Banking on gloom

WRITER-DIRECTOR Dominic Savage says that his films are about confronting life’s realities, not escaping them. So there are no happy endings in Freefall, set against the background of the current financial crisis.

How many of us want to be reminded of our money problems remains to be seen.

Savage uses improvised dialogue which, as Mike Leigh has shown, can be really effective, although here it’s more irritating than anything.

Freefall looks at the people who sell financial packages and the poor saps who buy them – and then find themselves with dire money problems.

Dave (Dominic Cooper) is a Jack the lad with the gift of the gab and the ability to sell discounted mortgages or CDO (collateralised debt obligation) which enables people without money to buy a house and then fall horribly into debt so that they lose their home.

Dave happily sells to anyone he can, including old schoolmate Jim (Joseph Mawle) and his wife (Anna Maxwell Martin), who swap their council house for a very des res in a nice area.

The third point of this financial triangle is city banker Gus (Aidan Gillen). He gets high on doing financial deals at the expense of his home life, alienating everyone including his lady friend (Rosamund Pike) with whom he has sex on his office desk. One year later, and the money problems begin for all three, although they materialise in different forms.

While Gus is talking about losing millions, Jim is only struggling to pay his monthly mortgage instalments now they’ve gone through the roof.

Among this trio of money men, it’s difficult to find anyone to like. Gus and Dave are obnoxious and deserve everything they get. Jim and Mandy evoke some sympathy as the victims, although their greed in wanting a better house played a part in their financial downfall. But all it may do is remind people too much of their own financial woes.

COAST returns for a fourth run and, having searched every nook and cranny of our own shorelines, geographer Nicholas Crane and the team extend their search farther afield.

He, together with Neil Oliver, Alice Roberts, Mark Horton and Miranda Krestovnikoff, dust off their passports and extend their tour to the shores of our European neighbours.

The team makes a hovercraft crossing to France. However, the overseas adventure is short but sweet, as the team returns to Britain to examine Rudyard Kipling’s garden in Rottingdean, East Sussex, before exploring the geology of the Isle of Wight.

SO far in Property Snakes and Ladders, most of the people have faced a stark choice between moving into the property themselves in the hope it eventually goes up in value, or selling it now at a loss.

At least the would-be tycoons featured here do have some experience of making money out of bricks and mortar, as they did very well on the buy-to-let market.

However, instead of taking the cash and running as fast as they possibly could, they’re now preparing to risk everything on a hugely ambitious project – converting a grade II-listed railway station on the edge of Dartmoor that’s been abandoned for the past 40 years.

They hope to launch a holiday rental business but, as ever, Sarah Beeny sounds a note of caution. She believes they’ve misjudged their potential market and made some serious miscalculations in their plans. And that’s before you take the recession into account.

GETTING old is difficult enough without silly old thespians like Nicholas Craig (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nigel Planer) sounding off about the dos and don’ts of acting like an old codger.

How To Be Old is another of his lectures about acting techniques, this time masquerading as part of the Grey Expectations season. He tells us all (as if we care) how to play elderly characters as well as plugging his book, Charming Walks For Older Actors. He also has tips on how to get the most out of our twilight years. How about not wasting time sitting indoors watching him?