Riptide
Ranking: **
Miriam Margolyes: Australia Unmasked
Ranking: *
The fountain of everlasting youth used to bubble up someplace within the Aussie metropolis of Erinsborough, on a cul de sac referred to as Ramsay Road.
So a lot of its well-known Neighbours have proved ageless. When Scott and Charlene (Jason Donovan and Kylie Mynogue) returned for the collection finale this yr, they nonetheless appeared barely greater than teenagers. The likes of Donna and Mike (Margot Robbie and Man Pearce) are without end younger, too.
So what the heck has occurred to Shane Ramsay? Peter O’Brien, the actor who performed him for the primary two years of the cleaning soap’s run within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, seems as lined and craggy as an Easter Island statue.
O’Brien stars as surfer dude Sean, within the thriller Riptide (C5), and his face is so deeply fissured that I fearful he may crumble into mud if not dealt with gently.
Peter O’Brien stars as surfer dude Sean, within the thriller Riptide (C5)
All credit score to him for refusing, in contrast to so many actors of his era, to have beauty surgical procedure. However even all of the Botox in Hollywood could not repair him. These wrinkles want Polyfilla.
Sean appeared as historic as Methuselah however he wasn’t appearing his age as he launched into a second marriage to his masseuse Alison (fellow cleaning soap star Jo Joyner, from EastEnders).
They had been attempting for a child – to the seething fury of his ex-wife, their son, plus Alison’s ex-husband and her truculent teenage daughter. Then Sean introduced he was altering his will, and went browsing.
Inside hours, the police helicopter was looking for his physique. They needn’t have bothered. When an Easter Island statue falls off a surfboard, it is sure to sink.
Up up to now, Riptide was a cliched however pleasant thriller thriller, with loads of dramatic aerial pictures exhibiting the roiling surf.
Nevertheless it received slowed down in grief, as Alison slid right into a melancholy and hung round sobbing with the bloke next-door whose spouse had simply died from most cancers.
A maudlin memorial service was held, the place characters queued as much as keep in mind what Sean was like when he was younger – and when his face appeared much less like a dried-up riverbed.
This added nothing to the plot. It was only a downer, down-under.
Miriam Margolyes was down-under too, however that was little shock as a result of she’s been in all places these days – roaming Scotland in a campervan with Alan Cummings, cooking a Dickensian Christmas dinner at her London residence, popping up on This Morning.
She’s even rumoured to be the voice of a monster referred to as Beep the Meep on Physician Who subsequent yr.
Maybe there’s multiple of her, which is an alarming thought. The Miriam Margolyes who introduced Australia Unmasked (BBC2) introduced she’d lived in Oz for many years and even took Aussie citizenship 10 years in the past.
Why they put up together with her, I do not know. For the primary ten minutes she was always making jibes concerning the nation’s historical past as a Victorian convict colony.
Visiting Tasmania, she stayed with a sheep farmer and his spouse, and baited the person that his ancestors had exploited criminals for ‘slave labour’. That is not simply impolite, it borders on racism.
And in case anybody thought she wasn’t being obnoxious sufficient, she requested the lady whether or not she’d married the person for his cash. This couple had been letting her keep and giving her dinner, keep in mind.
The meal turned out to be roadkill wallaby. If it gave her indigestion, she deserved it.
As a result of that is BBC2 and never C4, Miriam tried to sort out critical topics, studying concerning the island’s historical past of homophobia and its present drawback with illiteracy.
However none of that stopped her spattering dialog with F-words, or breaking wind, which she does so often that it is virtually her catchphrase.
I’ve had greater than sufficient of her now.
- Choreography of the evening: As Coppelia (BBC2) opened, Swan (Michaela Mabinty DePrince) and her mom danced via the kitchen making breakfast. They even caught toast because it pinged from the toaster. Who’d have thought Morecambe and Sensible might encourage a ballet?
