Roadkill
Sunday, BBC1
DNA
Saturday, BBC4
Rating: 
Roadkill, the latest political thriller from David Hare, stars Hugh Laurie as shady Tory Minister Peter Laurence and Helen McCrory as the Prime Minister, and both are so wonderful and mesmerising and terrific that if I had my way, I’d cut everyone else out, and all the other subplots, and it would just be them, circling each other.
I would be content with that, truly. As it is I kept thinking: yes, yes, that’s all very well, but when are we going to get back to Laurie and McCrory?
Otherwise, this didn’t seem that exceptional, and it was riddled with so many That Wouldn’t Happen moments, of the kind that make you want to throw your slipper at the telly – ‘That wouldn’t happen!’ – it made you despair.
Roadkill, the latest political thriller from David Hare, stars Hugh Laurie as shady Tory Minister Peter Laurence and Helen McCrory (above) as the Prime Minister, and both are so wonderful
But just to be clear: even if you take Laurie and McCrory out of the equation, it’s still nowhere near as dreary or confusing as Hare’s last TV drama, Collateral. Yet.
This is a four-parter that is being shown weekly, but it is also available to watch in full on iPlayer. I’ll be reviewing the first episode only, out of respect for the weekly watchers who will otherwise send me the hate mail that is always diligently forwarded by the office (thanks for that).
This opened with Laurence, the Transport Minister, emerging victorious from a libel trial where a journalist had claimed he was secretly lining his own pocket. (This has something to do with the privatisation of the NHS, which will, I’m assuming, come more into focus, Hare being Hare.)
The journalist, the bizarrely named Charmian Pepper (Sarah Greene), had changed her story in court because she couldn’t prove what she had alleged.
We were only a few minutes in and already we had the first of our TWH moments. Her newspaper published the story even though she had no concrete evidence? (TWH!)
She is then fired by her newspaper’s editor – mate, you should have made sure the story stood up before publishing it – who is such a chauvinist dinosaur it all felt very dated.
But Pepper is determined to bring Laurence down and convinces the editor to send her to Washington to look into the story properly, although why this wasn’t done first time out, I don’t know.
I also don’t know what it is about acclaimed playwrights working for television, but I’m guessing that somewhere in their contract it says they are not obliged to do any research whatsoever.
But I’ll leave off the TWHs, even though the cumulative effect is dispiriting, and even though I could go on and on. (Would a ministerial driver take the ministerial car back to her home overnight?)
Instead, let’s move on to Laurence, who has plenty of skeletons in his closet. There’s a mistress and an unacknowledged daughter, possibly, while elsewhere we had political aides jumping into bed with each other at the drop of a hat.
But it was Laurie’s portrayal of Laurence that kept you going, to the extent that you did. Laurence is self-made, prides himself on having ‘the common touch’, appears regularly on a radio phone-in show and has an all-round charming facade, but Laurie’s performance lets us know, right from the off, that underneath this he is all narcissism and greed and ambition.
We know it, and the Prime Minister, who has helmet hair and the iciest way of talking – McCrory is terrific, did I mention that? – knows it, and toys with him mercilessly.
The scene where Laurence imagines she is about to appoint him Foreign Secretary was so riveting that I even momentarily forgot Little Grey and Little White – the Beluga whales from last week, whom I Google endlessly to check they are still happy in their Icelandic waters.
As we left it, Pepper is off to Washington to research what she should have researched in the first instance, while I find I’m most hung up on one small detail: why was Laurence so offended by the small stain on his assistant’s shirt?
So I will stick with it, if my television can withstand it. My television seems quite robust, but still, there are probably only so many slipper strikes it can take.
As the nights draw in blah-de-blah, what we most need is Strictly, which, thankfully, we now have – oh God, poor Anton – and also a Scandi noir, which we also have. This is the Danish thriller DNA, created by Torleif Hoppe, who also co-wrote The Killing, and it stars Anders W. Berthelsen as Rolf Larsen, a copper who is investigating the abduction of a toddler from a playground when his own baby daughter goes missing. (Be warned: the first episode begins and ends with a most shocking incident.)
This is the Danish thriller DNA, created by Torleif Hoppe, who also co-wrote The Killing, and it stars Anders W. Berthelsen (above) as Rolf Larsen, a copper
The second episode – this is being shown as a weekly double bill – takes us on to five years later when flaws that have been discovered in the national DNA database lead him to think he can finally find her. To be fair, this also had its TWH moments.
A child is abducted and there is only, in effect, one officer on the case? Does Denmark not have CCTV? Where’s my slipper? But it is well played, partly due to co-star Charlotte Rampling, and is horribly addictive.
I’m in.