THE last time you might have seen Gemma Arterton was in skirt-slashed and heavily accessorised school uniform in St Trinian's – although if you're really unlucky you saw her in the new Guy Ritchie film as well. Would she be up to the role of Thomas H
ardy's heroine in Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, the big BBC period stoater for these cash-strapped, stay-at-home times?
Well, we're only one episode in, but she's already got a lot of the tricky stuff out of the way, including the heavily trailed scene where, up at the big hoose, Alec D'Urberville feeds her strawberries. Presumably we were supposed to find this incredibly erotic, but I've never got the whole food-is-sex thing. When, at her local greengrocer's, Nigella Lawson squeezes a courgette to check for firmness, my only thought is: "You've handled that one so you better buy it." Furthermore, if chocolate was ever introduced into my bedroom, I reckon I'd be as appalled as Alan Partridge – "You've got it on the valance!" So, strawberries – not a turn-on. Now, if Alec had only fed Tess a macaroon bar…
That small gripe aside, this is a sumptuous production. Comely maidens dance dreamily on stunning Wessex clifftops in impossibly white frocks, then flash incongruously uncrooked smiles at the county's strapping young menfolk. But who needs historical accuracy? Everyone and everything is beautiful, including the men, including Hans Matheson as Alec, and initially I thought this was going to be a problem. Too many men on TV these days are beautiful and the dastardly D'Urberville shouldn't be. But Matheson made us see beyond his lustrous-locked loveliness, as did Arterton, although it should be said that Anna Massey acted both of them right out of the big hoose and right down the long drive as his blind mother.
I never got into Tribe, the greater Gore-Texed Bruce Parry's last outing, because I remain unconvinced that mainstream primetime TV – and all that needs in the way of thrills, manufactured or real – is the best way for us to learn about remote corners of the world. After all, now that these primitive people know about the existence of TV and indeed Gore-Tex, won't they turn decadent, lose all their innate cunning and pick up colds? But I decided to give Amazon With Bruce Parry a go. Parry is following the world's mightiest river from its trickle of a source high up in the Peruvian Andes to the great yawning mouth on Brazil's Atlantic coast. He's an okay guy once you get to know him, and I think we're all familiar with the type: short, compact, weather-beaten, slightly mad eyes, wears trekking sandals even in winter, drinks real ale, non-practising sex maniac. The latter may be grossly unfair in Parry's case though apparently in Tribe he was required by ancient custom to invert his own penis.
He began this adventure with a hardy family (not to be confused with a Hardy family) of llama herders descended from the Incas who chew coca leaves to combat altitude sickness. Further downriver, the leaves take on an entirely different aspect. It's legal to cultivate coca for "traditional use" but 90% here goes to manufacturing cocaine. The farmers don't get rich, one revealing that an entire harvest earns him just $100 – the price of a gram of coke in London.
Parry had decided to leave the Andes by the quickest route – whitewater rafting – but admitted: "I'm cacking it." This didn't sound very BBC Natural History Department, or very David Attenborough. But maybe I misheard, and what he actually said was: "I'm kayaking it."
The journey only got scarier, with Parry witnessing peasants doing their bit in the creation of the white powder by adding bleach, kerosene and sulphuric acid ("A glamour drug?" he wondered) before the film crew were forced to dodge a US-funded helicopter gunship intent on blowing up this jungle lab.
In the last refuge of the Maoist guerrilla organisation the Shining Path, he met the peaceful Ashaninka tribe who have been drawn into a war with drugs gangs. "We live as you see us," Parry was told, "in the forest with the wasps." The tribesmen need the forest to hunt; their enemies want it torn down for new land for coca. In an action-packed programme, Parry's director then fell critically ill. The danger over, our man was in urgent need of a beer, even though the local brew was made from spit.
Who would have thought that watching real people pick their noses would still be fun, and especially in 2008? In 1974 The Family was groundbreaking reality TV, but since then every British family, or at least its most show-offy member, has appeared on our screens. Well done, Channel 4, for lifting up a stone in Canterbury and finding the Wilkins clan – mum, dad and three offspring who're making their telly debuts for this revival, even though all the women bear a vague resemblance to the Slaters of EastEnders whenever their hair is at its straightest and mouths their sulkiest.
Actually, the Wilkins don't live under a stone but in a trim red-brick terrace where dad Simon seems to do all the cooking. Of an evening, he and his wife Jane like to open a bottle of rosé, just as long as Tom, their clumsy-but-sweet 14-year-old, hasn't broken the last of the glasses.
Jane is depressed at the thought of turning 40 but she's an attractive woman. If anything's going to age her it will be Emily, 19, who skives off work and goes clubbing every night. "You treat this place like a bloody hotel!" roared Simon. Dads were scolding errant daughters like that back in 1974 – back in Thomas Hardy's day as well, no doubt.
The full article contains 997 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
