Tonight's TV
Dead good
Waking The Dead (BBC1, 9pm); Age Of Terror (BBC2, 9pm)
AFTER last night's opener, you'll
be as confused as me as to who's
doing what and to whom in
Waking The Dead. The key images
repeated over and over
again are flashbacks to a
gagged woman hanging from chains in a container
in a railway siding. Whenever you're
in danger of dropping off, the director gives
a quick flash of the unsettling sight to jolt you
back into life.
This isn't half as disturbing as the behaviour
of cold case detective Dep Supt Boyd
(Trevor Eve), first seen at the airport saying
goodbye, not to his luggage because he's flying
from Terminal 5, but to his lady love,
Sarah.
No sooner has he said: "I wish I'd never met
you" (Boyd's idea of a term of endearment)
than we're plunged into the action as a mugger
trying to steal a handbag on a railway station
platform is pushed on to the track by a
woman who proceeds to leap down, give him
the kiss of life and then disappears into the
crowd.
Her DNA is found at the scene of a murder
that took place in 1993. The charred remains
of the victim, labelled 27B, have been waiting
for identification ever since.
We know after the opening part that this is
about terrorists - Palestinian, Basque and
Irish - and revenge involving three women
whom you don't cross. As the Irish one threatens,
perhaps taking her cue from Delia
Smith's latest cookbook: "If you mess me
about I'll cut your balls off and put them in a
blender."
Ratbag Boyd, meanwhile, is on a personal
quest involving a boy in a psychiatric ward.
By tonight's episode, he's shouting a lot. He
seems incapable of talking reasonably to anyone,
suspects or colleagues.
"She's driving me insane," he says of chief
suspect, Lore. Pot, kettle, black are the words
that spring to mind.
Even Boyd admits: "It's complicated". This
becomes obvious as people say things like:
"What happened in 1993 is about what happened
in 1992."
I'm all in favour of the detective who threatens
a suspect with a sheet of sandpaper to get
him to talk. She should use it on Boyd to smooth out his rough edges and put him, and
us, out of our misery.
Despite all this, Waking The Dead remains
a gripping thriller with a plot that just about
hangs together by the time all is revealed.
Real terrorists are scrutinised in the first of
Peter Taylor's new series, Age Of Terror. His
aim is to present "the bloody history of 30
years of terror".
The 1970s were the time of the revolutionary
hijacker. He takes as his example the 1976
hijacking of an Air France Tel Aviv to Paris
flight by a group of Palestinians and German
Marxist revolutionaries. This was no simple
hijack as they flew the plane and the passengers-
turned-hostages to Entebbe Airport in
Idi Amin's Uganda.
With the Israelis sticking to their no negotiations
policy, a daring rescue mission was
planned.
One passenger got out early, thanks to her
own piece of deception. A nurse from Manchester
pretended to be pregnant and have a
threatened miscarriage. She tells how she decided
that: "I'm getting off this plane one way
or another and, from that second, I wasn't
scared any more because I knew I was going
to do it."
Amazingly, the hijackers released her, enabling
her to give the authorities valuable information
about the situation on board the
aircraft.
It's the hostages' candid and poignant stories
that make Age Of Terror stand out. One
of them, Sara Davidson, kept a diary of her
days in captivity, with readings helping convey
the awfulness of the situation, not least
when passengers were sorted into Jewish and
non-Jewish groups. The latter were released.
Taylor puts this terrorist act in the context
of today's threats. He recalls his first experience
of meeting a terrorist in 1971. That was
Angela Davis, who was prepared to die in the
struggle to liberate black America.
Today's terrorists have a whole different
agenda that makes every one of us a potential
target.
10:27am Tuesday 15th April 2008
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