Not satisfied with handing out inoculations to the stricken children of Nigeria, she tried to reason with a nasty Islamist child soldier before he spat in her face and ruined her immaculate make-up.
Lane batted her eyelids in protest before she went “off piste” (not sure that’s really possible in Africa) from her medical duties in a small village.
She resolved to rescue schoolchildren who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram after she “had a hunch” they might be around the corner.
Yep, she was right. She took the initiative by “putting out some flyers” (who’s going to print them?) and handed them out to everyone.
BBC
Our Girl: Michelle Keegan as Corporal Georgie Lane
It’s hard to believe that Our Girl and A Very English Scandal (BBC One) were actually on the same channel, as the first one should have been on CBBC
Lane, on the front foot again, armed with a portable printer. No one won a war by sitting back and waiting for someone else to go in. Best to do it yourself without any back-up and put the rest of your troop in danger.
Her colleagues will be delighted in the next episode when they have to track her down, the perspiration from this oppressive climate playing havoc with her mascara.
Another triumph for the show is how educational it is. “I remember after Partition,” began one character.
That’s the spirit: a history lesson. It’s peppered with reassuring lines like this.
We also had current affairs and travelogue, such as, “I never imagined Nigeria would look like this…” or “Nigeria is a complicated country…”
Not when seen through the eyes of these hilarious chumps. “Proper beautiful countries are all messed up…” Yeah, it’s a shame, isn’t it? Or this corker: “Africa smells funny…”
Where was that conversation going? And did you notice when they were travelling in their truck that the footage looked like a 1950s war movie or period drama which had been shot in a studio.
I look forward to next week’s episode when a spear carrier mistakenly walks on from the set of Cleopatra which is being filmed on the “sound stage” next door.
It’s hard to believe that Our Girl and A Very English Scandal (BBC One, Sunday) were actually on the same channel, as the first one should have been on CBBC. If the latter isn’t the best drama, it was certainly the most entertaining.
There were many laugh-out loud moments in the final episode. There was much to impress in performances, too, including Adrian Scarborough’s lofty George Carman QC, but I was mostly taken with Monica Dolan’s acid second wife who must have been the most tolerant woman in the world to have even considered Jeremy Thorpe, let alone marry him.
I particularly enjoyed the revelation about “bunnies”, which Hugh Grant’s Thorpe described as a “generic noun, in an imperative clause”, settling the issue for all time! The imperatives, it seemed, were far from generic in this case. But Dolan was a dutiful wife throughout as lurid details dropped like trousers in a Carry On film.
She soothed an emotionally strung-out Thorpe with the line: “I’ve made cod in parsley sauce.”
When the Bafta committee meets to discuss this hit, as they will, Dolan should be in line for Best Supporting Actress.
Of course, we had barely caught our breath when we had Tom Mangold’s robust, and revelatory, documentary The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal (BBC Four, Sunday). More skeletons then emerged from the closet, some literally, as the story came to light of another hit man who bottled it. At least he didn’t shoot a defenceless animal in the process.
Thank goodness the pair of them were useless. Given that the police investigation is now over, Russell T Davies’s wonderful drama is the best justice Norman Scott will receive. How little we knew. More of the same, BBC.
It might well be the best political drama since the underperforming House Of Cards. Both of them. Finally, lower the drawbridge: comedian Frankie Boyle has gone mainstream, at least in his own inimitable way.
You will recall, or have rightly chosen to forget, that he used to be in the habit of mocking the parents of disabled children, or taking a pop at the Queen (occasionally at the same time) but he has now been forgiven by the BBC after a suspended sentence. He has a new “chat show” and now this travelogue/polemic.
BBC
Frankie Goes To Russia was actually the funniest thing on television last week
Frankie Goes To Russia (BBC Two, Sunday) was actually the funniest thing on television last week, with much guffawing on the sofa in our house.
His straight-to-camera narration was hilarious. Here is his novel take on the end of the Soviet Union: “Ever since David Hasselhoff brought communism to an end in 1981…”
He was also devastatingly accurate about our beloved Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: “A cross between a head injury and an unmade bed!” But if you were looking for substance in this visit to one of the most hated countries in the world, you will have been disappointed. Substance is over-rated anyway.
Boyle did visit Rostov, which apparently has the worst hooligans in football, although the comedian only managed to find, among the local, revelling Cossacks a harmless rapper/ artist who will probably be rounded-up by Putin now for being too happy.
Welcome back to civilisation, Frankie.
