.
Glenister is highly watchable throughout the four episodes, even when it turns out that the event Tony is so tortured about is something he really needn’t have tortured himself over at all (and, indeed, in real life he probably wouldn’t have).
If I have a criticism of the way his character has been written/directed it’s that as a tortured cabbie Glenister ticks all the boxes; as an inspirational teacher fallen on tough times, not so much.
Also, while the teaching profession is always under the cosh (as Tony makes clear to Lawrence during their late-night chats), I’m pretty sure things haven’t gone so completely to hell in Liverpool’s educational handcarts that they are depriving the local ‘St Kevins’ of their rightful apostrophes!
Nonetheless, aside from an on-screen grammar crisis at the fictional secondary school, I was always rooting for a happy ending and, whether or not Tony gets it, you probably will too.
GUY MARTIN’S LOST WW2 BOMBER
Stream on Channel 4
Moving… But more Guy please!
Fans of irrepressible Guy Martin’s on-screen enthusiasm for a challenging engineering project will have found much to love in this moving film.
Due to the scale of the project though, there was less of the hands-on Martin than we usually enjoy.
You can stream Guy Martin’s Lost WW2 Bomber on Channel 4 (file image)
Lancaster Bomber ED603 was on its way home from a mission on 13 June 1943 when it was shot down by the Luftwaffe, ending up at the bottom of Lake IJssel in The Netherlands with the loss of its seven-man crew. Four bodies were subsequently recovered, identified and buried, but three remained lost.
So, in 2023, marking the 80th anniversary, an extraordinary recovery operation was put in place.
‘The Dutch government considers this a debt of honour and a duty of care,’ explained forensics expert Lieutenant Els Schiltmans, hoping to be able to identify the remains of Raymond Edward Moore, Arthur Smart and Charles Sprack.
Martin inevitably put it more bluntly: ‘The lads getting on them planes – their chances of coming back was next to none… Fair play!’
Fact: while the average life expectancy in their unit was just 12 missions, the missing men had flown at least 40. Powerful stuff.
Due to the scale of the project though, there was less of the hands-on Martin than we usually enjoy
Pip (Emma Myers) is a teenage amateur sleuth – but there’s no other obvious reason why A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder (BBC iPlayer) is aimed exclusively at youngsters.
And while I’d never heard of the 22-year-old American, Myers has 10.5 million followers on Instagram!
Her pitch-perfect accent makes for a convincing British teen, while the fabulous Anna Maxwell Martin (just 75.2k Insta followers) plays Pip’s mum – and she’s nothing like her other famous mum role, Motherland’s Julia.
In Spent (Mondays, BBC2), model-turned-stand-up-turned-actor Michelle de Swarte mines her own past for comedy gold
Not just a pretty face
In Spent (Mondays, BBC2), model-turned-stand-up-turned-actor Michelle de Swarte mines her own past for comedy gold.
As Mia, she’s a sofa-surfing former catwalk star who runs from looming bankruptcy in Brooklyn (‘You’ve got to spend the poverty out of your system,’ she explains) to start over back in south London.
The humour isn’t for everyone, but Spent is full of wit, pathos and great lines – proving de Swarte’s not just a pretty face.
