The week in TV: Ludwig; Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins; Apples Never Fall; Surviving October 7; Small Town, Big Riot – review | TV comedy

Ludwig (BBC One)
Superstar SAS: Who Dares Wins (Channel 4)
Apples By no means Fall (BBC One)
Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Once more (BBC Two)
Small City, Huge Riot (BBC Three)

Comedy thrillers are a tough style, too usually imploding right into a tonally bumpy mess: often not fairly humorous sufficient, and about as gripping as a sport of half-hearted yuletide Cluedo.

Enter BBC One with Mark Brotherwood’s six-parter Ludwig, set in Cambridge and the newest try at cosy crime (fashionable division). David Mitchell stars because the titular Ludwig, “the Elvis Presley of puzzle-setters”: emotionally repressed, out of sync with fashionable occasions, dwelling in Cambridge and virtually mummified in a wise corduroy jacket. Sure, Ludwig does give us aged-up Mark Corrigan from Peep Present. From some angles, with the beard, even a depressed David Blunkett.

When his sister-in-law, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), reveals that her husband, his police detective twin brother, is lacking, Ludwig takes on his identification to seek out out what occurred, and will get roped into fixing crimes. As a premise it’s pretty absurd, as is the truth that Ludwig employs his puzzle abilities to resolve a (very fundamental) thriller every episode, which appears primarily an excuse to provide actors comparable to Derek Jacobi and Felicity Kendall cheeky visitor spots.

Nevertheless, the extra episodes I watched, the extra I preferred it. There’s a cracking forged, together with Maxwell Martin, Sophie Willan from Alma’s Not Regular, and Dipo Ola as an unwitting detective. In the direction of the tip, the overarching thriller (what occurred to Ludwig’s twin?) slams into place. There are genuinely humorous moments (“Do you comply with the football?” asks Ludwig, attempting to bond with police colleagues). The sequence additionally appears intent on trolling the Oxford-centric Inspector Morse (substituting halcyon scenes of Cambridge).

Ludwig reasonably overplays the master-puzzler theme (it’s like attempting to whip up pleasure over somebody filling in a sudoku grid), however, in its finest cosy moments, it’s the closest any British manufacturing has obtained to the rankings juggernaut of US hit Solely Murders within the Constructing.

It’s fascinating to see actuality tv go chilly on politicians. There aren’t any within the present Strictly Come Dancing lineup and whereas I’m a Superstar… Get Me Out of Right here! featured disgraced former well being secretary Matt Hancock after which Nigel Farage (now MP for Clacton), it’s reported to be giving Westminster a miss for the subsequent sequence.

Now Channel 4’s particular forces coaching present Superstar SAS: Who Dares Wins? (which additionally featured Hancock) returns with no politicians, although there may be journalist Rachel Johnson (sister of Boris). To her credit score, she doesn’t fake she’s included for another cause, as she stamps by way of New Zealand mud, navigates excessive drops, and is dragged earlier than SAS instructors for an “interrogation”.

Johnson talks of individuals calling her household the c-word in Sainsbury’s and the way she’s been a “punchbag… who’s had to absorb loads of the anger folks have felt due to the massive choices which have been taken by my brother for the nation”. It beats the likes of Farage giving it primetime populist jazz arms, however I’m undecided actuality TV is totally over its politics dependancy.

Apples By no means Fall is the newest thriller to be tailored from a Liane Moriarty bestseller (Huge Little Lies; 9 Excellent Strangers), and on paper it sounds juicy. Annette Bening and Sam Neill star as Pleasure and Stan, now unhappily retired from their Floridan tennis academy, surrounded by their spoiled grownup brood, performed by amongst others Jake Lacy and Alison Brie, and a sinister stranger (Georgia Flood) who’s infiltrated the household. Within the first of seven episodes, Pleasure goes lacking and suspicion falls on risky and obnoxious Stan.

All of it feels dated and stodgy (extra claggy crumble than tangy apple) and there are such a lot of Pleasure-heavy flashbacks you retain forgetting she’s lacking. I’m sticking with it on the grounds that something involving Bening and Neill is watchable, however the TV-thriller racket strings are beginning to look frayed.

The week’s most devastating documentary was Yariv Mozer’s 90-minute Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Once more, proven on BBC One. It’s a gruelling, in-depth retelling of the bloodbath on the Nova music pageant in Israel (among the many websites attacked by Hamas on 7 October final 12 months) at which 364 folks had been murdered, with others injured or taken as hostages.

The occasions are associated by survivors in interviews, in quasi-real-time, utilizing footage from cell phones, CCTV, and Hamas’s personal physique cameras (they arrive on motorbikes waving AK-47s). The documentary begins with the trance pageant (at dawn, when rockets begin falling, many individuals are “rolling” on ecstasy or LSD), then erupts right into a massacre. On the pageant (folks huddling underneath levels or hiding in fridges), on roads (plagued by corpses and burnt-out automobiles), and in farmland (bullets whizzing previous as they run).

The movie doesn’t cowl the broader battle. Aerial maps present the surprising proximity of Gaza, there are temporary scenes at locations such because the Be’eri kibbutz, however the primary focus is the Nova festival-goers. Photos of high-profile victims comparable to Shani Louk and Hersh Goldberg-Polin seem as if in a horrible dream. Survivors are nonetheless traumatised, as they attempt to honour the lifeless. “I accepted dying,” says one younger man nearly blankly. Be warned: this can be a highly effective, however extremely graphic, harrowing watch. I can’t cease interested by it.

On BBC Three, the two-part docuseries Small City, Huge Riot appears to be like into the 2023 dysfunction in Kirkby, Merseyside, outdoors a lodge housing asylum-seekers, which led to arrests and convictions. Bafta-winning documentarian Mobeen Azhar states his purpose: “I wish to know why a protest in a little bit city become a full-scale riot.”

His investigation takes him past Kirkby to on-line misinformation and far-right teams stoking unrest. The sequence was primarily made earlier than this summer time’s riots (beginning in Southport after the stabbing of three youngsters and spreading throughout the UK), which Azhar refers to briefly on the finish.

What emerges is an intriguing research of supposedly spontaneous protests and disturbances. What Azhar brings to his topics (his documentaries embrace A Black and White Killing: The Case That Shook America) is an indefatigable dedication to the deep dive. Outdated-school investigative journalism that simply received’t give up.

Star rankings (out of 5)
Ludwig ★★★★
Superstar SAS: Who Dares Wins ★★★
Apples By no means Fall ★★★
Surviving October 7: We Will Dance Once more ★★★★★
Small City, Huge Riot ★★★★

What else I’m watching

The Nice British Bake Off (Channel 4)

The return of the pastel-hued baking contest of triumphs and disasters, and a reminder that it’s not over till the buttercream curdles. Judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith are joined by presenters Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (Netflix)

Ryan Murphy’s true-crime drama in regards to the US Nineties case of two brothers killing their dad and mom – then saying they’d been abused. Overblown, overlong and overacted, however surprisingly compelling.

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (BBC Two)

A brand new sequence of gently rebellious riverbank musings from Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse about fishing, life, ageing, dying, and naturally a fast nip to the pub.