Tonight's TV
Lucky escape
The Fixer (ITV1, 9pm); The Woman Who Escaped the Wests(Five, 10pm); White Girl (BBC2, 9PM)
YOU'LL never see me dance," our hero assures us at the end
of the first episode of The
Fixer, a shadowy thriller set
in the world of hitmen.
If John Mercer (Andrew Buchan) is unprepared
to show off any fancy footwork on the
dance floor, he is willing to put a bullet into
anyone that boss Lenny Douglas tells him to.
He has no choice. It's that or returning to
prison. This "clever quiet one" has been languishing
behind bars for shooting his aunt
and uncle. There's a good reason for this coldblooded
act (if you can ever have a "good" reason
for killing anyone) and shows us that he's
not all bad.
Lenny, played with icy menace by Peter
Mullan, wants Mercer to "do the stuff the law
can't do" - kill people who've done wrong but
can't be brought to justice.
He's part of a team assembled to fight the
war against crime. There are good and bad
points to this plan for Mercer. The killing he
can cope with, but working alongside Jack
the laddish Calum (Jody Latham) is asking a
lot. Never mind, he has the seductive charms
of a female hitman consultant - a Rose
(Tamzin Outhwaite) by any other name - to
console him on cold nights.
The Fixer eschews the complex, what-thehell-
is-going-on? scenario of some TV
thrillers for a straightforward reluctant hitman
drama enlivened by a set of good performances,
from Buchan's killer with a conscience
to Mullan's controlling boss.
The Woman Who Escaped The Wests is Caroline
Roberts, a teenage hitch-hiker who
made the mistake of accepting a lift from
Fred and Rose West. She was lucky in that she
lived to tell the tale. And, in relating her
dreadful ordeal, gives an insight into the
twisted minds of the Wests.
She was getting away from an unhappy
home life, so when the Wests asked if she'd
like to work for them, she said yes. "It was
lovely to begin with," she tells us. She cooked,
cleaned and helped get the children ready for
school.
Naive Caroline wasn't suspicious of the
large number of visitors to the house who
used to disappear into a room with Rose. She
said she was a masseur.
Howard Sounes, author of Fred & Rose, has
other ideas. "This place reeks of criminality,
vice and you don't want to know these people,
they're nutters. Let's be frank, Fred and Rose
were nutters," he says, not bothering with any
of the fancy psychoanalyst's talk that often
blights these reconstruction programmes.
Caroline really should have made a quick
exit after Fred began telling how he could operate
on a woman's genitalia to improve her
sex life. But when he invited her to join their
"sex circle", she packed her case and left.
You'd think she'd learnt her lesson, but no,
a few weeks later while hitch-hiking she
again accepted a lift from the Wests. This
time, things turned nasty. She was bundled
in the car, punched, tied up and taken back
to the West house of horror.
She was subjected to sexual abuse by both
of them. Amazingly, she stayed with them,
eventually escaping on a visit to the launderette.
The Wests were taken to court but escaped
with little more than a telling off because
Caroline couldn't face revealing the full horror
of her ordeal. They were free to become
serial sex killers.
She felt responsible for the girls who died
in the years afterwards, coming forward
when the Wests were arrested. It was a turning
point in her life and she now helps those
who've suffered like her.
Mother-of-three Debbie needs assistance in
White Girl, part of BBC2's White season. Abi
Morgan's drama sees her trying to escape the
abusive relationship with Daniel Mays' bullying
husband Stevie.
This scenario is familiar enough from TV
and film dramas but takes a different turn as
she and her children are rehoused in an entirely
Muslim area in Bradford. Her 11-yearold
daughter Leah becomes interested in
Islam, putting on a headscarf and joining
prayers at the local mosque.
With tremendous performances from Holly
Kenny as the unhappy Leah and Anna
Maxwell Martin as her desperate mother,
Morgan's drama packs a powerful punch.
11:21am Monday 10th March 2008
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