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Ghost Canyon

'Roadkill'
(Hugh Laurie, Helen McCrory, et al / 2-Disc DVD / PG-13 / 2020 / PBS)

Overview: Peter Laurence (Hugh Laurie, House, Veep) is a political outsider who is very popular with the people. Fresh from a successful libel case against a journalist printing stories alleging corruption, he's a man on the rise.

But Peter has plenty of skeletons in his closet. And soon he discovers another--an illegitimate daughter serving a prison sentence. It's a secret that could ruin him. And one, apparently, that his Prime Minister (Helen McCrory) already knows.

DVD Verdict: David Hare's latest four-part political drama centers on populist Conservative rising politician Peter Laurence, who projects a winning "man of the people" image not only with his solid, family-man image alongside his wife Saskia Reeves and two adult daughters, but also via his regular appearances on a "meet the people" live-radio chat-show where he candidly fields questions directly from the public.

Phew! OK, well, as we join the action, his star has risen even higher as he has just won a high-profile libel case against a national tabloid newspaper which has alleged dodgy business practices against him while in America.

The precarious Prime Minister of the day, Helen McCrory, obviously riffing off Theresa May, recognizes the danger to her own position of Laurence's ascendancy, and so sidelines him in a reshuffle to the political hot potato of Justice Secretary, when Laurence has been counting on being promoted to one of the senior Cabinet positions.

But problems are mounting up on the sidelines for Laurence. Not only does the female journalist who filed the original "libelous" article against him get a lead to follow up the story in New York which will prove the original charge and lead to a perjury accusation against Laurence, but also his rebellious younger teenage daughter, Millie Brady, has been caught on camera by the tabloid press taking drugs!

His mistress, played by "Borgen" P.M. Sidse Babett Knudsen is also getting uppity about being the invisible "other woman", his Private Secretary, Iain De Caestecker and even his female driver are secretly conspiring against him and leaking information about him to his enemies, while last, but not least, he learns that he has another adult daughter from an affair with a black woman years ago.

Just to mix things up even more, this new daughter is incarcerated in prison, serving a long sentence for bank fraud, coincidentally as her dad, whom she's known about for years, becomes the minister responsible for prisons. Then the prison where she's serving her sentence becomes the flashpoint for a major riot! (It's all bloody go, isn't it!!)

The narrative ebbs and flows from there with myriad characters, all of the above and more, ducking in and out of the story, with a possible murder, a prime ministerial resignation and financial skullduggery all in the mix as Laurence struggles to keep all his plates spinning to protect his career, new daughter, reputation, secret relationship with his mistress and his family, especially his two recalcitrant daughters.

The one person he thinks he can count on is his seemingly docile wife, who seems to be in denial about his philandering as she focuses on her day-job as a choirmaster.

The show title 'Roadkill' rather needlessly occurs when Laurence accidentally runs down a stray deer but the real roadkill of course here are all the incidental characters who likewise stray into his path.

The problem for me with the series is that with two larger than life buffoons currently running the White House and Downing Street, it's very hard currently to convincingly make fiction stranger than fact.

I also felt there was too much "cliffhanger and coincidence" as well as just too many characters at play, dragging down the action.

Hugh Laurie was capable, no more than that, as Laurence, but the ensemble acting was mixed in quality. Best were Helen McCrory as the vulnerable First Minister and Saskia Reeves as the mouse who eventually roars, while by contrast the performances of Brady and De Caestecker, to name but two, lacked depth and realism.

Whilst I certainly followed the serpentine twists and turns of the series, and was compelled to follow them and watch them spin out before me, at no time did I confuse what I was watching with real life. But then again, it is only TV and an enjoyable 225 minutes at that. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

www.PBS.org





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