Life
Tuesday, BBC1
Honour
Monday & Tuesday, ITV
Rating: 
Life is the latest drama from Mike ‘Doctor Foster’ Bartlett and it had, excitingly, been billed as a Doctor Foster spin-off, as one of the characters is familiar. It’s Anna, your favourite frenemy and mine.
Anna, Dr Gemma Foster’s neighbour, who was always looming with a balloon wine glass in hand. Anna, who was married to Oily Neil. Anna, who was Victoria Hamilton in a terrible wig.
What did happen to her after she ditched Oily Neil and left Parminster? Is she still ballooningly looming? But the trouble with Life, as quickly became apparent, is there isn’t much life to it.
Gail (Alison Steadman, above with Geoffrey Streatfeild) is approaching her 70th birthday celebrations when a run-in with an old school friend alerts her to how her husband controls her
I kept wanting to thrash it with a broom – ‘Come to life, come to life!’ – but it would not. It just stayed stubbornly bland.
This series follows the residents of a large Manchester house divided into four flats, and whose lives intersect at various points, so it isn’t that dissimilar to Jimmy McGovern’s The Street.
Or at all dissimilar, you could say. Anna – still played by Hamilton, but with pixie cut rather than terrible wig – has changed her name to Belle and is still at the wine, but not in a balloon glass, disappointingly, and is desperately lonely with a disruptive, troubled teenage niece who has come to stay.
As of yet there’s nothing to connect her to Doctor Foster, so she could be an entirely new character, which does make you wonder what the point is.
Meanwhile, the other inhabitants include university teacher David (Adrian Lester), who is moping around for reasons we come to understand; pregnant Hannah (Melissa Johns), who has a boyfriend who’s not the father of the baby – but then the father of the baby with whom she’d had a one-night stand does turn up; and Gail (Alison Steadman).
Gail is approaching her 70th birthday celebrations when a run-in with an old school friend alerts her to what was astoundingly obvious anyhow: her husband Henry (Peter Davison) is patronising and belittling and controlling, and possibly the most annoying man ever.
Quite why she’s never seen this when you can see it from miles off is anyone’s guess.
It’s all very workmanlike, right down to Gail opening a window to release a trapped bee. (A metaphor! For freedom!) And it’s not just Gail’s storyline that feels familiar. They all do.
Will Anna/Belle bond with her niece? Will she, will she? Will Hannah ditch her boring boyfriend for the dishy, cheeky one-night stand? Perhaps some great twists are on the way – I did read that Oily Neil makes an appearance – but for the moment this is dramatically turgid, and it’s lazy on the detail front.
Would social services simply dump the niece on Anna/Belle’s doorstep? I’ve awarded it two stars rather than fewer, solely for Hamilton and Steadman, who are watchable whatever, and there was that terrific moment when Anna/Belle confronted David about money owed for the painting of the hall.
I’ll give it that. There are still five episodes to go and I will watch but, frankly, only because I’m paid to. And times are hard.
The drama Honour was based on the real-life case of Banaz Mahmod, the 20-year-old from South London who, in 2006, was beaten, raped and murdered on the orders of her own family.
She was from the Iraqi-Kurdish community, and her crime? Divorcing the violently abusive husband who had been chosen for when she was 17 and falling in love with someone else.
The wonderful Keeley Hawes played real-life DCI Caroline Goode, who came on board when Banaz was reported missing, and whose dogged persistence and determination eventually revealed the horrific truth.
The wonderful Keeley Hawes (above) played real-life DCI Caroline Goode, who came on board when Banaz was reported missing
Also, it was revealed that Banaz had sought help from the police on five separate occasions and was never taken seriously, not even by a policewoman. ‘Five times she’s come to us and five times we’ve failed her, and I can’t even blame it on the f****** men,’ is how Goode put it.
Phone records, a car-tracker and the suspect who thankfully, perhaps, kept making calls despite the fact that his lawyer told him not to, finally led them to that derelict house in Birmingham.
And what was buried there. It was all harrowing but riveting, with just a few moments of light relief, often in the form of Keilly, the police analyst who kept jumping to conclusions (‘Keilly facts’).
Such moments weren’t necessary but they were welcome. It was, I think, sensitively handled. For instance, the reaction of the Iraqi interpreter made it clear that not all males from the community are blinded by such misogyny.
Still, it’s been criticised for being a ‘white saviour’ narrative. That is, for putting the white person centre stage rather than offering a well-rounded account of the victim, and there is some truth to this.
We learned little about Banaz. What was she like at school? What where her hobbies and aspirations?
But on the other hand, if it touches one police officer who will act differently in future, or one young woman who realises she does not have to live in terror of her father, her uncle, her cousins, it has to be worth it. Doesn’t it?